'Army Wives' and My Family

Army Wives
I read the description for this assignment and immediately thought of this 'Army Wives' episode I just saw. Ever since the first week or two, when someone mentioned the show, I'll watch it if I catch that it's on, because I think it's a really interesting look at someone's idea of life on a US base, and it's been interesting to see those images of militarization and contrast them with the images I've come to expect. The other night they were replaying the season finale so I caught most of it, and it happened to be about the main commander guy at the base was reassigned to command NATO forces in Brussels. His wife is the lead female in the show, and the head of this association on the base (it reminds me of a school PTA). Anyway, they are reassigned and have to tell all their friends they are moving. They have a daughter, too, and they had one daughter who had died while they were living at that base.

As a result of their moving, new orders are issued for the other characters (to up the drama I suppose) that make me think about the upheaval people face when someone leaves a base, even if it isn't their own family. Not only are friendships left behind, but officers have to work with new commanding officers and the whole order is rearranged.

In one scene, the mother who is supposed to leave goes to the room of their dead daughter, and she can't pack it up. In that small scene, they actually capture really well the loss associated with such a mobile life. It made me think about all of the army families who have to leave behind living and dead family members and friends, not to mention the daily lives they have grown accustomed to over a short or long period of time.

My Mother
So the show made me think more about the life my mother grew up living. My grand father was in the Navy, and she grew up on bases all along the east coast, and then they were moved to Greece for four years. I grew up hearing stories about her childhood, and knew that she had to move back to the US for her last year of high school, but I'd never thought about how her situation was mirrored around the globe in the lives of so many military families. To this day my mom has very few friends from her youth who she is in contact with, because they moved every two or three years. Since she was always the new girl, it was hard to keep friends from place to place. In Greece she thought she'd at least graduate with her classmates, but when the Americans were expelled from the country, she and her family had to return to the US, uprooting her again.

I never understood how she could want to live in Wisconsin with just her garden and family around, when I saw her life of travel as exciting and enticing. But the more I look at military basing, the more I realize how lonely that life must have been for her, at least in the long run. I look at my grandparents and wonder how they did it. How my grandmother gave birth to my mom on Christmas Eve while my grandfather was stationed halfway across the world in the Pacific. I wonder about what her daily routine was like. Is 'Army Wives' even close? I know some of my mom's side of the story, but how were my grandparents affected?

I've been told about Greece many times and when I was very young I remember thinking we were Greek. My mom raised me on spanikopita and bachlava, and her adolescence was spent there, so it's no wonder she was so influenced by the experience. She went to the American school there, primarily for the children of officers. When I talked to her this week about the base discussion, she said it was very regimented, that the houses were uniform, the schedule was precise, and she felt the tensions of being a US citizen, especially a Navy brat, in Cold War Greece. She rebelled against the whole system when she returned, by moving to Canada with ex-pats from the Vietnam years to live on a farm. I was raised a pacifist, by a mother who'd been raised in the military, and I don't see that as a coincidence.

It's strange to realize how much I know about military basing when I'd been sure until a week ago that it was the most foreign concept in this class, the one I felt most out of touch with, most unfamiliar with. But then, and this sounds strange, I never really thought about the fact that my mom grew up on bases, even though I've seen some of them on trips east. I never registered that because I don't think of myself as having a personal connection with these bases, they seem so distant and alien, and yet every story I know of my mother's childhood, every story my grandpa tells about living in the Philippines, every time I look through the photo album, there they are: bases. I think they lived on seven different US bases and then moved to Greece. How did I not register that knowledge as relevant to this? My family seems so safe and secure and stable, that it's hard to imagine it was any other way. Yet now, I look at my mom and realize how much harder it was for her to define herself apart from the military life she was forced to live. I realize that her childhood was lonely and that nothing must have ever felt stable or constant, except the promise that they would move again. I look at my grandparents, so settled, and I can hardly imagine what they must have once been like. But oddly enough, when I watch 'Army Wives,' as commercialized and dramatized as it is, it helps me imagine what my grandma might have been like as a Navy wife, what she must have been like as a school teacher, how she had to move away from her students and co-workers and friends, and pick up where she left off at the next place.

I feel so silly to have not thought this hard about these things before. I also think that what I did recognize from my own family history in these past weeks was just how complicated this matter of basing is. I know I disagree with the vastness of US military presence through bases across the world. But I also know that it is hard to say that the military personnel are bad who are out there, because there are so many families like mine whose lives are wrapped up in that base, who are there on orders and who may not be aware of the sensitive political issues at stake. That's not to say they don't know, and many do, but even then, in the military you obey your orders. I may not agree with them, they may not agree, but a dishonorable discharge is a price that is too high and too shameful for many to take. When my mother found out my grandfather had been at the Bay of Pigs, she asked him how he could have stood and watched innocent people die after promising to help them. He replied that he was given orders, and he had to follow them, because what if all the people who disagreed had gone ahead against orders? They could have put the whole situation in jeopardy diplomatically, and they would have faced dishonorable discharge, as three officers did. When my mom replied that she didn't think that was good enough, he reminded her that he dinner was paid for with the money he earned for respecting his orders. I imagine she chose not to eat that night, but in the end, I see my grandfather's point. What if he and all those who were sympathetic to the cause just abandoned orders? Our foreign policy, our diplomacy - all of the peaceful efforts would be shot to hell because the military wouldn't be able to promise stability or defense.

So, this was really long, and I'm not sure how to end, but I'll give it a shot: Military basing bothers me greatly, and I find the practice of foreign military basing imperialistic and colonialist. I think our military presence around the world, however, has a great deal to do with my ability to live with a pretty sure sense of security. That doesn't mean I think people are fighting in Iraq to keep me safe. I do think that the level of security in this nation, the privilege, the luxury, the safety net of being a US citizen - that general sense of assumed security - comes in part from the ubiquitous presence of the US military around the world, which I see as a sign of national arrogance. But in general, I don't know what to think about all of this put together, especially when my birthday checks come from my grandpa's Navy retirement package. Militarization at its best, huh?