Part I: A long introduction

In the beginning, chronologically speaking

Sporadic is probably the best word to describe my childhood. I bounced around from place to place, parent to parent, and identity to identity.

My parents, both gifted musicians, met in an Army Band, my mother, Sally, in her early twenties, and my father, Steve, fourteen years older than her in his mid thirties. They were friends for some time before becoming romantically involved. When they met, my mother was married to a close friend Eric, a marriage that afforded them both military benefits and gave Eric a good cover story. “Don’t ask don’t tell” was the status quo but plenty of people understood. My parents began dating in the mid-eighties when my mothers “sham” marriage ended amicably. My mother got orders to move to Germany and it was only a matter of weeks before my father proposed over the phone.

In 1988, while my parents were living in central Massachusetts, my sister Alexandra was born, a beautiful dark haired baby girl, outgoing and ambitious by nature. Thirteen months later, in the spring of 1989 my parents had me. Socially speaking, and from a traditional medical standpoint, they had another baby girl, but like most things seen in retrospect, it wasn’t quite as clear as they thought. My mother says that I was always awake in the morning when she came to see me. I would stand up quietly in the crib with a big smile on my face, my hands clasped on the wooden bars waiting for the day to begin.

I’ve watched many hours of my early childhood played back on VHS tapes. The actual memories are fuzzy, less real than many dreams. On the tapes, my mother is usually behind the camera, narrating the days events. Christmas morning 1990, birthday parties, a family trip to Story Land in New Hampshire.

My father, frozen here in his mid-forties, is often shirtless and in jean cutoffs with big silver glasses and a cigarette in his mouth. His skin is red-brown from decades of hot summers in Panama and Ecuador. The tattoos on his arms fade into the dark hues. The eagle, the snake, the drumset, and my mother’s name, evenly spaced on forearms and biceps. Those arms, thin but strong, lift me out of the sand on a New Hampshire beach and swing me into the air.

After 20 turbulent years in the army my father retired and became a postman while my mother continued with her career in the band. We moved as a family back to Germany in the early nineties. The Army Band was it’s own microcosm of an American community. My parents’ friends, the fellow band members, were always around at events and as babysitters. At 3 and 4 I was certain that I was a boy, not knowing what it meant, just knowing how it felt to me. Most adults played along, a light-hearted game where they would call me Jack, a name I likely pulled out of bedtime stories. I knew enough that I understood what a name could do.

The split

I don’t have any memory of my parents arguing or of being unhappy early in my life. I remember my parents’ divorce being framed as an exciting move to a new place. My father took my sister and I the four thousand miles across the Atlantic to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where my aunt, uncle and four cousins had recently settled.

The memories of my mother from this stage of my life are clearer maybe because of the distance. I spent a lot of time thinking about her, not as a person in my everyday life but as an idea and a figure. I didn’t understand why she was in Berlin and why we were in the U.S.. I could picture her soft white skin, her cheerful smile, and the loose blue and white striped t-shirt she would wear. In fits of missing my mother I would cry, rip posters off of my bedroom walls, and refuse to listen to my father’s matter-of-fact reasoning. But at the same time, when I had a chance to speak to her on the phone, I sat in front of the TV and barely responded, distracted by cartoons, football and Full House. Soon after the move I went from having a full head of long curly hair to a short barber shop cut to fix what I had cut off with scissors on my own.

Life goes on

For the next few years my mother was only able to visit the U.S. a few times a year and she saw our lives through the VHS tapes.

My aunt takes the mammoth video camera around the house my father bought, pushes through the screen door and out into the yard, dragging the thick orange power cord behind her while giving a lively tour of each room. She focuses the camera on each of the six children playing outside in a castle made of tens of cardboard boxes from the move and the new appliances. It’s chaotic and playful. Inside, her sister walks by a mirror and jokes about her hair. 

Life continues for us in South Carolina. My sister and I start school, her excelling socially and academically and me cruising along without attracting too much attention, disruptive in class but successful on assessments and placements. Early on we were both identified as “gifted and talented,” something I’m sure played a big role in our growing senses of identity and self confidence. I specifically found the knowledge that, “I was smart” as an excuse not to put any effort into school work or class activities, as if they were meant to take me somewhere I had already arrived.

My mother’s life continued too. She began dating and eventually married a man, Craig, while in Germany, another band member from Maryland who moved with her when they were stationed to a base in central Texas. Alexandra and I visited my mother over summers and spent time with Craig’s family in Maryland at their home outside of Washington D.C. where Craig grew up. His parents, Hank and Jean, were like aged movie stars in my eyes. Hank, now retired from the National Park Service, had been a pilot in World War II, flying over 40 combat missions in North Africa and Sardinia. After the war while he was stationed in Okinawa, Hank met and fell in love with Jean, an American schoolteacher living abroad. Their house was filled with mesmerizing artifacts from their travels and beautiful authentic Japanese furniture. I remember watching the 1994 Winter Olympics in their basement den, thinking I knew exactly what it felt like to live in the 1950s.

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This is the beginning of a short personal narrative series.

Part II: Growing pains

Some names have been changed for whatever reason, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

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My father in August of 1981.

My mother, “gazing at the Alps.”

Mother in a cafe.

Yours truly in infancy.

Myself and Alexandra in the driveway in Myrtle Beach, photographed by my father.