What's a BRAT, you ask? The short answer is 'child dependent of the people who serve our nation, whether they are in the Armed Forces, civilian service personnel, diplomatic corps (including foreign service and state department), and educators.' However, growing up as a BRAT defines a person long past childhood.
As far as the letters -- BRAT -- it's not a proper acronym. A proper acronym has an agreed upon meaning. For example: USA - United States of America. If you hear "USA," you know exactly what those letters mean. The same is not true for BRAT. That is not to say they do not have meaning -- they have so many meanings, and they are important to us.
The first time I was called a BRAT, my father told me it meant 'Born, Raised, and Trained" . Military BRATS are Born, Raised and Trained in the military, and that is certainly true. But I've heard a lot of meanings...and they all resonate with me. Why wouldn't they? This is my identity, and these are all words of strength. When you move every three years (if you're lucky!), and transfer schools even more often, you have to have something constant...an anchor, if you will.
So, what do these letters stand for?
Sometimes, it is a sentence or a saying, like "Born, Raised and Trained." I have seen "Born, Raised and Traveled," "Born Ready and Traveled," and "Born Rough and Tough." Those are just the sentence ones, and I can assure you -- those are the very definition of a BRAT.
But sometimes, these letters have meanings:
B - Bold, Brave
R - Responsible, Resilient, Respectful
A - Adaptable, Adaptive, Adjusted
T - Tolerant, Tenacious
I think you can see why we might cling to these adjectives. They are things we aspire to. In a world of "suck it up, buttercup," we use those as a mantra.
BRATS have recently added another letter collectively.... S - Spunk! We are a spunky bunch, and we have to be.
All this is just a little bit of who we are: as children.
Why is it so important for an adult to cling to this? It's simple. Where did you grow up? Did you have a simple answer, like "Roanoke, Virginia"? Even if you've left "Roanoke," did not those years help develop you into the person you are today? You might live in Cheyenne, Wyoming, but you always consider "Roanoke, Virginia" to be home, or at least a part of who you are. You will always feel comfortable in Roanoke. I bet you can even rattle off your childhood street address - perhaps even your phone number.
Where did the BRAT grow up? Everywhere. We are America's children, spread like seeds in the wind. We've been all over the globe. Our hometown IS really our culture...our identity. We don't have a physical hometown, but we do have a metaphysical one.
Honestly, we need our name when we're growing up. We also need it once we've separated. We cannot go home -- the bases are closed to us. We've been exiled. Still, even if we could, even if we could drive down the streets where we once played, there would be no one that we knew there. No one would remember us -- or anyone we knew. Our culture is transient in location, but very strong in its bond.
Young BRATS serve this nation from the time they can walk until they reach the age of separation. They make unrecognized sacrifices every single day -- today's BRATS deal with multiple deployments of one or both parents. While they have access to communication technology that was not available to the BRATS who came before, they are still sacrificing a childhood of security so that our nation can be secure. They sacrifice Christmases and birthdays, plays and presentations, playoffs and play dates. Many of these children have spent less time with their parent than they have apart from them. Yesterday's BRATS made that sacrifice as well. And they do this without complaint. They, like their parents, live Kennedy's challenge: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." They learn to serve this country before they learn to walk.
That sacrifice never stops. And many, many, many BRATS make another sacrifice -- the loss of a parent in the service of our nation.
What else do BRATS do? When we are abroad, we serve as unofficial ambassadors of this nation. How many people will ever meet a head of state? How many will ever have an opportunity to talk to an official ambassador? Sure, the rich and powerful have those opportunities. But what about the average person? Not many. But a lot of people in those nations have a chance to meet the BRATS (and their families). We know, from a very young age, that when we are off base, what we do reflects not just on us, or even our parents. We're representing our nation. We take that very seriously. We love our country very intensely, and it is very important to us. Who do you think we're sacrificing for? We never forget.
Not while we're growing up. And not after we separate. America forgets us though...and that is assuming you ever paid attention to the fact that we also served. We did not volunteer. We were drafted with our first breath. And we are thrown away when we reach our expiration date.
Yet we still love our nation intensely.
I'm very proud to be an Air Force BRAT.
There are a lot of ugly things about being a military BRAT -- There is a lack of stability existing outside of our own immediate family. Some BRATs do not even have that much -- military families are like many others. Some are supportive and some are extremely dysfunctional. However, if you do not have the support of your immediate family, BRAT life very very difficult.
I was extremely blessed that my parents were (and are) supportive. I knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that if my father missed something important .... it was not his choice to miss it. My father went on temporary duty assignments, sometimes for months at a time. One time, that TDY actually worked to my advantage -- in college! (okay, the TDY got cancelled, but he was supposed to have a TDY at Wright-Pat. I was in college in Michigan. My dad was then stationed in Montgomery, Alabama. Wright-Pat is within a semi-reasonable drive of my college.) My senior year, the final band concert was during the time he was supposed to be at Wright-Pat. He had, reasonably, missed all of my college concerts -- and I never bothered asking them to come (I mean... 18 hour drive for a concert? No.) But I did ask him to come to this one. It was a mere 3 hours away. His TDY got cancelled. But instead of telling me this, he and my mom did that 18 hour haul for an hour long college concert. They could have told me the TDY had been cancelled. I would not have been hurt. I only asked because, for once, he would be close.
In addition to the unspoken but always present knowledge that having a parent in the service brings about a constant threat of loss, many BRATS have to deal with parents who come home and are not the same. Combat is difficult on people. But coming home does not end the stress -- it just brings on a different stress. But BRATS do what BRATS do.... they deal with whatever the military throws at them.
And there have been a lot of BRATS who, after separation, realized that there is a need to reach out to BRATS of all eras (We each rather identify with an era that defines the experiences we had. I'm a Cold War BRAT, for example. I'm very grateful to not have been a Viet Nam Era BRAT -- simply because while they dealt with many things similar to what today's BRATS encounter, they did not have the comfort of a grateful nation to support them. They had to deal with the stress of a parent in a war zone, and their school mates asking if he was a 'baby killer.' America owes these BRATS and their families an apology, by the way. The way we treated our veterans was horrendous, and the way we treated their families was equally so! I say "we", but I do rather mean those of you who are old enough to have been there!)
These BRATS have formed clubs to reach out to the kids in civilian schools, so they know they are not alone; they have conducted the longevity studies that other organizations have failed to consider; they have researched and produced works of non-fiction books and documentaries; they have written children's books to help children with deployed parents; they have formed databases; they have worked extremely hard on behalf of BRATS, past and future. They have done these things without the support of the military or the government. They have done this with extremely limited support from civilians. All because these entities do not like the name of our culture: BRAT.
These entities do not recognize or respect that not all BRATS are spoiled.
But we are very proud of our name and our heritage and our legacy. And woe betide to anyone who tries to take it away.
Here are links to the organizations I was talking about.
Brats without Borders / BRATS: Our Journey Home (documentary)
BratPin
Military Brat Registry
Overseas Brats
Books for Brats
I'm very proud of those who have worked so hard to preserve our legacy and bring us together, giving us a community long after our exile, and let us know that, as always -- we are not alone. We never were.
We are your neighbors. We are your co-workers. We are the realtor who sells you your very first home, or the underwriter who approves your loan. We are writers and actors, lawyers and legislators. We are members of the global community. We learned who America was by seeing her through the eyes of the world, and we helped them see our nation for the beautiful place and people it can be.
I'm proud to be a part of this community. I'm proud of the experiences I got to have as a BRAT -- from spending my 18th birthday in Paris, France and London, England to the world class education I received from some of the best teachers in the business.
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