We're Having a Party Today

I have decided to throw a party today...just for my kids. I believe that they deserve it.  I know you think I'm nuts, right?  "All the complaining about them driving you insane as to how bored they are, even on their way home from the beach! Your kids don't deserve a party!" Au contraire, mon frere.

You see, most of you civilian types don't know what I'm talking about.  My military brat friends are probably laughing their butts off right now. Because they know that the above-pictured party hat will NOT be donned by my children. That's right, fellow BRATs.  I'm throwing my kids a G.I. Party.  They don't know what it is yet either. But you can bet, they won't be wearing headgear of any kind. (Don't worry, civilian people. I'll  provide a glossary for all these italicized terms at the end of this post.) But I will. THIS will be my party hat:
Oh, yeah.


Somewhere along the line, I got tired. Perhaps it was the fact that I realized I'll be 44 this year, AHEM! (29 for the 15th time.) Perhaps it's just the heat and humidity is getting to me.  The fact that we all shower 3 and 4 times a day, thus overfeeding the laundry monster towels and sweaty clothes requiring me to slay it repeatedly on a daily basis, has pushed me to the edge of my usually forced patience brink.  But now we'll add in the constant whining, bickering, insult-throwing, sassing, and fist-fights to the already fully packed list of tattles, complaining, and arguing and you've got a one word adjective that describes the situation I am in to a T:   Disrespect. 


I have noticed that lately I must call out the same name at least 5 times before I hear a half-assed "Ma'am?" in response. I know that if my face was on t.v. they'd hear me loud and clear. (And probably turn the thing off.)  When I ask someone to complete his or her dishes so that I can get dinner started, I either wait three or four hours for them to begin, or I get pissed off and ask God for patience while I wash them myself.  I get elated that I finally killed the laundry-dragon and burned its nest down and smashed its eggs only to walk into the boys' room and find its twin sister laying more eggs at the end of my son's bed in the back corner of the bedroom.....even though I told him THREE TIMES to get all of his dirty clothes into the hamper NOW so that I can complete the laundry.

These are normal issues that happen all the time, I guess. But we've also been dealing with an enormously abnormal amount of tattling, whining, teasing, slapping, farting on, fist-fighting and swear words. I am at a loss for words as to how much of it.  Maybe not.  Words seldom leave me. I guess to be more accurate, I'll say that I'm too humiliated to admit to the world how bad it's gotten. It's enough that my neighbors can hear the noise of bodies crashing against furniture and four letter words flying through the open windows (only because it's too hot to breathe with the windows closed.)  I'm very grateful that most of their insults and swearing are done in English because none of my neighbors speaks English.  Although they all probably know the bad words. (Thanks, Hollywood.)

I've put them on restriction.  I've spanked (get over it, those of you who don't believe in corporal punishment. I'm betting you don't have 5 kids separated by a year between them each and live in a foreign country and raising them alone. And if you have, oh well. Bygones!) I've taken away their meager allowances and computer privileges and television. I've encouraged. I've rewarded good behavior. I've talked with them. I've explained. I've done everything that everyone under the sun from Dr. Spock to Dr. Laura have suggested. (I still don't know who Dr. Who is, so haven't tried him yet.) So now, I'm going back to my own grassroots, sans the "beat the hell out of 'em" policy.  I am returning to the Army. 


Each GI will be issued a scrub brush.  Sassier GIs will be issued a toothbrush.  KP duty will entail scrubbing of tiles on the walls and floors.  All dishes will be cleaned. Stove top will be scrubbed.  Counters will sparkle and all duties will be completed prior to mess at 1800 hrs. 


Latrine duty will entail scrubbing of all tiles on the walls and floors, sink, toilet, shower and removal of all clutter, including empty shampoo receptacles that had previously been labeled as saved for refilling with water to fire upon passersby under the balcony.  Latrine will sparkle and all duties will be completed prior to mess at 1800 hrs. 


Day room police will entail removal of all dust particles from furnishings and appliances.  Windows will be cleaned and once floor area is completely mopped, all furnishings will be returned to their appropriate locations.  Any non-regulation day room items will be returned to their proper locations or will be removed by drill sergeant during white glove inspection.  Day room will be left in a clean, neat and outstanding condition prior to mess at 1800 hrs.


Any underbreath remarks, backtalk, complaints will result in disciplinary PT  following mess at 1800 hrs.  


DISMISSED.


*As suggested by my BRAT friends, I will not lie on the couch and eat bonbons throughout the party.  But I will definitely be reminiscing and once they fall asleep exhausted tonight, I'm going to email my dad and thank him again for being the hardass that he was.  If he hadn't been, I wouldn't be nearly as respectful a person as I am today.

Now, I'm going to "get this party started."


GLOSSARY (for you civilian types)-


G.I. Party - Army term meaning a massive cleaning session, usually carried out by an entire platoon.

Platoon - A subdivision of a company of soldiers, usually forming a tactical unit that is commanded by a lieutenant and divided into several sections; A movie about Vietnam that starred Tom Berenger and Charlie Sheen...but that's not relevant to this blog post.


Headgear - Regulation hat issued by the military as part of the regulation military uniform; to be worn outdoors only


KP duty - Kitchen police; usually involves scrubbing pots, pans, dishes, walls, floors, peeling potatoes and cooking.


Mess at 1800hrs - Mess means meal; Mess hall or chow hall would be a military dining room. 1800 hrs means 6 o'clock in the evening.


Latrine duty - Cleaning of the latrine


Latrine -  Bathroom; WC; facilities; toilet


Day Room - The living room/den area where soldiers are allowed to "hang out" in the barracks; usually furnished with couches, chairs, tables, television, sometimes  pool table and ping pong table or fussball table and soda machines or snack machines. 


Non-Regulation Day Room items - Personal items that do not belong in the Day Room, this includes but is not limited to clothing, shoes, backpacks, scarves, books, pens, rocks picked up along the beach, the charger for your mobile phone that you always claim you cannot find, and toenail clippers.


Outstanding - Overused Army adjective that reflects good quality; antonyms for outstanding would be unsatisfactory, sub-par, and shitty.

Homesick

My heart is heavy...like someone placed a wheelbarrow full of bricks on my chest after making me to lie down in the soil on my back. Unwanted tears are streaming down my face and my breath is shallow.  I don't have a real reason to cry.  Nobody died and I'm not physically hurt.  I feel like an idiot as the salty tracks reach my mouth and my nose clogs up and I realize we don't have any tissue in the house.  I called just to hear their voices; just to wish them a happy anniversary and to tell them I miss them; how much I wish I could be there.  He couldn't handle my teary voice and gave the phone back to her.  I hope I didn't make him melancholy, too.  I just need them both to know that this girl inside me, this girl of long roots, who has lived every place and who is still from no place in particular, that when she gets homesick--- it's their home she's missing.

Not Enough Hours in the Day...and Now I Know Why

It wasn't until today that I ever thought of myself as an overachiever. Maybe on some levels, I've known.  But I don't think I've ever caught a glimpse of how others see me. I'm a Facebooker. (Yeah, who isn't?) I've blogged before about how great this social network is because as a military brat, it is extremely difficult to keep in touch with friends from childhood when sometimes you can't remember what year you lived where.  Anyway, so I have subscribed to several military brat-related pages and caught up with some old friends and made some new ones.

One particular page is full of "regulars" who post daily what they've done and what they're planning to eat and other stuff that usually ends up with all of us nearly "chatting" via bulletin board-type posts.  Today I actually typed up my little laundry list of stuff I did today before 1130 hrs (that's 11:30 a.m. for you civilian types) and I think I managed to exhaust at least 3 people who typed that they were off to take a nap due to my activity.

Honestly, while I am my own biggest fan and LOVE to toot my own horn, I wasn't bragging.  In my own opinion, I managed to waste the day away with ONLY the stuff I got done, while ignoring the ginormous "to-do" list looming over my head.  I took a nap from being so damn tired. I don't get much sleep at night. As much as I blame my kids (who are TOTALLY at fault for about half of my exhaustion), ultimately it's my own damn fault.  If I wasn't such a control freak who pushes herself to complete every single thing on her never-ending list of stuff to do, I WOULD get more sleep at night, I would probably be healthier and I would have less stress in my life.  Of course, if I did that, then I wouldn't be the neurotic, selectively-OCD crazed nut-job that my family and friends have come to know and love.

I'm getting a little better. I quit wiping off the stove and now delegate that responsibility to whichever little smart-mouth gets in trouble during the day.  One step at a time...

Hopelessness

She was a freshman when I was a senior. I knew who she was. I said hi to her when I saw her in the hallways at school. Her brothers and I were all friends. They lived on the court behind ours. Years go by and I read on the internet that she and her young daughter had died. I sent my condolences to the family. I didn't know how and something inside me kept me from asking about the circumstances. Today I read an article online that detailed the incident and I felt sick to my stomach. She was shot by police after refusing to put down a knife that she was using to repeatedly stab her four year old daughter. Now at first, I thought, "Oh my God! How could she?" but then I read on. She had been suffering from emotional and financial distress, probably not in that order. She'd lost her job and hadn't been able to afford to pay her rent for 5 months or more. The water had been shut off for failure to pay the bill. Apparently the state had been threatening to take her children. No one knows what they will do in such a situation. I mean, it's easy to say, "I know I would never" but how do you know? I would HOPE that I would never feel such hopelessness and fear as to take the lives of my children. I have to hope that my belief that God controls all would get me through.

I have been in some seriously dire situations financially. I lost a house to foreclosure. I had wages garnished for 6 weeks once (not just some...the entire 6 weeks of pay...$zero income.) And were it not for WIC and the kindness of friends and our ability to eat canned beans and bread, we may not have made it. And it was hard, but we did it. A lot of you know that we returned to Texas from Egypt last year to make a go of it there. After four months, I packed the kids back up and came back to Egypt. We just couldn't do it. We applied for food stamps and I was training to go back to work as an interpreter. My husband was working and applying all over the city for more work. But no one was hiring (except illegals) and we didn't have enough money to pay rent. When we finally decided that I was going to move with the children back to Egypt, my mom and sister and various extended relatives all had their opinions and emotions over the issue. But you see, none of those who were angry had been in a desperate place or lost a  home or had stared the inability to feed their kids in the face before. And we listened and tried to explain but they didn't "get it." And we left anyway, with a lot of hurt and angry people in our wake. Some blamed me. Most blamed my husband and assumed that he "sent me away." (Anyone who truly knows me, KNOWS that I am rarely forced to do anything against my will.) Whatever their opinions we had to do what was right for us and our situation. No regrets.

I look at the situation of my former school mate and I wonder what she would have done if she'd had the option we did. If she was able to take "the out" that we were, would she be alive today. God knows. I do know that through my grief for her surviving child and brothers that I again see a lesson reiterated. Judge not that you be not judged. We cannot judge her actions. God knows her heart and the desperate place that she was in. I pray God forgive her her sins and grant her His mercy. 

A Sad Day

Death is part of life. It is inevitable. We take our first step toward it with our first breath immediately after we're born. Nobody looks forward to it. Nobody escapes it. Some fear it. Some welcome it. Some just don't think about it. Some wait for it.

One of my best friends from high school just lost her big brother to cancer this morning. He was 45 years old. He had flu-like symptoms a year ago and then about 6 months ago was diagnosed with cancer. He had several treatments and operations. But eventually, it was just his time to go. I never knew him well. What I did know of him, I always liked. He was smart and handsome and extremely funny. He and his sister were close; the kind of siblings who could look at one another and say, "Do you remember when I went to the..." and the other would say, "and then you pulled on the...." and crack up laughing at a mutual memory without ever actually saying what it was they were remembering. They had a lot of these moments.

When my father retired from the Army and moved the rest of our family from Maryland to Texas, my sister and I stayed behind. We had an apartment in Laurel about a mile from my friend's house. My sister and I worked several jobs to pay bills while going to school part-time. We rarely saw each other. And when the apartment got too quiet and I missed the hullabaloo that only life in a large family can bring, I would go to visit them and listen as I ate spaghetti at the kitchen table while they joked and laughed and their mom raised hell about the youngest turning off the kitchen faucet and how the pipes would burst since it was snowing outside and my friend and I would crack up while her older brother was mimicking her behind her back. He always made us laugh.

And as close as my brother and I are, I think that she and her brother were closer. I rarely get to see my brother or talk to him. She spoke to her brother nearly every day. I am certain that she and her siblings and mother and his daughter are all devastated that he is gone. I am so grateful that they got to spend his last days together laughing and loving one another and saying their goodbyes. We, the friends, stand on the outer circle looking in to them; waiting patiently for them to need us for support. We await their need of hugs and tears and help in any form. Because that's what we must do. We are there for them as an extension of their family. And now that their time of being strong for him and supporting him is done, they will definitely need us to be strong for them and support them.

God please bless this family with patience and strength during their time of mourning.

Hollywood's Actually Got Me Thinking

As an Army brat, I attended 15 schools in 12 years. (16 schools if you include the night classes that I took at the local community college during my senior year in high school.) Most of the teachers that I had were pretty good but most never left any major impressions on me. Weirdly, I remember most of my teachers names from the Department of Defense Dependents Schools (DODDS) that I attended. But the teachers that I had in the U.S. are a mere blur. With the exception of Sister Carita Ulm, my kindergarten teacher from Rosenburg, Texas, who taught me to read, and Sister Mary Katherine, my 2nd grade teacher, from El Paso, Texas, who I really only remember because she nearly clawed my arms off from the elbows down because I kicked some boy named Raul off of the top of the slide for looking up my skirt while I was in line in front of him.  I don't know why I remember all of my DODDS teachers so much better than the civilian school teachers. I remember Mrs. Ball, 8th grade Social Studies teacher from Ozark, Alabama because she smelled like cigarettes and Dentyne gum. And Mr. Ken Korn, my 7th grade speech teacher from El Paso, Texas. I liked Mr. Korn because he was actually a good teacher and demanded our respect in his class. He also said that the word was not BECUZZZZZ but "beCAUSE...rhymes with JAWS."  Oh, and Mr. Whitaker, from my 7th grade Talented and Gifted class in El Paso. Mr. Whitaker made an impression because he worked us do death mathematically and because we got to design cool bridges made mostly out of toothpicks which we then destroyed by hanging weights off of them. Mine, of course, was the first one to snap in half. Most of the other teachers in El Paso were known only as "Mees" and "Meester", even by us anglo kids. I always wondered if any of them had surnames.

I remember the DODDS teachers most, I think, because they actually challenged us to think and to problem solve. Even the really crappy teachers still had an edge over most of the ones that I had in the civilian world. (With the exception of 3rd grade on Fort Bliss...if I had had an orangutan for a teacher in that class I couldn't tell you, it was THAT memorable a school.) Anyway, what got me thinking about teachers vs. GREAT teachers was that movie from 1988, "Stand and Deliver" starring Edward James Olmos as a math teacher, Jaime Escalante, who decided to challenge the kids in his Garfield High School class to learn calculus and take the Advanced Placement exam. It was like a lot of the "based on a true story" movies showing how disadvantaged kids in East Los Angeles, when given a teacher who gives a damn and works to get and keep their attention while still earning their respect, can overcome all odds and get themselves on the right educational track. Other examples are "Freedom Writers" with Hillary Swank, "Race the Sun" with Halle Berry and James Belushi, and "Dangerous Minds" with Michelle Pfeiffer. All are loosely based on true stories. All seem to indicate only one teacher in an entire high school full of teachers gives a damn. Wow. Our public education system must REALLY suck.

At Stuttgart American High School, which was located in Ludwigsburg, Germany just outside of Stuttgart, the opposite was true. For every average teacher I had in a 6-period day, I had 4 really good ones and one who stood out among the rest. My freshman year, my favorite teacher was Mr. Pike in Biology. He was corny and funny and smart and challenged us and made us laugh and think and expected 150% in all of his classes. My sophomore year, my favorite teacher was Dr. S.E. Lewis, Honors English. He was a little flighty and we could play some whopper practical jokes on him. But he challenged us with reading assignments and made us dig deep into Shakespeare and I swear I read more than 30 books that  year alone in his class. My junior year, I had two favorite teachers. Mrs. Bourland was my Honors English teacher and she was tough with her reading lists and composition assignments. She inspired my love of the American authrs like Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Poe. She was 10 times stricter about the term papers she assigned than Dr. Lewis was the year before. But she was compassionate toward me when I almost lost my mom to cancer that year. Mr. Mazzei was also a favorite that year. In his humanities class, I was introduced to art and architecture in history and it made all of those boring old history classes that I'd had for years make sense to me. I fell in love with the flying buttresses of Gothic architecture and did two term papers for him on two different cathedrals in the town I where I lived. My overseas education in DODDS schools really made me a deeply cultured person.

When we returned to the US, my dad was stationed at an airfield on Fort Meade, Maryland and my sister and I were enrolled in Meade Senior High School. This is actually a county school that happens to be on post. But I think we lucked out and ended up with some  pretty good teachers there, too. My absolute favorite teacher there was Ms. Patty Diaz (she married after I graduated but I don't know her new last name.) She was my dance teacher and introduced us to contemporary/modern dance. It was a great release for me with all the stress I was going through at home. Ms. Diaz was laid back and creative and cool, but still demanded our attention and respect. As for academics, I had a few favorites. Mr. Bill Shepard was my speech teacher and he was also the faculty adviser for the school newspaper. When Mr. Shepard heard about my mom being terminal with cancer, he asked me to write an article about it for the school paper. I did, but anonymously. Being in high school is hard enough without everyone staring at you for the added reason of your mom dying in order to point and call you a freak. Then there was Mrs. Sharp, my Algebra II teacher who was very good at explaining the tougher points while still keeping a little sarcastic wit for those who were not paying attention. And then there was Mr. Pelham. I was in his Advanced Placement English class for seemingly 5 minutes before I got moved to a different class because my dad insisted that I drop Sociology and re-take Algebra II that I'd passed in Germany with a 'C'. (Dad's reasoning was that if I'd made a 'C' the first time around, that I could easily make a 'B' or even an 'A' the second time around. That's how I met Mrs. Sharp. And as great a teacher as she was, I still made another 'C' in Algebra II. I think I just didn't want to be there....I digress.)

Mr. Pelham seemed to be going through some changes in 1985. I didn't know him before that class. So, I guess I'm the last to judge. But he seemed sort of disillusioned with American youth. In my first week in his class he said something that didn't sit right with me. He said that "Americans have no culture at all." Of course, most of the class took issue with this statement and began calling out various things that they thought made them "cultured." Sadly, I began to see what he was talking about. Pretty much, most of the stuff that my classmates used as examples were things from Elvis Presley's era until present...well, present-day 1985. I guess those of us who had gone to school overseas and visited places like the Colosseum in Rome, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, skied the Alps of Bavaria and Switzerland, visited  Anne Frank's hiding place in Amsterdam, and touched the walls of the shower rooms and smelled the stench of the crematorium still present at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany could be the exception to his rule. I still liked Elvis Presley and Jazz and hamburgers and pizza, though. So maybe Mr. Pelham was right and I was uncultured. Whatever. He made an impression on me. He was an excellent English teacher, even if I was only in his class a brief time. Honestly, I wish I hadn't dropped his class. The nameless, faceless English teacher I ended up with now falls into the "blur pit" of other civilian world teachers that I had throughout my years in school.

But I'd like to take this opportunity to thank those teachers who have made a difference in the lives of their students. Teachers who challenge their students to think, to take that nearly but not absolutely impossible first step toward self-improvement, to go further than they thought possible, and to THINK for themselves....these are our true heroes. Thank you, Sister Carita, Mr. Korn, Mr. Whitaker, Mr. Pike, Dr. Lewis, Mrs. Bourland, Mr. Mazzei, Ms. Diaz, Mr. Shepard, and Mr. Pelham. You helped shape me.

My Love of Irish Actors

I've always had a love for Irish actors. Maybe it's my Irish roots (details of my heritage here.) While the love of my life is the Egyptian man that I married, on screen the likes of Colin Farrell, Ralph Fiennes, Brendan Gleeson, Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne, Patrick Dempsey and Colm Meaney grab my attention. I love the coarse language and dry humor and hilarity of such dire situations in comical tones that usually fill Irish movies. "In Bruges" was right up my alley. Where else would you have two stoned Irish hitmen, a Dutch hooker, and a racist American little person getting high in a Belgian hotel room? F-bombs a-plenty.

I think I got hooked when I first watched "The General" with Brendan Gleeson. I wonder if the Irish were the original "black comedians." After seeing "Billy Elliot", "In America," "The Commitments," and "Waking Ned," I felt reconnected to my Irish comedic gene...you know, "me funny bone." I love the dramatic films, too. "Veronica Guerin", "Michael Collins," and even "The Crying Game," are movies I've seen at least three times each. But I think that my favorites are still the comedies. I just read about "The Guard" online tonight and I'm waiting impatiently for it to be released to satellite tv so I can see it. In the mean time, I'll just keep watching my faves without dropping my own f-bombs so my kids don't ask me if I'm feeling Irish.

Autobiography of Omnivore Army Brat Turned Vegetarian In Progress

Over the last ten years I've been trying to write a book. I always intended for it to be somewhat autobiographical but not a completely actual story of my life kind of thing. I figured there must be someone out there in the world who would find a crazy American who turns Muslim vegetarian living the ex-pat life in Egypt raising 5 young kids mostly on her own and without the aid of alcohol to be kind of funny. But everything I tried to get on paper seemed to come out kind of stilted and robot-like. Maybe that was due to the name-changing and trying to protect the innocent (or guilty.) You know, where I sort of lost touch with the main character because she didn't seem like me anymore.

So a couple of days ago I sat down and screamed at all the kids to leave me alone. I was not "Mommy" anymore. Mommy left for a sabbatical and I was now to be called "Genevieve DuBois" and then told them all to go to bed. I typed my brains out. It didn't take long. Well, really, it didn't seem like it took long. I wrote for about four hours. And all of it's completely non-fiction. I just got motivated re-reading my post on MY HERITAGE and decided "Hey, my life has been REALLY interesting. Being an Army brat and having attended 15 schools in 12 years (yes, that is in fact true), I really might have something to offer the world in the world of literature. Well, maybe something to offer the world of paperback books kept in the basket of bathroom reading material, anyway." And so I wrote and wrote.

I've gotten about 13 pages done in a couple of nights. It's quite anecdotal and probably something that any military brat can relate to. (Yes, I ended that sentence with a preposition. Get over it.) I'm hoping to pound out rest of it in the next few weeks before I start my usual practice of "Death by Editing."  As most artists are their own worst critics, I can make any draft bleed a horrible death of red ink editing and re-editing. But at least I'm writing again. And hopefully I'll actually publish this time around.

My Heritage

When one crosses an Alabama-born, Army-brat girl of Irish Catholic redneck-lineage with an Egyptian Muslim raised in Greece, what does one get?

My family.

And now that I've converted to Islam, I think some people think I'm going through an identity crisis. I've been accused of turning my back on my heritage by several people. Mostly, they're family members. Nothing could be further from the truth. I embrace my Irish heritage, my Catholic heritage, my Alabama and redneck heritage and my Army brat heritage. However, I do not cling to them with a G.I. Joe kung fu death grip. I take what I value as most important in all of them and use them as I need them, as the person I've become...so far.

I mean, really. Aren't we all still developing as people the longer we live? Do we really just stop somewhere along the line in our personal growth and just not anymore? I haven't. Personal growth isn't height or shoe size. It's a work in progress. At least, mine is.

I love my Irish heritage. I love my reddish hair and freckles. I love that I'm a 4th generation American on my Mom's side. I love the width of my face and that I'm not usually offended when people drop the f-bomb. I love The Cranberries. I love that I've inherited the ability to look at a really bad situation and make a joke about it and carry on with life. I stopped drinking years ago. No reason to carry THAT particular gene around, right?

I was brought up Catholic. I was pretty involved in the church, sang in the folk choir, did readings at mass, taught Vacation Bible School and CCD, went on youth retreats and hung out with the CYO. I've since left the church for a myriad of reasons...all of them personal and none of them having to do with being "brainwashed" or "influenced" by my husband, any of his family, my friends, or living in Egypt. I still live by the same life standards by which I was raised. I treat others the way I want them to treat me. I try to turn the other cheek and think innocently of others, believing none of what I hear and half of what I see. As to the dogma of the Catholic church, I no longer embrace that at all. But having grown up in it and believing in it
for the better part of 34 years, I do still defend it when others, Muslim or Protestant or otherwise, speak
untruths about the beliefs of Catholics.

While Alabama and redneck do not necessarily walk hand in hand,  they happen to in my case. And I love
that I learned to parallel park in my Aunt Virginia's Chevrolet Suburban and that my cousin, Wendy, and I used to drive to the state store in Mississippi in her 1949 purple Mercury with white wall tires so big that the car looked like a giant jelly bean on wheels. I love that I am one of the few girls in the world who knows what a universal joint is and how important it is when you're trying to find a drive shaft that will fit on a 45 year old car. I love Mardi Gras in Mobile, the Fishing Rodeo on Dauphin Island, and water-skiing on Tea Lake. I love frito-pie at the ball games and the smell of pine needles and the sound of crickets and how it's common knowledge that an Avon lady's phone number is imperative in the summer months because how else can you keep the mosquitoes away without Skin-So-Soft bath oil and not smell like bug spray?

I love that I'm an Army brat and lived all over the United States and Germany. I love that I am adaptable to change and that I can speak four languages with a pretty good understanding of a fifth. I love that I don't have "roots" down anywhere in particular because sometimes those roots can tie you down. I love that I continued with the travel bug my dad "infected" me with. I saw a huge chunk of Europe as a child and I enjoyed it with all my heart. Since I became an adult, I've continued seeing the world and added more of
Europe and parts of the Middle East and North Africa. I like that my children are all bilingual, even my
autistic daughter speaks Arabic and English. She's teaching herself Greek and a little Japanese from subtitled DVDs. How cool is that? I love that I respect timetables and rules. I also love that I'm forgiving and can bend for situations where a particular due date was overtaken by events. I love that I went to a Department of Defense Dependents EURope (DODDSEUR) high school. I was exposed to world events as they happened,  politics, news, world history, historical sites like concentration camps, museums, and landmarks.
I love that we held our homecoming dance on a boat floating on the Neckar River and that we went to ski school in the Bavarian Alps. My father provided me with something so much more important than "roots."
He gave me life experience, strict rules and a view of the world so broad that it somehow made the world an amazingly fantastic place to live. Living around the world has given me self-confidence, self-esteem, and an ability to not allow fear to prevent me from doing what I want. Being an Army brat, the words "I don't know" were unacceptable. "I don't know but I will find out," was.

At current, I'm a redneck, Alabama-born, country-music lovin', hip-hoppin', hard-rockin', Irish-American Muslim mother of five, living in Egypt. I can cook, sew, sing, write, home-school, slaughter and pluck a chicken just before cooking it for you and rebuild an alternator on a 1973 Chevrolet Camaro! I am amazing. And I owe it all to my heritage.

Reconnecting

Growing up an Army brat, I attended 15 schools in 12 years.
Filling out a security questionnaire for me was challenging and
probably a nightmare for the guy who had to do the back-
ground investigation on me. I wonder if he got overtime. He
damn sure deserved it.

We moved in the summer. We moved in the winter. We moved
all the time. By the time we finally picked of the little blue stickers
the movers had stuck on our furniture, it was time for another
moving company to come and put on some fresh ones. There
were a few times that they just stuck new ones on top of the
old ones.

I think the longest we ever lived in one place was the last place
we were stationed in Germany. It was a little town in Bavaria
called Schwaebisch Gmuend. Still we managed to move from
a very temporary inn just outside of town, to temporary 8 bed
room apartment on the 4th floor for one year, to a 3 bedroom
3rd floor apartment after one of my best friends, Anneliece, and
her family rotated back to the States. We stayed in that apart-
ment for a little over two years.

I made friends all over the world. We had summer vacations in
Italy where we camped and ate corned beef hash cooked on
a Coleman stove and then toured churches and cathedrals and
museums all day. We got to drive through the Swiss Alps and
my sister ordered goat's milk at a restaurant in Switzerland just
like Heidi used to drink in the book. We went to Austria, the
Netherlands, England, Belgium, and France. We swam in the
Mediterranean and North Seas. But we didn't know probably
half of our cousins and never understood what the word "home
town" actually meant.

Now that the world has become so much smaller, thanks to the
internet and social networks such as Facebook, I've reconnected
with friends I haven't seen for nearly thirty years. And most of
the other military brats I was friends with still remember me and
the fun we used to have at various posts around the globe. Today
there was a post about paper grocery bags from the commissary
and all of the 1001 uses for them that had all of us in stitches.
It didn't matter where we were stationed, Germany, England,
Spain, Italy, Ft. Knox, Kentucky....we ALL used those bags in
the same ways.

Reconnecting with other military brats has helped me in the last
few weeks. It helped me to remember how complete I am as a
person; how my "weirdness" is not unique to me but to all of us
military brats...thus giving me a sense of normalcy. Whatever
THAT is.

I'm proud that I'm a military brat. I'm proud that my dad served
for more than 20 years in the US Army. I'm proud that his
service allowed me to reap the benefits of world culture, a larger
sense of appreciation for others cultures, a respect for humans
as a whole, and a sincere and deep lack of understanding of the
word "prejudice." Thanks, Dad. (And thanks, Facebook.)

Today Started Out Fine...

...but in the last few hours it's become rather emotional. I've cried
four times in the last three hours. Well, one of those times was out
of sheer frustration having told the boys to go to bed no less than
5,362 times since 11:30pm. But the other three times have just been
weirdly triggered by Facebook and blogs of all things. Granted,
the Facebook cry session was due to a message I received from a
very dear friend of mine whose brother is dying of cancer.

While he and I were never close friends, I always had one of those
"Oh, God, I would just die if he were to ever walk up and say, 'You
are the woman for me,' but it'll never happen because he'd dating a
friend of yours" kind of crushes on him. So I never said anything.
Anyway, my friend told me that he had to tell his daughter that his
cancer didn't respond to the chemotherapy. I flashed back to my
senior year in high school when my mom had to tell us 2 weeks after
losing her leg to cancer, that she was terminal and had probably less
than 6 months to live. It felt like I'd had the wind knocked out of me.
I mean, I dealt with it. I had to. I was the oldest of four and had to
pick up Mom's slack while she was sick. But it sucked. I remembered
all those feelings of anger, sadness, rage, indifference, self-pity,
compassion and fear came bubbling back up after all these years. I
definitely can relate to how his daughter is feeling now. (Mom made it
by the way. She made the protocol for an experimental drug and
she's one of the NIH success stories for Interleuken II. As I understand
it, not that many made it.) 

I regained my composure from this bout of crying just after I added
my friend, her brother, his daughter, and their entire family to my
prayer list. I yelled at my kids and got back into the groove that is
motherhood, and then sat down to read one of my favorite blogs
and in spite of how hilarious Brittany is, she struck a nerve in me and
the next thing I knew, I was bawling my eyes out again with my head
on the desk. God, I'm such a sap. Pass the tissue. Ismail came in and
asked me if I was crying. I said yes. He asked why and hugged me. I
just gave him the usual mom-spiel about how I'm sad right now and
just need a quick cry. That seemed okay with him and got me a kiss
goodnight.

So then I thought maybe my other favorite blog might cheer me up.
WRONG! This usually funny, self-deprecating site was written in the
middle of some seriously stressed-out Mom-mode angst. I don't know
what's going on with Shauna's family right now but she made number
3 on my prayer list for personal intentions. And then the tears began
to flow again. Wow.

I need to drink a 2-liter bottle of water to refill my tear ducts, I think.
But maybe tomorrow will be better, God willing.

Goodbye, Friend!

My sister informed me a few nights ago that
a friend of mine from high school passed away
quite recently. I'd known that he was ill and
had been diagnosed with the same type of
melanoma as my mother some 26 years ago. I
guess because my mom made it, I'd had hope for
Devon. God had other plans.

Devon was a couple of years ahead of me in
school. He was very intelligent and funny and
politically aware and spoke fluent Italian and
English and was learning German and of course,
I had a crush on him. Only I was a dork freshman
with braces and he spoke to me but NEVER with
the look in his eye that only a 14-year-old girl
could wish for.

His two best friends were Alex and Rudy. The
three of them would climb on the bus each morning
on our way to school and laugh and rehash events
that happened over the weekend at various clubs
(usually Karibik the disco down the hill from
our housing area in picturesque Schwaebisch Gmuend,
Germany.) I loved to hear their stories and to
watch Devon dance that typical German dance where
one hardly moves his head and moves stiffly to the
music....sort of like the guys on Schprockets
from Saturday Night Live. Devon introduced me to
punk rock and spray-on pink hair. I've never been
able to listen to the Clash without thinking of him.
And even though my short-lived crush was not
acknowledged by him, my friendship was. He was
always a good guy and remembered some of our conver-
sations once we reconnected on Facebook.

And while his family and friends are devestated by
his death at such a young age, I pray that God bless
them all with patience to overcome this sense of loss.
And that God be generous and merciful to Devon and
forgive him any sins and allow him into his place in
Heaven.