THE HARD TRUTH ABOUT GROWING UP AS A MILITARY BRAT
I don’t remember Connecticut. They tell me I was born there, but I don’t remember it. We only lived there a month after I was born. When people ask me where I’m from, I say Virginia. We lived there for 7 years, the longest I stayed in any one place growing up. Virginia provided the only stability I knew as a kid, and even then, it didn’t last. By the time I was 11, I’d lived in five different states and God knows how many houses and apartments, on base and off, changing states on average once every two years, not unusual for a military family. Home is where the Navy sends you. Related read: Do I Use My GI Bill for Dependents or Myself?
What It's Really Like to be a Military Brat
My father was a submariner. I spent my childhood watching him hold several positions: engineer, weapons officer, XO, CO, Chief of Targeting at STRATCOM, Commander of NOTU. His job allowed me to do a lot of interesting things: watch ships be commissioned, see them in dry dock, spend days at sea, fire a water slug, walk through the process of test-firing a nuclear missile, watch a space shuttle launch from 3 miles away. I once watched a Trident missile test fire, dined at a governor's mansion, wandered inside the underground bunker at STRATCOM, met several Admirals, and much, much more. I even have what was, when I got it, a working key to a nuclear reactor. I’ve been very lucky. Being a Navy brat has afforded me a lot of opportunities that most people will never have.
Military Brat Life isn't Always Glamorous
It shapes you in other ways, too. I didn’t get to know my father until he’d retired from the Navy when I was about 13 years old. He was a submariner, he spent half the year at sea. 3 months away, 3 months home, rinse, and repeat. I never resented him for it, and we spent as much time together as we could when he was home, but the reality is that it’s hard to maintain a relationship with someone when you don’t see or speak to them for half the year. When he was at sea, the only way to communicate with him was through Familygrams: small, yellow pieces of sturdy paper, about the size of a postcard. After addressing it – person, name, and the number of the ship, along with the Navy Post Office you’d be sending it to – you had 40 boxes to work with, one word per box. There were two rules: the Navy was going to screen everything you wrote, and you couldn’t send bad news, no matter how important it was. Read next: Does My Family Hate Me Now That I Don't Deploy? Filling out a Familygram was like a game of chess. You had to figure out what you had to say, what you could say, and how many words you had to say it in. My mom and I spent hours on them. Usually, they ended up something like this: “Hi. Hope you’re well. We are fine. We did X recently. It was a lot of fun. Will did well on his math test. The cats are doing well. We miss you! Love Karena and Will.” That’s 36 words, and as you can see, you don’t have a lot of space. The worst part, though, was we never knew if they arrived until he got home, and he couldn’t write us back.
The Meaning of "Military Brat" is Blending In
I was an only child. I didn’t have siblings or a dog, so I learned to make friends quickly. I became a chameleon, which is to say I cultivated a lot of interests and whenever I didn’t know what people were talking about, I lied early and often. “Yeah, I’ve seen that movie. Sure, I know that TV show. Yeah, I’ve read that book. Been a while, though. Oh, that’s one of my favorite games! Yeah, I loved that album!” Upon moving to Nebraska, a neighbor asked my mom, “Y’all Huskers fans?” We looked at each other; neither of us had any idea what a Husker was. Finally, we both shrugged, and said “We’ll be whatever you want us to be.”
From Military Brat to Finding the Real Me
I had to unlearn those habits – both the impulse to lie and the need to fit in – later in life, but they were survival mechanisms and they got me through several moves. They also had the odd effect of making me good at listening to other people rather than waiting my turn to speak. People will tell you a lot about themselves if you just have the patience to listen to them talk, and letting them talk to you is a good way to make friends. So, I did. I made friends quickly and kept them across several moves, and I made new ones wherever I went. Fitting in with any given community was a balancing act. When we lived in Georgia, I worked hard to make sure I didn’t develop the accent or say “y’all” so I wouldn’t be confused for a Southerner the next time we moved. I didn’t pick up too many regional sayings outside of the stuff I learned as a kid in Virginia. People had to think about it for a while, but it always seemed to shake out like this: Northerners consistently told me I sounded like I was from the South; Southerners told me I sounded like a Yankee; folks from the Midwest thought I was one of them. But it did keep me from being too easily identified.
Military Brats Learn How to Pack Really, Really Well
Mostly, I wandered. Never quite in with every given group but rarely unwelcome. I met a diverse group of people, interacted with many different aspects of American culture, and got to do a lot of things most people never will. It made me restless, growing up a military brat, a Navy brat. I can’t stay in one place too long. It’s hard to grow up in a military family. You grow up missing often one parent, never quite sure if they’re going to come back, never in any one place too long, often lonely. Home is where the Navy sends you and packing your life into boxes every two years can be hard. But it gives you a lot, makes you weird and self-sufficient in the best ways. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Suggested read: The Top 10 Best Charities for Veterans To Donate Time & Money ToWill Borger is a Navy brat from Virginia. He holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, has served on the staff of several literary journals, and taught writing at two universities. His work has appeared at Marathon Literary Review, Purple Wall Stories, Your Tango, Into the Spine, Abergavenny Small Press, The Rupture, and IGN, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Will lives in New York with his wife and dreams of one day owning a dog.
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