It’s been eons since I was an Air Force dependent, but the memories haven’t faded.
Hello, new and long-time friends! I’m excited and thankful for your presence on Roots and Branches/Memoir-ish Musings. Today’s post departs a bit with a highlight on U.S. military children. You may know about my memoir, I Must Have Wandered: An Adopted Air Force Daughter Recalls. Facebook groups dedicated to adult children of the service branches, lead with celebratory posts this month. To paraphrase one: we can all admire and learn from their bravery, resilience, adaptability, and toughness, qualities that make military children special and inspire others.
(Cringe.) I wasn’t so much aware of a slogan growing up, as of the expectations of correct behavior. This quote from another group emphasizes pride and honor:
I am an American Military Child. I am a Warrior in my own right and a member of the Military Family. I serve with my Military Parent(s), who serve the people of the United States. I will always place the mission first: to stand beside, behind, and with my Family. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit. I will not leave a fellow military brat hurting. I will stand beside them. I am disciplined, but young; physically and mentally tough, but vulnerable. I will ask for help when I need it! I am adaptable and I am resilient. I stand ready to say "Goodbye", whisper "I miss you", and shout "Welcome Home". I am a representative of the American Military Family and the American way of life. I am an American Military Child.
And then, there was me, a post-World War II infant abandoned at birth in September 1951, in Greenville, South Carolina, and a New York couple stationed at Shaw Air Force Base who’d cared for me for six months through Catholic Charites before becoming my parents.
Comments by adult Air Force dependents (names changed) resonate with some of my childhood challenges:
Lisa: I learned early on not to form any close relationships. The first few times, my heart was broken, and I decided no more. I stopped letting myself get close to anyone.
Flo: My dad retired when I was in eighth grade. It was my first off-base school. I remember the summer before meeting people who had known each other since kindergarten. It took a while to grasp.
Susan: My dad retired from the Air Force when I was fourteen. I have few memories of friends. We only stayed two to four years at bases at a time. When I went to a civilian school in the eighth grade, I knew no one. Everyone else knew everybody and who was kin to whom. I never felt like I fit in.
Dad served in India in the Army Air Corps. Mom was a Visiting Nurse in Manhattan and Brooklyn, doing her bit in Public Health while waiting for Dad. After the war, he earned his master’s at St. John’s University in Economic Geography and married Mom, re-enlisting as Lieutenant U.S.A.F. in the Korean War, staying Stateside. Born in New York City in an Irish Catholic home, after high school with the Paulists, he was sent to the seminary in Baltimore; and his sister to a Dominican convent. Though neither continued religious life, after retirement Dad was ordained a deacon. I was raised strictly: God and Country.
I was not so resilient. A worried child. Were the wounds of newborn abandonment opened with every separation? Frayed nerves never toughened. My mother coped each time my father was away, for weeks, months, or a year. She had an irrational fear that her first adopted baby would be removed from her care by Catholic Charities because of her self-perceived lack of skill in mothering a child who was not hers by birth. Did that state of mind contribute to my anxiety? Or were these traits of mine—fearful, anxious, prone to panic — genetic in origin?
Dad’s duty was to protect me from harmful influences, and he might have felt this responsibility especially keenly as an adoptive father. There was safety, a kind of cloistering, in on-base housing and parochial schools, and, for two grades, in a convent school, where his responsibility and discipline were shared. He clarified to me that my behavior, speech, attitude, and associations reflected on his ratings, rank, and security clearance as an intelligence officer — a burden for a little girl. When I was eight, they adopted another infant girl. My sister was more easy-going, it seems and sweet-natured. Not as difficult as “the first one.”
Culture Shock In June 1964, after Dad’s three years of duty in Tokyo, we returned to New Jersey. The New York metro was alien and difficult to understand. The town we’d returned to which held our permanent home since 1954, showed a different aspect to me, at twelve and a half. I’d become familiar with the polite, mindful Japanese, and their gentle culture. Suddenly, I was immature and socially inept. I arrived stateside with “new math” skills seriously lagging and was sent to remedy them in the township high summer school. Co-ed Junior High at Johnson Air Force Base outside Tokyo was chaotic, coming as I had from the central Tokyo international all-girls convent school. But the thirteen-year-old girls with whom I shared a cafeteria study table, who shopped at the Bergen Mall, and wore sandals and shorts to summer school snickered at my short permed hair, home-sewn pastel-striped straight shapeless shift hemmed to the middle of my knee, and the white anklets Mom put out for me to wear with new black flats. I was disconnected. A misfit. And adopted. “They were so mean, please don’t make me go back!” I cried to my mother. She must have been uncertain about the changes, too, an officer’s wife now out of her element, used to shopping in the base exchange (B.X.) for somewhat out-of-date necessities, and she had always sewn my dresses. Until then, I was confident in my wardrobe, now I was flat-chested, a skinny four inches taller than her buxom five-foot-two.
Long-term, continuous connections were missing, not having moved through the school system like neighborhood children. I saw that eighth-grade classmates and families, with nine-to-five fathers, were active in town and school sports. My dad didn’t check in, rarely connected to my efforts or lack thereof, but was quick to annoyance and anger. No relaxing with a game. My friends noted my parents’ strictness. Dad’s severe countenance. Mom’s scarcity when they visited. I noticed my new sadness in missing biological relatives. My sister, cousins, aunts, and uncles weren’t like me. I looked like none of them, who resembled each other. The loss was a vague vacuum.
Controlling and over-protective in some ways, oddly lax in others, my mother didn’t listen, seemed oblivious, or at a loss as to our dissimilarities, and what to do about my prevarication. Whatever my dad decided was up to him, including the belt. When he returned in 1968 after a year in Southeast Asia, his moods were too much for a sixteen-year-old rebellious peacenik daughter, his angry remoteness would drive me away, however ill-equipt I was to leave at eighteen.
How difficult it was to stay connected with him! Perhaps I was hopeless as a military man’s daughter. But this adoptee can admit to her good fortune, having reaped the broadening benefits of the Air Force life.
Military Brats Global info@militarybratsglobal.org
I've often thought of that! It isn't likely, as I don't have a car or any $ for traveling, and am on the verge of being homeless. I did finally get in touch with a case worker from the office for the aging on Long Is. who is hooking me up with many resources next week.
I still can't believe all the things we have in common....being abandoned by my birth father at age 2, moving around a lot, finally settling in for good on Long Island (after living in 6 places in the mid-west) in 8th grade with city kids, now living in suburbia with kids who swore and fought, coming mostly from blue collar backgrounds, while my step-father was brilliant and a college graduate. My teen years were racked with anxiety and uncertainty. I couldn't wait to leave and return to Iowa, to my gram and old friends in Des Moines. My mother was not reliable either, always asking me to do things that a young person isn't prepared to do. But the good news is we both survived!!!!! We are still here....pleasant, creative, compassionate women. Bravo to you! Bravo to me! I do feel a kinship with you through your wonderful words, your gift for writing. Thank you, Mel.