The very first chapter books I read on my own were Uncle Arthur's Bedtime Stories. The ancient-looking volumes belonged my Grandma and her siblings when they were kids and had that delicious old book smell and yellowed pages softened from use. Though the doctrine of the Christian morality tales never really stuck with me, I didn't escape entirely from their influence.
I distinctly remember reading one particular tale. It centered around the predictable poor-but-jovial family gearing up to celebrate Christmas. They didn't have any presents, but they shared love and a faith in God, so off they went to church on Christmas Eve. The story sets up that the little boy protagonist is a nice, selfless kid, unconcerned about his lack of presents under the tree and uncomplainingly helping out with his tiny baby sister. His angelic-like state is heightened to the point of puke-worthy as he is overjoyed when his aunt and uncle give him some mundane, practical gift, and he is gracious and overjoyed, thinking it the climax of his Christmas.
The details are a little fuzzy at this point, but the families are all gathered in the church, and after the typical Jesusy stuff, the preacher turns to the kids and unveils a tree of gifts. The toys and fancy clothes astound the poor kids into a grateful oblivion, and the protagonist boy eyes a snazzy toy train. It is the only selfish want he expresses throughout the whole story. There is some random method of allowing the kids to select a gift from the tree. For some reason that also escapes me, the boy sacrifices his train to get a coat for his sister or lets some other even poorer boy get the train. I don't know; the reason doesn't even matter.
The point was, I was incredibly disappointed for the boy. Since he was bent on refusing to show actual human emotion, I felt it for him. I think he eventually gets a train (from the benevolent preacher who saw what was going on), but the crushing disappointment quite powerful. Upon my many re-readings of the collection, I always skipped that story to avoid having to feel that way all over again.
Even at my young age, I looked around at the vast array of toys surrounding me and felt horribly guilty about not giving them to orphans.
Every time I see a charity, especially around the holidays, I feel a pang of guilt for not being like the little boy with that damn train. For Christmas my seventh grade year, I acquired two crisp 100 dollar bills. We were having a fundraiser at school for victims of the tsunami, and I tried to sneak one of the bills to school to donate. My mother caught me and prohibited the altruistic action. "But Mom," I protested, "I will still have a hundred dollars left!" Really, I was thinking of the boy and the train.
Maybe it's the profound affect of the first chapter book I read independently (and foreshadowing of the importance books would always play in my life), or the power of Uncle Arthur's storytelling (doubtful), or the simple moral at the heart of it all. Either way, I want every little boy to have his train.
This basic motivation keeps me gravitating towards a career with some non-prophet organization. What better way to spend my life than assuaging that guilt developed so young? Maybe the story affected me so powerfully because helping people is what I'm meant to do. I don't really believe in fate, but I do believe in predisposition. Maybe good ole Uncle Arthur was onto something.
Nov 16, 2011
Nov 12, 2011
Veterans Day
Most people associate the military with rigidity, fighter planes, propaganda posters, marches, cadences. They always want to thank them for their service, and usually think their service consists of shooting people from the tops of buildings as snipers and performing barrel rolls over Iraq as fighter pilots.
But my military associations are much different. The pleats in dark navy pants, the stiff and colorful ribbon racks, the careful starching all remind me of my dad; whenever he would finally come home, I'd rush to the door to greet him, breathing in the familiar smell of uniform and feeling the scratchy fabric on my cheek as he gathered me in a long-awaited hug.
I think of being perched on my parents' bed as my dad went through the nightly ritual of preparing his uniform. We'd talk of whatever issue was currently plaguing me; his words of advice always came as steadily and effectively as the iron that removed the wrinkles from his shirt. As he burned the frayed edges and fly-away strings from his pants, he'd cut the extraneous worry from my life.
I remember waiting in his office with my brother. We'd play with the toy bombs and guns used to train for drills. One of us would plant the bomb somewhere in the building: a filing cabinet, carelessly unlocked desk drawer, couch cushions. The other would then try to find the object while the mastermind would laugh maniacally in triumph until the good guy deactivated the bomb, just in time. To me, this is what occurs in Air Force office buildings.
I remember Dad pulling up in front of the house in his AF cop car, sirens blazing. My brother screamed in terror (he was young) while Dad "arrested" my friends and I, cuffs and everything. I remember squadron holiday parties with Easter egg hunts, where my toddler brother loudly proclaimed "that's not the Easter bunny! That's a man in a suit!" and Christmas parties where my best friend was embarrassingly obnoxious and my brother broke the stick we were using to hit a pinata that was apparently reinforced with concrete. I remember trick-or-treating on base housing, the best place for treat-or-treating, and staying out so late people would start dumping their left-over candy into our outstretched bags.
I remember the freedom of walking to the Shoppette and to school, passing under a gigantic air plane statue every morning on my way to elementary school, skipping through the security gates on my way home, and calling the grocery store the commissary.
My childhood was marked by the multiplicity of military brats; half Turkish or Korean or from Hawaii and Alaska, we united in our ever-revolving life. Half your classmates would move away before the end of the year, but then you'd have pen pals all over the world.
But most of all, I remember the long months when Dad was gone. Mom struggling to be both parents, do all the duties. I remember my carefully penned letters and the phone calls with extreme delays as Dad's voice took twice as long to travel around the world.
I remember the extreme joy as Dad stepped off that plane and returned to us. His skin was extremely tanned by the desert heat, and he was incredibly skinny from the desert chow hall, but he was finally home. And my face scratched against the stiff fabric of his uniform and I breathed in the familiar smell, and I took away an entirely different conception of what the military is.
As the National Anthem plays and people standing staring up at the American flag and the camera pans over a crowd of military men and women, I know all the memories that pass through their minds aren't the same as the images that riddle military advertisements and popular culture. It's the smaller things, the real life things.
I appreciate my dad for so many things, but being in the military was just his job. I appreciate him for not making it his identity. He doesn't like when random people walk up and thank him for his service. He joined because he had no other options out of high school; there is not a lot separating a fast food uniform and a military one. While the military life does mean a lot of sacrifice, it also means a lot of benefit. Military members get healthcare benefits, GI benefits, housing, and a plethora of other benefits many Americans do not have. It's overly romanticized why people join the military--for every wannabe hero, there's ten that are just joining to survive.
So people might think I'm bad for not getting teary-eyed on Veterans Day, having been raised by a veteran. But really, the holiday is for civilians, not veterans. I appreciate the most important veterans to me every day of the year.
But my military associations are much different. The pleats in dark navy pants, the stiff and colorful ribbon racks, the careful starching all remind me of my dad; whenever he would finally come home, I'd rush to the door to greet him, breathing in the familiar smell of uniform and feeling the scratchy fabric on my cheek as he gathered me in a long-awaited hug.
I think of being perched on my parents' bed as my dad went through the nightly ritual of preparing his uniform. We'd talk of whatever issue was currently plaguing me; his words of advice always came as steadily and effectively as the iron that removed the wrinkles from his shirt. As he burned the frayed edges and fly-away strings from his pants, he'd cut the extraneous worry from my life.
I remember waiting in his office with my brother. We'd play with the toy bombs and guns used to train for drills. One of us would plant the bomb somewhere in the building: a filing cabinet, carelessly unlocked desk drawer, couch cushions. The other would then try to find the object while the mastermind would laugh maniacally in triumph until the good guy deactivated the bomb, just in time. To me, this is what occurs in Air Force office buildings.
I remember Dad pulling up in front of the house in his AF cop car, sirens blazing. My brother screamed in terror (he was young) while Dad "arrested" my friends and I, cuffs and everything. I remember squadron holiday parties with Easter egg hunts, where my toddler brother loudly proclaimed "that's not the Easter bunny! That's a man in a suit!" and Christmas parties where my best friend was embarrassingly obnoxious and my brother broke the stick we were using to hit a pinata that was apparently reinforced with concrete. I remember trick-or-treating on base housing, the best place for treat-or-treating, and staying out so late people would start dumping their left-over candy into our outstretched bags.
I remember the freedom of walking to the Shoppette and to school, passing under a gigantic air plane statue every morning on my way to elementary school, skipping through the security gates on my way home, and calling the grocery store the commissary.
My childhood was marked by the multiplicity of military brats; half Turkish or Korean or from Hawaii and Alaska, we united in our ever-revolving life. Half your classmates would move away before the end of the year, but then you'd have pen pals all over the world.
But most of all, I remember the long months when Dad was gone. Mom struggling to be both parents, do all the duties. I remember my carefully penned letters and the phone calls with extreme delays as Dad's voice took twice as long to travel around the world.
I remember the extreme joy as Dad stepped off that plane and returned to us. His skin was extremely tanned by the desert heat, and he was incredibly skinny from the desert chow hall, but he was finally home. And my face scratched against the stiff fabric of his uniform and I breathed in the familiar smell, and I took away an entirely different conception of what the military is.
As the National Anthem plays and people standing staring up at the American flag and the camera pans over a crowd of military men and women, I know all the memories that pass through their minds aren't the same as the images that riddle military advertisements and popular culture. It's the smaller things, the real life things.
I appreciate my dad for so many things, but being in the military was just his job. I appreciate him for not making it his identity. He doesn't like when random people walk up and thank him for his service. He joined because he had no other options out of high school; there is not a lot separating a fast food uniform and a military one. While the military life does mean a lot of sacrifice, it also means a lot of benefit. Military members get healthcare benefits, GI benefits, housing, and a plethora of other benefits many Americans do not have. It's overly romanticized why people join the military--for every wannabe hero, there's ten that are just joining to survive.
So people might think I'm bad for not getting teary-eyed on Veterans Day, having been raised by a veteran. But really, the holiday is for civilians, not veterans. I appreciate the most important veterans to me every day of the year.
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