Thursday, March 4, 2010

Centrality of being a military dependent??

My dear friend Diana wrote a post about being a military brat. She titled it using the word "centrality" and that got me thinking.

Therefore, being the good teacher that I am, I looked up the definition. Centrality means, "vital, critical or important position." I think it all depends on how you look at the word. Is it vital for our world that we play this role? Is it vital that people understand the role we play? Is it vital for us that we are this role?

For me, I think it was vital that I play that role. I was a military dependent (can't use the word brat - don't like it) for 21 years. I loathed it. I loved it. I rebelled against it. I embraced with everything I had. I was a typical child. I both loved the adventures and luxuries it gave us and despised the label it gave me.

I couldn't be more grateful for the experiences.

For me, the problem has been that people do not understand the inherent feeling of restlessness and longing for change that has permeated my way of life.

I find it funny and ironic. I work with girls, helping them to break the box of "Girl World" because I completely understand what it is like to be both inside and outside of the box. Had I not had the opportunity to be all the different roles I played (because I had the chance to move and recreate) I couldn't do what I do with the empathy and sympathy that I have.

I also wrote about my experience here.

For that reason alone I am eternally grateful.

I have had to remind my father that I am grateful. While I agree that as military families we make sacrifices that many people do not understand or cannot relate I am most appreciative of one of the greatest sacrifices my father made for me. He understood, not to the extent he does now, the life-long impact (both good & bad) his career has on me.

When we moved to Germany, my junior year, I had already been to two different high schools on two different continents. When 3rd AF closed at the end of my junior year my father had an opportunity to be SJA at Mildenhall. Although my father never wanted to be general and had taken the SJA spots that would be best for our family, this was a great position. I remember hearing my father and his then wife talking about this job. . .

I had made up my mind that we were not going to Mildenhall and decided the next day I would tell him. In all of my 17 year old glory I walked into his dressing room. I will NEVER forget the scene. He was sitting on a chair polishing his boots. He was using a wooden brush, a scene I had seen him do hundreds of times. I told him my feelings on the matter of moving to England and I will never forget his response. (Keep in mind that he hardly ever raised his voice and never, ever got in my face.) The wooden brush hit the wooden floors and in a flash he was up and in my face. He said, "you will move when I tell you to move and where I tell you to move." End of conversation. Check.

However, that was not the end of the story. My father got it. The centrality of his life was being a father. He saw that for me, one of the important position of my life was being his daughter - a military child. It was who I was. It was how I was defined. He gave me the opportunity, for this one year, to perhaps still be outside the box but no longer the outsider. He declined the SJA job in England and was deputy SJA USAFE until he took his final job stateside. I never understood, until I could reflect upon this utterly selfless act, how much this one decision shaped and gave me such a framework for the work I do now.

It allowed me to relate as both the outsider and finally an insider. Something I am not sure I would have had in my teenage years. Something that gives me a unique perspective to work with high school girls.

I am defined as many things: wife, mother, teacher, confidant. All true. All great roles. But for me, one of the greatest things that defines me and explains who I am and why I do what I do because I had the opportunity to be my father's daughter.