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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.
