THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 15, 1995 TAG: 9502150493
SECTION: MILITARY NEWS PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: MY TURN
SOURCE: TABITHA SOREN
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
A very simple question has plagued me my whole life. ``Where are you from?''
It's succinct, direct, easy. But I never know what to say. I respond by looking perplexed, and after all these years I still fumble for an answer.
It's because I come from a military family.
I have moved 13 times in my life. I moved five times before I was 4 years old. I didn't even know I lived in Phoenix, Ariz., until last year.
The military world my family lived in was very controlled. We had to always be on alert.
The cropped lawns, newly painted buildings, shined shoes, polished cars and litter-free yards that seemed so inane to me as a child now make sense after reading Mary Wertsch's illuminating book ``Military Brats'' (Ballantine, 1991).
``We had to show that this society was prepared to wage war with the same relentless attention to detail it brings to every moment of every day,'' Wertsch writes.
Until I read her book, I had never thought of the military as a defining characteristic in my life. I had so accepted my nomad existence that I never really considered the implications. After all, I had no choice in the matter.
Now, for the first time in my life, I see how my sister and I were greatly affected by these experiences, and, more importantly, how we too have roots.
I had grown up with the impression that other people had backgrounds, but I didn't. Even my parents were more ``real'' than I because they were born and had lived, met and married in Rhode Island, complete with friends from kindergarten in the wedding party.
But when I was younger I felt like a nobody because I was from nowhere and everywhere.
When I was in high school, my father decided that we should live on the military base, where conformity rules.
Being told how and when to do things was never easy for me - especially in my teen years.
I rebelled. I dressed scandalously. I drove my 350-horsepower, eight-cylinder, fire-engine red Camaro way above the 25 mph base speed limit.
It was very easy to break rules on base. There were so many to choose from.
Periodically, when you were driving home from a night out, military police would be at the base gate to greet you with very large German shepherds. The police would kick you out of your car and the dogs would sniff it for any illegal substances.
I always felt incredibly violated, and certainly terrified. If they found anything, we would lose our housing on base. How's that for punishment?
It's this kind of pressure that helps explain the high rate of child abuse and alcoholism in military families.
However, the largest group of military dependents is composed of those who outwardly seem confident and happy. ``To all appearances, `successful' military brats,'' Wertsch writes. ``The overachievers, the perfectionists, the independent ones are likely to also be plagued by a reflexive self-doubt that severely limits them.''
Military kids are nothing if not resilient. By the time we've reached adulthood, we've met so many thousands of people, weathered such a diversity of predicaments and traveled so many places that we are unlikely to be fazed by much. We know how to bounce back from disaster and take advantage of a clean slate like no one else.
And for that one pays the price.
``There is so much we weren't allowed to talk about - so much stress, so much loss, so much love,'' said one military brat to Wertsch in a conversation she cites in her book.
Talking it through would help us get past the pain and examine the courage and determination that are so much a part of warrior life. MEMO: Tabitha Soren, a contributing correspondent for NBC News and MTV News,
is a 1985 graduate of Hampton High School. Her father, retired Air Force
Lt. Col. John T. Sornberger Jr., served part of his career at Langley
Air Force Base and now lives in Hampton. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Tabitha Soren
by CNB