Military Brat
By: Valerie Kittell
Tags: Friendship, Family, Military Family

“Your father has orders,” is the way the news was usually conveyed. What those words mean in military shorthand when told to a kid is “We’re moving again.” I was the daughter of a career military officer and I heard those words many times.

When I was growing up, I moved eight times between nursery school and high school graduation and I attended nine schools. This all occurred in fourteen years, the ages between 4–18.

To many of my adult friends who led more normal lives, these statistics are beyond belief. Many of them lived in one or two houses and attended the same schools with a stable core population of peers throughout their entire childhood. I have the same skepticism as they do, but in reverse, when they describe their growing-up years — “Really? I can’t imagine that.”

I spent a large part of my formative years as “the new girl”.

“Class, we have a new student I want to introduce to you today. Her name is Valerie. Let’s all say a big hello to Valerie.” And they would. They would intone it. “Helloooo Val-a-ree,” with the same level of enthusiasm shown when being urged to kiss the great aunt who smells like mothballs.

What’s interesting is that all over the country, the same dynamic would usually pop-up. It seems like there was always someone in the class who was an ambassador/screener, like the unofficial HR person for the group. This person would usually volunteer to show you around and sit with you at lunch with their friends where an informal friend interview would launch. It would only take one or two lunches before you were accepted into the greater social order as being “ok” and not “weird”. Honestly, the standards for acceptance were not that rigorous.

But, if my ambassador had no friends of their own to sit with at lunch, that was a big red flag — I was being co-opted by an outsider of the main group as a potential friend and ally. It’s incredible that these kind of sophisticated stratagems were used and recognized by second and third graders, but it’s all true. Someone who has been a migrant into the established social order a number of times can quickly glom onto the dynamics and discern a pecking order and determine their survival strategy. A couple of times, I wasn’t attracted to the mainstream vibe and went with the outlier friend with good results.

I was mostly okay with all this melding and became quite adaptable to blending in to new surroundings, but I knew lots of kids who suffered at the upheaval. What I found out about living in so many places and going to so many different schools is:

Everyplace has something going for it that makes it unique and it will always reveal itself over time. The quality of light is different around the country. The food is different. You will have an immediate catalogue of sense memories if someone says “San Diego” or “North Carolina” or “Boston” or any other place where you actually lived. Living someplace is a lot different than visiting that same place. You will always find a friend and nice people anywhere you live if you will open yourself up to the possibility.

But there was one ill effect I experienced and it has to do with the concept of friendship. Because I had so many “best friends”, some of whom I was truly attached to, that I had to say goodbye to when the orders to move came, I grew to mistrust the idea that it was possible to maintain friendships when circumstances have changed. We always promised to write and visit and stay in touch, but we never did. One or two letters, a Christmas card and then nothing.

There was an exception. A girl who was probably my very best friend for almost three years (a record!) asked me years later to be in her wedding, which I happily accepted. We had grown apart and really didn’t have that much in common anymore but I think of those three years of bike riding, and buying Beatles albums and reading Teen Beat in her bedroom as three magical years preserved in my head as an old Kodak super eight film.

There was another long-lasting effect that had impacts throughout my life as a result of growing up with a parent in the active military: I think I developed some sort of migratory or uprooting impulse that kicks in after three years, which happens to mirror the longest time I ever stayed in one place during my youth. After a couple of years, I always grew itchy wondering where the major life disruption was; isn’t it about time to: move, change jobs, try something different? So I always said about myself that I had a three year attention span. I don’t see that as necessarily a bad thing, I’ve been pretty happy with the results of my self-directed upheaval.

I’ve been told that things are different now than from when I lived the life — that assignments are longer and that they don’t happen as much mid-year so that kids aren’t experiencing the trauma of a mid-year school transition. That sounds like a good thing. Those mid-year transitions could really make you or break you. I’m glad that there is a growing appreciation of the family ecosystem behind everyone who serves.

(Originally Published in Other Doors)