Somewhere Between

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I really, really, really want to see this movie, and furthermore would love to see it with my daughters.  They are also Third Culture Kids, in a way.

Born Under an Assumed Name

How do you talk about a book that is overflowing with "aha" moments?  I read this book twice; once just to absorb it, and the second time armed with a pink highlighter.  Sara Taber's life could have been my life.  In places, it was.  She is able to put into words so many of the confusing, restless feelings that make up my psyche.  I could pick apart the entire book and point out the myriad parts of her life that paralleled mine, but there aren't enough megabytes on Blogger to include them all.

Sara grew up as a Third Culture Kid, the daughter of a CIA covert operative who worked in the guise of an embassy employee during the era of Red China and the Communist Horde.  Sara was born in Japan, but her earliest memories are of Taiwan.  After a brief stay in the U.S., the family moved to Holland.  In high school Sara attended boarding school in Japan while her parents were stationed in Borneo.  She spent her senior year at the American School in Japan.

http://www.tripsite.com

Like Sara, I was a young girl in Asia (Japan), and lived in Belgium (next to Holland).  We also returned to Asia (Philippines) when I was in high school.  My sisters and I attended the American School in Japan.

Sara describes an incident in Borneo when she and her father trekked three hours into the jungle with a Catholic missionary priest.  They "slathered their legs with insect spray" and trod through the muck, listening to the drone of insects and watching gibbons hanging from a vine.  You can almost feel the oppressive. moist heat, as the jungle became "close and claustrophobic."  I will let her continue the story:

"Finally at the end of three hours, we saw a bright opening in the forest.  All around us was scrub, interspersed with fruit and rubber trees, and vegetable and pepper trees ... Walking ahead we found on the green a tiny hamlet of bamboo huts on stilts, surrounded by palm trees...

"On our approach, we passed a line of six or eight upright stones, animist figures like ancient beings, being licked by some scruffy goats.  I stopped a minute to circle the stones.  The figures seemed open-faced and friendly...

"Up a rude ladder, in one of the houses, a woman in a faded sarong served us tea.  She smiled at me and listened intently to the priest.  A boy led us to the hut on stilts where we'd spend the night.

"My father, [my brother] and I sat with our backs against the bamboo walls while Father Downey read for an hour from the Bible.  As he read on with the drone of an insect, I thought of the collection of small stone figures outside on the pasture.  It seemed so violently wrong to me.  I thought about imposition -- about the priest's imposition of his beliefs on people with their own perfectly serviceable religion.  I thought about missionaries ... how [they] imposed their ways on others with a sense of righteousness.  To a fault, I'd be wary of imposition always -- that of others and my own."

http://www.incitoprima.com/details.php?catid=14&aid=160

When I was a child, my family always attended the Episcopal church.  I still feel a semblance of "home" whenever I experience communion, hear the familiar hymns and see the brass candlesticks and crosses, with the priest in his gold-stitched cassock.  As most teenagers do, I turned my back on religion when I got to college.  As an adult, I was exposed to several faiths which insisted that they were the only true faith, and I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat when I listened to people mourn for all the poor lost souls in Africa who never heard about Jesus.  I was asked "Why can't you just believe?" and told that my salvation was in question.

Although I never went into the hinterlands of deepest darkest Borneo, like Sara, I did taste, see, hear and feel other religions.  Before entering a Shinto temple, I poured water from the temizu basin with a bamboo ladle over my hands.  I walked up a hill to catch my school bus, alongside a Buddhist temple, listening to the ting of a small bell, signifying wisdom.  I walked, shoeless and quiet into a Muslim mosque.  I never questioned the validity of their religious fervor, never judged them.  If anything, I felt awed by their quiet devotion and understood that there was a place on this earth for us all.  I like to believe that we are all children of the same God, but we call Him (or Her?) by different names and worship Him according to our cultural and historical geographical differences.

http://www.cor-images.com/index.php?pr=JAPAN__Tokyo

Sara Taber validated this feeling I have always had about evangelical religions.  Who are we to impose our beliefs on others who live as far away from our civilization as it is possible to get?  Hasn't their religion serviced them perfectly for thousands of years before we came along?  Look at the enormous feats of architecture (Angkor Wat) and sculpture (Easter Island) and art (the Cathedral of Notre Dame) that men have achieved in the name of their God.

http://www.asia-palooza.com/Cambodia/activities.html

I am reminded of my own father, who, having lived and worked all those years in Asia, developed kind of a Zen outlook on life.  He saw the world practically and realistically, understanding that we are all on this earth together, but in different shapes, sizes, colors and creeds.  He clung to his own Christianity, but had a huge respect for other faiths.  In a men's bible study late in his life, the question was posited:  "Why are you a Christian?"  Several of the men gave their stock answers, serving Christ, spreading the Word, ministering to the poor, etc.  When my dad's turn came around, he replied, simply and earnestly, "Accident of birth."

I can't recommend Sara Taber's book enthusiastically enough.  I have described just one small part of her story, but the book is brimming with many, many others.  I challenge any Third Culture Kid to read "Born Under an Assumed Name" and not find pieces of themselves scattered through the pages.

Third Culture ... Hair?

I have a confession to make.  It’s something I have kept secret for years, although some of my nearest and dearest may know the truth.  I have fought to keep it private, but sometimes the elements around me scream for me to confess, to come out, to make amends in public.  So here and now, I will make it known to the world:  I have curly hair.

My earliest toddler memories are of my sisters calling me “Fizz Head”.  Photos of me show a meringue confection of tow headed curliness swirling around my face.  Waves and ringlets dance chaotic around me, every day looking like I have just rolled out of bed.  When it got long enough, my mom braided it every day; over time I left the house in progressively longer braids, so tight that I felt like my eyes were stretched into slits.  Towards the end of the day, wild tendrils would pop out of the braids, and the ends would swirl into perfect soft-serve Shirley Temple coils.  I had an enormous wardrobe of matching ribbons, grosgrain, satin, yarn, you name it, one for practically each outfit.  On special occasions, would put my braids into loops, and I looked like a hybrid of Heidi and Pippi Longstocking.  

Mommy, Mommy, my braids are too tight!

By the time I was 11, my hair reached below my waist.  I finally convinced mom that it was time to Stop the Braids, and went to the more grown-up ponytails.  At this time, it was the early 1970’s, when long, straight, parted-in-the-middle hair was the style du jour (think Marcia Brady).  My older sister Lisa, also of the curly persuasion, started rolling her hair on huge (empty) orange-juice cans, or wrapping her wet hair around her head, securing it with bobby pins until it dried.  (This was long before the era of the blow dryer).  I tried to emulate her; I was her apprentice, learning her craft.  I don’t think I ever actually ironed my hair, although it was long enough. 

Argh, where's my flatiron?  Oh wait, it hasn't been invented yet!

There was a product on the market in those days called “U.N.C.U.R.L” made by Clairol.  I think I only used it once, and there is a lovely picture of 7^th grade me, a new kid at Episcopal High School in Baton Rouge, with long, straight, perfect hair.  But walk out the door on a humid Louisiana morning, and it was curtains (curl-tains?) for me.  The damp air was my enemy.  When we moved to the Philippines, I lived in a humid bubble, always chasing the air conditioning, dreading a rainy day (which was just about every day). 

The fear of curly hair was my nemesis.  At the International School Manila, sitting in the Student Lounge during recess would strike fear in my heart.  It was an outdoor pavilion, and if I was out there for half a minute, it was frizzy mayhem.  I think I volunteered to stay in class to help clean erasers most of the time.  I once had a semester of P.E. first period of the day, and we had swimming!  I think the bandanna became my best friend.  There was that awful day in Singapore (even closer to the equator!) when my mom made me walk to school.  Horrors!

11th grade, Manila.

I missed out on so much.  There were trips to the beach and pool parties with classmates that I skipped.  All because of the damn hair.  It was a curse.  I don’t know if it was because of the taunting and the teasing when I was young (“Fizz Head!”) or my devotion and worship of my sister Lisa.  When she died, perhaps I was continuing her legacy of elegance and straightness.  In a way I was trying to keep her alive in my mind.  Not so much trying to be LIKE her, but to BE her.  She had been ultra-popular in high school, cheerleader and singer.  She used to ride her moped to school in Belgium, her long straightened hair billowing from underneath her helmet.  Crowds of teenagers with guitars used to crowd into our house, motorcycles parked willy-nilly in the driveway.  My dad would tape their jam sessions on his reel-to-reel Aiwa recorder.  My mom would sit amidst them, one of the gang.  I would peep in from behind the door, loving the sounds of the twelve string, and admiring the girls with their long, straight hair.  I wanted to be one of them, but I was relegated to admiring from afar.  I probably got into Lisa’s makeup, again trying to transform myself into what she was.  She was the epitome of cool, and I always fell short of reaching her status.

I was always on the fringes (no pun intended).  My psychotic relationship with my hair kept me always on the outside, like the 12 year old me watching the jam sessions behind the dining room door.  Why couldn’t I just embrace the curls?  I had friends with beautiful curls.  I loved how it looked on them.  I envied their nonchalance.

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!

When you're the New Kid at school every few years, like most of us of the TCK ilk, it's bad enough when you're just new, not to mention awkward and angly, all knees and elbows.  But to add self-loathing and heightened self consciousness, it is that much harder.  I suppose that if it wasn't my hair it would have been some other minute imperfection that I perceived.  Like a lot of teenagers I would have found myself hideous no matter what.

I think I have finally made peace with my hair, although I recoil at humidity.  I still straighten my hair, despising the process all the while, but hating the alternative more.  Recently I went to bed with wet hair, too exhausted to do anything about it.  When I woke up, I looked like Cosmo Kramer.  Literally.  I am able to laugh at myself now, but I still won’t come out of the curly shell.  I have fantasies about cutting my hair completely short, traveling to the jungles of deepest Borneo and not having to worry about a thing.  

Third Culture Animals (and a small rant)

I am indeed a recovering Third Culture Kid!  Some evil miasma of a virus/bacteria/what-the-heck has had me considerably under the weather.  Thanks to a modern miracle of pharmacology, I am back amongst the living.

Feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed again!

Where were we?  Oh, yes, ANIMALS!  I suppose I have been a little rattled by the recent events in the Middle East and northern Africa, so that writing about my pets seemed a little ridiculous.  I have to say, while I try to remain apolitical on all forms of social media, those events left me feeling pretty darn frightened and more than a little dismayed and disappointed in our present administration.  To have no security at our embassies and/or consulates on the anniversary of 9-11 seems, well, almost outrageous.  And the fact that it took nearly 24 hours for our president to come forth and actually say anything?  I thought Hillary Clinton was 10x more presidential than "he" was.  Okay, rant over.

Animals ... yes.  So our puppies made it to Manila with no apparent scars.  They spent a month or so at a kennel until our household goods arrived.  They had the run of our house, and while our maids seemed to like their little furry charges, not so much our gardener Reuben.  (If you are shocked that we had "staff" please remember that this was commonplace in Manila.  They practically came with the house).  Whenever Reuben showed up, Sheba would attack his pants legs with the ferocity of a land piranha, teeth bared and a growl that came from somewhere deep in her soul.

At night our back yard would come alive with these strange frogs (that I know I have mentioned before).  Sheba didn't know that the frogs were poisonous to small animals, but somehow she was immune.  We knew she had been frog diving when she would come in the house with her beard chock full of foamy phlegm, or whatever the heck it was.  The dog had a stomach of steel.  Although one time she got hold of a church bazaar cake that had been sitting out in the sun most of the day, and she wasn't too pleased with the results.

Don't they look tasty?

On home leave one year, mom decided to give the Schnauzer Breeding Effort another try.  We found a little girl schnauzer puppy and she flew alone to Manila from New Orleans.  We named her Evangeline, after the Longfellow heroine who spent her whole life looking for her love, Gabriel.  Our Evangeline traveled to the Philippines to find her lover, Gus.  Sadly, again, Gus never seemed to master the idea of fatherhood, so our plans were abandoned yet again.  So now we had THREE dogs.

My dad and me, with puppies, Christmas 1978,  Singapore

When we found out we were moving to Singapore, the movers showed up and we decamped to the Mandarin Hotel down the block.  After a long hot day of packing, having gone back to the hotel to rest, we got a phone call from Pacita, our maid, who was bereft.  Gus was nowhere to be found.  We thought he had escaped through a door left open by one of the movers.  We jumped in our car and turned onto Buendia Avenue, only to be immediately caught in a logjam of traffic.  I actually leaped out of the car and ran down the street to Forbes Park, arriving out of breath and terrified at our house.  We looked and looked and called and called.  I thought I heard a little bark but dismissed it as imagination or wishful thinking. But wait!  There it was again.  I ran to the back of the house, and found poor Gus trapped between the door to my bedroom and a ceiling-high stack of boxes.

The quarantine station at Jurong, Singapore

Singapore, being a former British Colony, had a strict 30-day quarantine requirement.  (When you take a dog to England, there is a six month quarantine!)  The establishment where they were to spend their incarceration was outside the city, in Jurong, about a 30 minute drive.  We drove out just about every other day.  It was a pleasant place, lots of trees and flowers, with large concrete runs and a little shelter where they had a wooden platform to sleep on.  Every day a tiny Chinese woman with an enormous straw hat would clean the runs, and water & feed her charges.  There was a beautiful Boxer right next to our guys named Judge.  A perfect name for him.  He was very distinguished looking.

In 1979 mom and dad returned to the states for good.  The dogs made it home in one piece.  Gus ended up having an undescended testicle that became cancerous (which may have explained his lack of, for want of a better word, lust for life).  He lived until he was 11 years old, when he died suddenly as the result of a tumor was found near his lung.  As Gus came to us at such a grief-stricken time in our lives, I thought losing him would be another crushing blow for my mom.  As it turned out, I was the one sobbing my eyes out on the way home with his body after he died.  Dad buried him in the back yard, along with a couple of my sister's cats.

Sheba lived until she was 14, long past any quality of life.  She used to walk around in circles, deaf as a post, and half-blind.  One time mom and dad went away for an extended trip, and dad dug a hole in their "pet cemetery" just in case she died while they were gone.  Evangeline was given away to a family in Baton Rouge some time in the 80's.  We later learned that their house had burned to the ground, and we were never able to bring ourselves to ask them what happened to Vangie.  Mom and Dad had 2 more dogs after that, a wire haired terrier named Gulliver and a Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier named Toby.  None of them was as well-traveled as the three Schnauzers.  I loved the breed so much that I got a black Schnauzer named Boudreaux in 2003.  He is almost 10 and still acts like a puppy, but his sleeping time seems to be getting longer than his playing time.  He loves playing with his Beanie Babies (I just knew those things would come in handy some day!)

Boudreaux the Wonder Dog

So there you have it.  Sometimes having a pet is the only constant that TCKs have, but there are times when we have to say good-bye.  Our lives are filled with loss, both human and animal, but as the old adage goes, it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.

Third Culture Animals? Part I

Third Culture Kids not only have to say good bye to friends and teachers, they also sometimes have to part with beloved pets!  My history with pets involves a lot of loss and grief, even if they were "only" animals.  They were family members who were also affected by our peripatetic life.

The first dog we had was Punch, a dachshund.  Punch came to us in Shreveport, before we even started our globe trotting.  In 1965 we moved from Louisiana to Chappequa, New York, sort of a stopgap before we went to Japan.  We were there about 6 months -- my sisters had to go to school in the interim.  Right after the movers came to pack up our stuff, we checked into a motel.  One night we went out to dinner, leaving Punch in the room.  At some point after we left, the chambermaid came in to turn down the beds, or whatever it is they do at night.  Punch slipped out the door, ran into the highway and was hit by a police car.  I don't remember anything other than riding in our station wagon, at night in a driving rainstorm, the dog's dead body in a box in the back.  We were on our way to the old house to bury him.  Mom urged me not to look in the box.  I have a shady vision of Daddy digging a hole next to a tree, in the rain, as we watched through the window.  I still remember how the beads of water dripped across the glass, throwing measles-shadows across our skin.

http://www.donmarkennel.com/

Our third Christmas in Tokyo, Daddy arranged for a special gift for my mom.  Right in the middle of our Christmas morning melee of shredded silver paper and discarded ribbons, the doorbell rang.  It was a little Japanese man, holding a tiny little dachshund puppy in his arms.  The puppy had a huge red bow around his neck.  All our new toys were forgotten and we all swarmed around him, oohing and aahing. Oscar was a great dog ... playful and happy.  It never occurred to me how strange it was that Mom named him after a family friend.

That summer we got the news that we were going back to New York.  I don't remember much about the actual move, but we ended up staying at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan.  Oscar arrived by airplane soon after that, but he was really, really sick.  He had distemper, either contracted at the vet in Japan or on the plane, we never really new.  I just remember walking him on the streets of New York, and our hotel room floor covered in newspaper.  Mom says we spent several hundred dollars on vet bills, getting him well.  It wasn't long after we moved into a rental house in Westport, Connecticut, that Oscar, restored to health, ran out of the yard and met his end under a pickup truck.  At that point I started to think all dogs died by getting hit by a car.

After only a year in Connecticut we hit the road yet again, headed to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where my dad's company had established their headquarters.  I begged and pleaded and cajoled for a pet, and somehow convinced my parents to let me have a cat.  He was Timmy, a tiny little black and white thing.  He was all mine ... and I loved him!  But the family jinx hit yet again when Timmy was hit by a car.  Fortunately for him, the car only ran over his tail, and the tip became scabby and disgusting and eventually fell off.  When we moved YET AGAIN to Brussels the next summer, I was told that Timmy would not be invited.  I don't remember who took him but that was the end of that.

In Brussels, we were friends with a family whose dog, a basset hound, had a litter of puppies.  We took one home, a tiny, wriggling black white and brown pup.  Sam was clearly the runt of the litter, with all sorts of problems like buck teeth and wonky hips.  His legs were impossibly short to support his body.    He had enormous ears that drooped into his water dish when he drank, and anyone within five feet of him after he drank was showered with slobber and water when he shook his head.  He was a pretty pathetic, sorry looking animal.  He peed all over the upstairs carpet, and it had to be replaced when we moved out.  He always seemed intrigued by trash cans, and often decorated the halls with his treasures.  Whenever we took him to the vet he got violently car sick, one time all over me.

Sadly, when we moved away, we couldn't take him, for whatever reason.  The family who had given him to us promised they would collect him from the kennel when they returned from their summer vacation.  We later learned that they never had, and we can only imagine what happened to him.  My mom still gets choked up when the subject of Sam comes up.  Sam favored my sister Lisa. She had that uncanny vibe that attracted all the animals in the family.  They were drawn to her.  I was quietly jealous of that.

http://www.miniatureschnauzer.info

Right after my sister Lisa's accident and death, we adopted a gorgeous Miniature Schnauzer puppy named Gus.  Gus was the perfect therapy dog.  When my mom was having a particularly difficult moment (were any moments less difficult than others?) the dog would literally put his snout on her knee and gaze at her as if to say, "I'm here if you need me."  He was truly an amazing animal.  Soon after he arrived, we adopted a little black kitty who was mine, all mine!  I named her Krishna and she was very much My Cat. She used to sleep on my neck as I read books in bed, and she burrowed under the covers at night.  At a point in my life when I particularly needed loving, she was just what my tormented teenaged psyche needed; something that loved only me.

This is a picture of an actual missing kitty in the UK.  She looks very much like my cat, but maybe I can help these people find their pet by posting here.  Check out http://cataholics.org.uk/blog/blog4.php

Before we moved to Manila we got the idea in our heads to adopt a female schnauzer as a consort for Gus; we had $$ in our eyes, thinking of going into the breeding business.  It did not materialize since no one ever explained the birds and the bees to Gus.  In spite of all that Sheba made herself right at home.  Like Sam the Basset, she had several "faults of the breed" .. crooked teeth, wildly shaped ears and a strange sheen to her coat.  Somehow that made her all the more lovable.  She and Gus became platonic companions for each other.  The three animals co-existed in a world where dogs don't hate cats, or vice versa.  We had quite the menagerie and they all comforted us when we needed it the most.

In the spring of 1974 Dad was asked to move to Manila to take over the company's Southeast Asian headquarters.  I distinctly remember him stating "I will take the dogs, but I am not taking That Cat."  He wasn't fond of cats; he tolerated them.  I was horrified.   I adored Krishna, but the decree had been handed down.  Luckily for us, a lady at our church was willing to take her.  I remember standing in that lady's kitchen, Krishna in her carrier.  The lady asked what her name was, and mom said, "Well, her name is Krishna, but most of the time we just call her Kitty."  At the sound of her name, Krishna started yeowling.  I think that was when she realized she was leaving us.  I cried hot tears all the way home ... sad for having to say good-bye yet again.  Sad for decisions that were made for me, without any input from me.  That happens a lot for TCKs.

Many many years later, my sister Debi came to live in Baton Rouge.  Due to one of those "small world" kismet stories, she ended up living across the street from the lady who had adopted Krishna.  One day we looked out the front of Debi's house and there was Krishna, sitting right on the roof across the street, looking at us as only cats can.  She had to be more than 20 years old at that point, but there she was.  I like to think she was trying to tell me, "Hey!  I remember YOU!"

Meanwhile, back in 1974, we loaded the two schnauzers in their carrier, and watched as the airline agent put them on the conveyor belt.  They slowly disappeared into the black hole of the luggage area, and I swallowed hard.  They were going to fly with us, but what a flight it was going to be: more than 26 hours.  After the first leg to San Francisco, we were allowed to take them out for a quick walk.  Then it was back in the cage.

In Hawaii, we inquired as to whether or not we could take them out again, and the flight attendant snapped at us.  "If those little paws touch the ground you're looking at 6 months in jail!"  Okaaaay.  Our first lesson in quarantine.  We stopped again in Guam, but again, the puppies had to stay in the box.  I had these horrible visions of finding their cold dead bodies when we arrived in Manila; it was torture for me.

Finally, finally, we touched down in Manila.  We had never felt equatorial heat before.  It was a living breathing thing, that heat, and it enveloped us like a woolly, scratchy wet blanket.  We were beyond fatigued, dirty from the trip, blinking and staggering, taking in all the strange smells and sounds of this new green planet on which we had landed.  I have a vision of another luggage carousel, the dog carrier making its way slowly towards us.  I dared to look inside, truly fearing what I would find.  Gus and Sheba sat there together, looking at us as if to say, WHAT THE &*$% HAS HAPPENED TO US?  But they were alive!  They had survived!!  Stay tuned for the REST of the story ...

History Comes for a Visit

This summer has been filled with several visitors from the East.  My daughter Lisa flew here in June for a week, and we had a great time shopping and showing her the sights here in South Texas.  We drove out to Marble Falls and toured Longhorn Caverns, an unbelievable mini-Carlsbad right in our back yard.  If you’re ever driving around the country looking for pop culture like the Largest Ball of String or the Barn Made of Corn Cobs, or a Store Shaped Like a Duck I highly recommend Longhorn Caverns.  We also have one here in the Austin area called Inner Space Cavern, right smack dab underneath Interstate 35, but I have to say I prefer Longhorn. 

Lisa spelunking.

Daughter Melanie came in July to celebrate her 10^th birthday and we spent a week at Disneyworld (no, it wasn’t 1000 degrees, 1000% humidity and there weren’t billions of people there, not my definition of hell on earth).  We had a fantastic time in spite of the less than ideal conditions, including dinner with Cinderella and a night at the Cirque du Soleil show “La Nouba”.  Melanie was thrilled.  Being the youngest in a large family, it was a treat for her to be the main attraction.   

Melanie schmoozing with da princess.

In early August my two sons Quentin (junior in college) and Christian (sophomore in high school) hit the road and DROVE here from North Carolina.  I had imagined for them a “bros hit the roads” trip of bonding and extraordinary experiences.  After a stop in Mississippi with their grandmother (and a midnight trip to the ER after Grandma sliced her hand open in the spinning blades of an antique fan) they rolled into our driveway, road-worn and weary.  With their older brother Colin (who lives in Austin) they had a day at the Schlitterbahn water park in New Braunfels, a trip which can only be summed up with the immortal words “It's all fun and games until you find a colostomy bag in the Lazy River!”  The End.

Christian is a Man After My Own Heart, in that he, like me, is a World War II fanatic.  When he was about 9 years old we visited the D-Day Museum in New Orleans.  He walked up to the docent who was decked out in authentic WWII uniform.  Little Christian looked up at him and pointed at his rifle, saying “That’s a M1 Garand, isn’t it?” The guy’s eyes flew open and after a pause he said, “Why YES!  It is!”  I would like to say he learned this all from reading history books, but it most likely came from video games.  Who says they aren’t educational?  Now he’s pondering some sort of military career.  Can you say proud mom?

Christian and the Very Large Weapon

Christian brought his copy of “The Pacific”, a companion series to HBO’s “Band of Brothers.”  We watched the entire thing while he was here.  I had no idea that the series was based on real books written by the real people who fought in the real Pacific.  Even with what I thought was pretty comprehensive knowledge about the war, I had never heard of Peleliu, Pavuvu or Cape Gloucester.  Apparently I still have a whole lot to learn.  We took a drive out to Fredericksburg and spent the day at the National Museum of the Pacific War, or the Admiral Nimitz Museum.  I could have spent a week there, it is so impressive.  And again, right in our back yard.  As I often do after learning something new, I had to snatch up all the reading material I could find about the subject.  I just finished “With The Old Breed” by Eugene Sledge and am now ensconced in “Helmet for my Pillow” by Robert Leckie.  I will never be as enthralled with a book of fiction as I am with these books.  Real life is much more interesting and impressive.  The horrors these men went through and lived with for the rest of their lives are unimaginable.  The numbers of surviving WWII vets is getting smaller and smaller these days, and the opportunities to thank these heroes are becoming more and more rare.  Don’t miss the chance to shake a hand, although most of them are as humble as humble can be.

I asked my mom why, when we lived in the Philippines, we never visited Corregidor or Bataan. I think she was miserable in Manila; the heat and the pollution did her in, and she was just biding her time until we could leave, four years later.  No energy for sightseeing.  We did live a stone’s throw from the American military cemetery at Fort Bonifacio.  We used to drive through it on the way to the airport, and I do remember being somberly impressed by the neat rows of white crosses, but their real meaning escaped the teenaged me.  I’m just glad it’s not to late for me to learn as much as I can about this important part of history; I’ll never be done.  

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness.  When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement; and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual.  Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.  --George Santayana

The Olympics

Japan Image Series

Watching the Olympics this week has been a slow walk down memory lane for this TCK.  The earliest memory I have of anything Olympic was moving to Tokyo in 1965.  The Olympics had been held there in 1964, and we drove past the Olympic Stadium every day.  It was a sweeping, wavelike, concrete monolith, a little reminiscent of the swimming venue in London today.  The Japanese later turned it into an ice skating rink.  One time when we were there skating, I fell down and someone ran over my hand.  I was carted off to the first aid station, where they doctored the gash and wrapped it in what I thought was sticky brown paper. 

The movie, “Walk, Don’t Run” was filmed in Tokyo.  It was a typical campy 1960’s comedy set during the Olympics there.  A stuffy English Lord (Cary Grant) talks his way into sharing an apartment with a lovely young British embassy employee (Samantha Eggar), as there is a serious housing shortage due to the games.  Grant in turn, sub-lets half of his room to an American athlete, played by Jim Hutton (yes, Timothy Hutton’s father).  Hilarity ensues when Cary Grant tries to fix up Hutton and Eggar.  Hutton is evasive when asked which event he competes in, until the climax of the film has Grant stripping down to his boxers and undershorts, pretending to be in the race walking competition to catch up with Hutton. 

Race walking looks pretty hilarious, compared to some of the more mainstream events.  Watching a video of it, with the droll British color commentary, it almost feels like you’ve stumbled into Monty Python’s “Silly Olympics”.  Laugh if you must, but this is a serious competition.  You try walking that way for 50 kilometers! (China’s Chen Ding won the gold this year, in case you were wondering).

We had just moved back to the states when the 1972 Olympics were held in Munich.  Having been to Munich while we lived in Brussels, I could identify with the places and landmarks I was seeing.  Even as an innocent 12 year old I watched in horror as the Israeli athletes and coaches were being held in a dormitory by Palestinian terrorists, and later slaughtered in cold blood.  I still think it was a travesty that those athletes weren’t remembered this year in London.  If they could have taken a moment to remember the victims of the bus bombings five years ago, I don’t see why they couldn’t have remembered the Munich tragedy.  I will make up for that oversight by posting pictures of the men who were killed, and whose memory is still alive with their families and may they rest in peace. 

Moshe Weinberg

Yossef Romano

Ze’ev Friedman

David Berger

Yakov Springer

Eliezer Halfin

Yossef Gutfreund

Kehat Shorr

Mark Slavin

Andre Spitzer

Amitzur Shapira

We were on home leave in the states in 1976 when the Olympics were held in Montreal.  I vaguely remember catching some of the events on TV, but I was more interested in shopping at the American stores and stocking up on my wardrobe for the coming year.  Of course, we all remember the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, or rather the Olympics That We Skipped.  In 1982, I traveled to the Soviet Union with my Russian professor at Trinity University.  We stood on a bluff at Moscow University, overlooking the stadium where the games had been held.  I don’t remember being caught up in the politics of the moment, but I did think that I was seeing something historically significant. 

Being a Third Culture Kid AND the mom of two daughters who were adopted internationally, I find myself rooting for athletes from all over the world.  I have a special soft spot for Kazakhstan (4 Gold Medals as of this moment!) and the Philippines.  I was excited see a Belgian athlete.  For some reason I feel more of a thrill when the underdog wins against the powerhouses like the USA, China and Russia.  I always root for the poor swimmer whose preliminary times earned him a slot in the outside lane for the final.  I don’t know if anyone ever won in Lane 8!  I feel terrible for the poor guy who is lapped by the pack in the 10,000 meter run.  I am thrilled that a Guatemalan athlete won the marathon.  Some day the Jamaicans are going to win the bobsled race, and I’m going to be their biggest cheerleader!  We may feel bad for the poor bronze medal winner, but for me, just to BE there competing would be an honor.  Even if I were the last one limping over the finish line, it would be a proud moment.