This last week has been a difficult one for my family. Three of us are dealing with a constant, nagging something that isn't quite a cold and isn't quite the flu but insists on hanging around and making daily life less pleasant than it should be. My kids have missed days of school when those days matter the most - as in the United States, the last couple of school weeks in Argentina are fraught with tests, with teachers catching up with lesson plans, with field days and picnics. And springtime is a lousy time to be sick - the weather is finally beautiful and we would rather be sitting out underneath the profusely purple flowering trees and sipping our mate than nursing our headaches and runny noses.
So today, when everyone was feeling somewhat better and headed out to school, I was happy to find out that my oldest had a schedule change. We were able to spend an hour in a cafe together, sipping coffee and sharing a tostado, along with casual conversation. But as is the way in our family, casual conversation is anything but and our talk slowly migrated from the latest book he is reading, Imperial Grunts, to life as a military child.
It is often hard to write about military life. If we complain, many people remind us that it is a life we chose and to basically suck it up. We usually are allowed to describe the joys, the travel, the excitement of meeting new people, the safety of knowing the next paycheck is coming and that my kids can always see a doctor, with nary a person getting upset with us. But military families are never supposed to complain. My oldest son feels this deep in his psyche. We have learned to confide in each other; I confide enough in him so that he feels that the conversation is a true back and forth but not so much that he has to take my stress and make it his own. Because my child is stressed enough without me adding to the load.
As a sixteen year old, he is looking at his adult life just around the corner but he has no idea where he will live 6 months from now. He has no idea where he will go to school nor how he will do it. He has no idea who his future friends will be and how many of his current friends will be willing to maintain a relationship via Facebook and email. He doesn't know if we will live near family or far away and is unsure which would be better. Hell, he doesn't know if we will live in the United States or outside of it. Basically his life for the next two years is not his own. He will have to chose what to make of it no matter where we live, but he has learned from past experience that each assignment brings out a different person in each of us. We discover new things about ourselves but we also fit niches in each location that enable us to survive.
When my husband and I made the decision 20 years ago to follow a military life, we knew at the time that it was meant to be a career. I had grown up military and I loved moving. I get the proverbial itchy feet if we stay in any one location for too long. My husband, on the other hand, grew up in the same home, in the same town, his entire life and wanted to explore. We sort of new what that would mean for our children but I don't think I had considered what it would mean for my young adult children. My dad retired when I was 13 and I finished my high school education and started college in a single place. I obviously moved around a bit as I went from college to college, trying to find my place in life, but I basically stayed close to home.
I had always thought deep down inside that we would be finished traveling at my husband's 20 year point - that maybe we would have that last assignment with him as a Colonel near a place where we might like to retire. That my boys would finish high school, or homeschool the rest of high school, in one location. That they could begin community college or the 4 year university of their choice and could always come home to visit or even stay home and commute. But that doesn't look like that will be happening. My husband loves his job and the military continues to offer him unique and challenging assignments that we are all enjoying. None of us want to stop traveling but all of us would like to know what is supposed to happen next. My son and I both want to make plans and we can't. That choice 20 years ago is still having a profound ripple effect.
Some of our concerns are those we have created for ourselves. We have homeschooled throughout their school years in an attempt to provide stability. It worked for the elementary years but for high school, we are finding that we are on very unstable ground. My son chose to study a semester in a public school in CA and passed with straight A's. Currently, he is finishing a year at a school here in Buenos Aires with a grading scale unlike anything we have ever seen in the United States. Add to that imperfect grades from having taken the classes in the native Spanish Language and from having a teacher or two who have never passed exchange students because they hate Americans. He is a semester off the US schedule and we are unsure whether he should try and become a Junior or should just homeschool again and start Junior College. And that decision won't be made until we know where we are going because a lot will depend on the State or the Country where we will live. My poor, very intelligent child, doesn't know how he will manage the college entrance process because we chose a different path. We chose for him to immerse in the language (and he speaks Argentine Spanish with an ease I envy) and ignored the American-style school that would have given us peace of mind.
Today, I found out that my son isn't just worried about the immediate future. He is struggling with belonging. We don't belong here in Argentina - it's like an extended vacation. We are loving our time and the lessons we will take from here will shape my children for a lifetime. But my 16 year old son has had trouble finding his niche. He spends hours trying to explain who he is because to the Argentines, we don't fit their expectation of Americans. We are not rich, though we are definitely not poor, especially by Argentine standards. The Argentines in this school do not understand the inequities that exist in the United States and they are somewhat horrified that my son is even willing to acknowledge that they exist at all. America is perfect in the minds of those who don't live there. The American Dream is alive and well in Argentina and many of them believe they would prefer to live in California or in Florida or in New York than their own city of Buenos Aires. And then there are those, like the teacher who is failing my son for his nationality, who think America is the cause of all ills in the world. There is the history book that shows pictures of war and they only show American soldiers. There is the geography teacher who insists that the area between San Francisco and San Diego is completely urbanized and is called San-San. As a nation, we are both loved and hated and my son is a diplomat, not by his choice, but by his father's military assignment and our desire to place him in a local school.
My son also struggles with the time he has spent without his dad. We spoke of past deployments, of time spent trying to figure out who he was as a man and not having his father around to talk to. I didn't realize how much that time still affects him and it has been a couple years since the last deployment. It makes me fear for those kids whose Dads have been gone so much more than my husband.
And after talking a little more, I finally find out what my son is most stressed about. He wants to be protesting with his generation in the United States. He wants to be at Occupy Wall Street.
Yep, that's what I found out today over coffee. It's not just the not knowing where we will be going. It's the not fitting in and the feeling that we are missing something essential in our nation. There is change in the wind and my son wants to be there from the beginning and it is already too late for that. We might be returning to the States come Northern American springtime; the movement will hopefully still be active, still be making a difference, in whatever way, shape, or form evolves. And we will take part.
My son talks of being arrested as if he would be earning a medal. He wants to fight for his country and this peaceful protest fits his frame of reference so much better than serving in the current military. These last two wars have changed what we believe so much. In some ways, he will chose a different life than his dad and I, but essentially that spark of serving the greater good infects him as much as it did us when we made the choice to serve our nation, he as an active duty officer and myself as the family member that would follow behind and offer support in whatever ways I could.
My son told me today that he wants to make a difference not for himself but for his younger brother. He worries so much and I wish that I could take more weight off of his shoulders. Maybe if I ignored what was going on in our nation, maybe if I hadn't raised him to discuss politics, issues of the day, problems in the world, he would worry a hell of a lot less. But I didn't. And I can't change the past. And honestly, I can't really regret it either.
I am proud of who my son is today.
It is so very hard to watch our children begin to take our load.