Santa’s Sleigh Was an F-4:  A Military Brat's Reflections

by Ginny Mikita

Dad just called another Family Meeting.  Mom, my thirteen year old brother, my three year old sister, and I, all gather in the tiny living room of our dilapidated apartment built just after WWII - military housing in Germany.  “I have an announcement.”  A euphemism for “Start packing your stuff.”  The drill continues.  ”We're moving,” he says with carefully balanced enthusiasm for him and sympathy for us.  Despite the military rhetoric about soldiers and their families living in a state of readiness, I am not.  At 16, sentenced to a back brace to counter the curvature in my spine, this move will bring the tally of high schools attended to three.

I grew up a “military brat” as we called ourselves, a child of a career Air Force fighter pilot.  For many years, I felt most at home within barbed wire-surrounded Air Force Bases, their entrances policed by MPs whose salutes became more reverent with Dad's rank.  To this day, I form instant bonds with complete strangers who have but one thing in common with me - having been raised by one version or another of the Great Santini where three-year assignments were long and family vacations were jump-started by 0400 departures.  Ours was a world of socialized medicine, ration cards and third-run movies in which the Star-Spangled Banner replaced previews.

We grew up on isolated bases, self-contained communities intended to meet the needs of servicemen and women and their families.  Bases were nearly identical no matter where we were stationed - England, Spain, Germany, even Las Vegas.

We worshiped at base chapels designed to serve all faiths.  If my Air Force Protestant family arrived just after 10:00 Mass on Sunday morning, we were privy to an ascension of sorts.  Above the altar, handy electronic tracks allowed for a smooth replacement of the Catholic cross with a Jesus-free cross.  

We celebrated most holidays without extended family.  Army Post Office delays even altered the timing of our exchanged greetings by mail.  Our nuclear family traditions became exceedingly significant, especially at Christmastime.  Christmas Eve meant cheese fondue, midnight worship and a new pair of jammies.  Unlike most, we relished Christmas newsletters from home and friends who'd been transferred to other parts of the world.  And what kid wouldn't love Air-Force style Christmas parties?  Santa, having left his reindeer at the North Pole, taxied up to the squadron in an F-4 Phantom jet.  Donned in a traditional red suit and USAF Flight Boots, he'd climb from the cockpit bearing gifts for each of us. 

Home is Where Your Stuff Is

My husband and I celebrated our ten-year anniversary in June.  Since marrying, we have lived in one community - Rockford, Michigan.  Despite living in our first house for nine years, I always had a looming sense of impermanence.  We would be moving soon.  It could have been because it was a fixer-upper, and we're not fixer-upper type folks.  But I believe the real reason was, like all the places I lived before, it was simply another roof over my head.  In my nomadic days, rather than making a commitment to the homes in which we lived, I grounded myself in the hard evidence of my life.  Boxes and boxes of schoolwork, love notes, ticket stubs, programs, photographs.  I kept everything.  I still do.   

Two years ago, to accommodate our growing family's need for more than one bathroom, we moved to a larger home in the country just three miles down the road.  For reasons I am still not entirely certain, I can imagine growing old here.  A couple months ago, I painted my first wall with high-grade (we'll be around for awhile) semi-gloss enamel.  We sealed the driveway.  And in perhaps the boldest move of all, my husband and children planted a diminutive Dogwood as a gift to me on Mother's Day.

 Friends Today, Gone Tomorrow

Living in a constant state of leaving had a profound effect on my relationships.  It forced me to achieve levels of intimacy on a fast track.  As soon as Dad got his orders, I had to just as quickly let go.  There were always promises to keep in touch.  It rarely happened. 

When I met my husband, he began introducing me to childhood friends he's known since kindergarten.  I yearned for my own.  While I'll never have friends I've known since kindergarten, I now have friends with whom I've shared life's joys and sorrows for over ten years.  I’ve also had friendships dissolve, the foundations of which were built primarily upon a common neighborhood, church or experience.  I have now come to understand this phenomena happens, even without moving.  I remember as a kid forming a human pyramid with my brother and five cousins.  My life feels like that pyramid.  It’s made up of friendships that sustain me where I am at the time.  Friends leave and are replaced by others.  Others stay and are my bedrock.

We're All In This Together

Finally and most significantly, the opportunity to live as a guest in England, Spain and Germany and travel to faraway places, has greatly impacted my worldview - my sense that while I’m most at home in the United States, the rest of the world is only a flight or two away.  And, as I recall living abroad as a child, the only barrier between me and the people native to our host countries, I now realize, was language.  And even language so often ceased to be a barrier, as almost everyone spoke English as a second language.    

In my twenties, I seriously wondered whether I'd ever be able to live in one place, literally or figuratively, for any significant amount of time.   A life brimming with sameness sounded unimaginably boring.  Instead, I have found a palpable serenity that embraces routine.  Perhaps I'm getting old.  Or perhaps I've just discovered the beauty of an ever-deepening connectedness to my surroundings and in my relationships.  

During a recent visit with my brother who now lives in Las Vegas, we paged through my senior yearbook.  As I looked at the faces, I felt such a disconnect between that life and now, with one exception.  Each year, our Christmas tree is decorated with my German wooden ornament collection, a collection I began in Germany in 1978 and to which I've added each year via the Internet.  Last year, I added a Santa pilot.

Ginny Mikita and her husband, Bob Kruse, of the Mikita Kruse Law Center in Rockford, MI have been providing compassionate legal assistance to the voiceless - animals, children and incapacitated adults for 15 years.