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rmThere's a long list of things we don't talk about in the family I grew up in. The people I come from are generally awkward and full of shame, and so nearly everything -- from our health history to our war history -- becomes unmentionable. In many ways, I know very little about my family, and what I do know, I know because of the strange faux pas of my childhood.
When I was seven, my favorite show was Battlestar Galactica. And when I was eight, it was Private Benjamin. So much war. So my father told me about how he joined the Army at eighteen to get the G.I. Bill to pay his tuition at Cartoonists and Illustrators School (now SVA). The Korean War ended while he was in Basic, so the only stories he has is going to bars on the Texas/Mexico border and how much he hated it: it was hot, it was filthy, and my father didn't like to drink.
I was eight years old when my father told me about pouring beers and tequilas out down the side of the bar when no one was looking, because that's what you had to do if you didn't like to drink but wanted to be sure everyone still thought you were a man.
My parents lectured me about their strange expectations and stranger bigotry often when I was far too young: I could have black friends, but not date black men -- they told me that when I was four; and I better not get married before 28 or join the army -- that was just for the stupid or the poor. I didn't need to do that, they said, but I was only eight, and thought maybe I did, maybe I would.
I've written before about the man I was with for seven years, more or less, and how he grew up in the shadow of West Point. One of the only memories I have of him being deeply honest with me about his emotions, while sober, and in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with me, was him talking about the experience of that, of wondering if he'd have turned out a better man, a more capable man, a happier man if he had chosen a different life, had laid himself down in front of something that could have pushed and bulled and beaten him into a different shape than he was. His arch nemesis in high school was the last American fatality of the first Gulf War.
Most of what I know about my family is questions. Most of what I know I have gleaned in fragments. I think I remember from my childhood a tattoo on my mother's father's arm that would mean he was in the Navy during WWII. My mother says my great-grandfather was a tailor in St. Louis in the 1920s, so our relatives must not have died in the Holocaust. I try to remember if my grandfather's second wife has a tattoo from the camps -- I think I once remember someone whispering that her family came through that.
No one tells me anything, except when I transgress. It was only when my uncle became angry with me that someone mentioned he was in Korea. My other other uncle -- his older brother -- is so calm and placid, I'll never make him angry enough to find out if he fought in a war, but I think he did. The years add up right.
When I was in university, I lived in Washington DC, just a few blocks from the Vietnam Wall. A guy I knew from online came to town for a conference and we agreed to meet and wound up walking all over the city together. We eventually went to the Wall, which he told me he had never done before. Most of the stories I have to tell are someone else's.
The next day he called me, asked how I was.
"I feel like shit. You know we walked 16 miles yesterday?"
"Yeah, me too. Why didn't you say stop?"
"'Cause you did eight fucking tours in 'nam. I was gonna wuss out?" (I was such an asshole when I was 19, dear god).
He laughed. "And what the hell was I supposed to do? Tell you I was tired?"
This summer, I traveled a good bit. Went to Chicago and to Atlanta and saw boys and girls leaving for war and coming home. Now I cry easy, and I had to keep looking away and blinking a lot. Over and over again. Maybe it was just being tired, and maybe I am a fool, but coming from a family like mine -- where you don't talk about anything ever and being a fan of shows about war is a terrible transgression for a child -- I felt like I wasn't entitled to feel anything: emotion is possession and the gravest of sins.
I like stories about war; they interest me, even though I'm crystal clear on how they dress it up and make it look romantic and narrative as opposed to boring and confusing and endless. It's a difficult thing for me to be comfortable with, and in my life, it's led to some ugly discussions where I've said things others have derided as the courage of someone who doesn't have to make a choice, of the brazenness of a girl who will never be called to war, as the hubris of a child who too much loves stories.
So each year, when Veterans Day or Remembrance Day rolls around, I feel like I both do and do not have something to say. I feel like a child, sneaking about to stay up past her bedtime and watch the grownups at their cocktail party through keyholes and cracks. Each year, I feel ignorant and ashamed and curious; each year, I have to confront the way I was raised that led me to believe that all stories, whether true or false, on some subjects are sin.
But most people, in my city at least, don't notice it's Veterans Day at all, while I struggle with not quite being able to look and not quite being able to look away, even if I know, in the heart I made myself, that stories are a good thing -- yes, even all those crappy stories about war that I love so much as they lie and lie and lie. Because stories, even crap stories, make people remember, albeit awkwardly and reluctantly, like so many kids who have gone off to fight.
My father joined the Army so that he could draw comic books. Sometimes stories are all we've got to give.
When I was seven, my favorite show was Battlestar Galactica. And when I was eight, it was Private Benjamin. So much war. So my father told me about how he joined the Army at eighteen to get the G.I. Bill to pay his tuition at Cartoonists and Illustrators School (now SVA). The Korean War ended while he was in Basic, so the only stories he has is going to bars on the Texas/Mexico border and how much he hated it: it was hot, it was filthy, and my father didn't like to drink.
I was eight years old when my father told me about pouring beers and tequilas out down the side of the bar when no one was looking, because that's what you had to do if you didn't like to drink but wanted to be sure everyone still thought you were a man.
My parents lectured me about their strange expectations and stranger bigotry often when I was far too young: I could have black friends, but not date black men -- they told me that when I was four; and I better not get married before 28 or join the army -- that was just for the stupid or the poor. I didn't need to do that, they said, but I was only eight, and thought maybe I did, maybe I would.
I've written before about the man I was with for seven years, more or less, and how he grew up in the shadow of West Point. One of the only memories I have of him being deeply honest with me about his emotions, while sober, and in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with me, was him talking about the experience of that, of wondering if he'd have turned out a better man, a more capable man, a happier man if he had chosen a different life, had laid himself down in front of something that could have pushed and bulled and beaten him into a different shape than he was. His arch nemesis in high school was the last American fatality of the first Gulf War.
Most of what I know about my family is questions. Most of what I know I have gleaned in fragments. I think I remember from my childhood a tattoo on my mother's father's arm that would mean he was in the Navy during WWII. My mother says my great-grandfather was a tailor in St. Louis in the 1920s, so our relatives must not have died in the Holocaust. I try to remember if my grandfather's second wife has a tattoo from the camps -- I think I once remember someone whispering that her family came through that.
No one tells me anything, except when I transgress. It was only when my uncle became angry with me that someone mentioned he was in Korea. My other other uncle -- his older brother -- is so calm and placid, I'll never make him angry enough to find out if he fought in a war, but I think he did. The years add up right.
When I was in university, I lived in Washington DC, just a few blocks from the Vietnam Wall. A guy I knew from online came to town for a conference and we agreed to meet and wound up walking all over the city together. We eventually went to the Wall, which he told me he had never done before. Most of the stories I have to tell are someone else's.
The next day he called me, asked how I was.
"I feel like shit. You know we walked 16 miles yesterday?"
"Yeah, me too. Why didn't you say stop?"
"'Cause you did eight fucking tours in 'nam. I was gonna wuss out?" (I was such an asshole when I was 19, dear god).
He laughed. "And what the hell was I supposed to do? Tell you I was tired?"
This summer, I traveled a good bit. Went to Chicago and to Atlanta and saw boys and girls leaving for war and coming home. Now I cry easy, and I had to keep looking away and blinking a lot. Over and over again. Maybe it was just being tired, and maybe I am a fool, but coming from a family like mine -- where you don't talk about anything ever and being a fan of shows about war is a terrible transgression for a child -- I felt like I wasn't entitled to feel anything: emotion is possession and the gravest of sins.
I like stories about war; they interest me, even though I'm crystal clear on how they dress it up and make it look romantic and narrative as opposed to boring and confusing and endless. It's a difficult thing for me to be comfortable with, and in my life, it's led to some ugly discussions where I've said things others have derided as the courage of someone who doesn't have to make a choice, of the brazenness of a girl who will never be called to war, as the hubris of a child who too much loves stories.
So each year, when Veterans Day or Remembrance Day rolls around, I feel like I both do and do not have something to say. I feel like a child, sneaking about to stay up past her bedtime and watch the grownups at their cocktail party through keyholes and cracks. Each year, I feel ignorant and ashamed and curious; each year, I have to confront the way I was raised that led me to believe that all stories, whether true or false, on some subjects are sin.
But most people, in my city at least, don't notice it's Veterans Day at all, while I struggle with not quite being able to look and not quite being able to look away, even if I know, in the heart I made myself, that stories are a good thing -- yes, even all those crappy stories about war that I love so much as they lie and lie and lie. Because stories, even crap stories, make people remember, albeit awkwardly and reluctantly, like so many kids who have gone off to fight.
My father joined the Army so that he could draw comic books. Sometimes stories are all we've got to give.
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no subject
Date: 2008-11-11 05:11 pm (UTC)Thank you for the gift.
I spent 22 years of my life in uniform. No one person can ever know the full arc of the military experience. The most you can hope for is to learn how to filter the genuine accounts from the BS.
Also, thanks for going to the Wall. It's a profound thing.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-11 06:38 pm (UTC)I went a lot -- probably forty or fifty times at least; and I usually go when I'm in DC (exceptions being for inaugurations when it's impossible to go anywhere). One of the odder parts of my backstory is I wrote a thing (bad, poorly written 20-year-old drivel) that I left there, and then it wound up on some veteran's sites and then it wound up on Pat Buchanan's website as an example of young Americans being patriotic, and then I had to send him a lawyer letter.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-11 08:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-11 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-11 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-11 06:22 pm (UTC)My Dad never talks much about his Navy days, and I sometimes wonder if deep down somewhere he is either not exactly proud of them, or if something happened or reminds him of a time of his life he just doesn't wish to recall. Once in awhile I get snippets, and so far it has always been some new little piece.
He never saw combat but was in during Korea. He was in the Navy simply because they paid for his college. I don't think he begrudged the idea, he saw it as a fair enough trade. But unlike other veterans I know he, until recently, has not given people much sign that he was in - in the respects that I know some veterans who are not afraid to let you know they were in the service. Within the last two years he has taken to wearing a Navy pin that I acquired after a job I did at a Navy recruiting post.
However, I have worked with and gotten to know other veterans from other wars. Some of them have talked to me of their personal experiences, and experiences of relatives and loved ones who were also in. After hearing a couple of stories, it is no wonder that many vets DON'T talk about their experiences. To go through them must have been unfathomable, to recall them must be excruciating, because just to hear them was hair-raising enough.
It has always both amazed me and made me feel ashamed that I never went in at all. Amazed, in that military vets of any service from any era always seem to have some instant commaraderie, an instant common ground, and once I got to witness that I felt I had somehow deprived myself of a worthwhile experience if nothing else just for the fraternity.
Mom always used to comment how funny life works out - *I* was the one that went through ROTC in high school and college, yet never joined. My sister had no interest at all...and ended up joining the Air Force in further pursuit of her music.
When I did talk about joining in my late teens, Dad did have a talk with me. He strongly agreed with the adage that the military "Makes men out of bums...and vice versa." Neither of my parents would have objected if I joined, but I don't think they were thrilled with the idea either.
Right...ok. Time for a post.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-11 06:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-11 06:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-11 07:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-11 07:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-11 07:41 pm (UTC)Making art of war
Date: 2008-11-12 01:43 am (UTC)Buffalo Soldier
Three Kings
Catch 22
Slaugherhouse 5
I like to see the dark side of service and the non-romantic other side of the story put on the screen.
Re: Making art of war
Date: 2008-11-12 02:31 pm (UTC)thank you for writing
Date: 2008-11-12 02:20 am (UTC)I know most families are screwed up, and you don't see it unless you look closely, but I never see anyone else's tales of family that make me feel as if they'd understand my tales of family. I'm sure my experience is nowhere near yours in terms of intensity. Because today everyone seems to be interpreting my statements wrong, I feel compelled to say I'm not trying to get into any sort of "my family was worse than yours" contest, because I'm sure it wasn't.
But you of all people will understand, I think, when I say that I tell people, "My family doesn't have stories. we have secrets."
no subject
Date: 2008-11-12 05:03 am (UTC)