Home Is Where the Brat Is By Ceilon Aspensen This article will be published in the anthology “Home: It’s Complicated” in April 2024 There is no more fraught conversation starter for a Brat than “Where are you from?” We don’t know where we’re from. We’re from everywhere. We’re from nowhere. Some of us respond to that question with, “I’m a military Brat,” but unless the person asking where we’re from is also a military Brat they will have no idea what we’re talking about, and will just think we’re being cheeky or trying to avoid the question. But we’re not. As all military Brats know, “Where are you from?” is the most loaded of questions for those of us who were raised in the military. So, where am I from? I was born in France but only lived there until I was seven months old. My parents were both from the same small town in Alabama, just thirty-ish miles northeast of Montgomery. My mom lived in Wetumpka and my dad lived on a farm in the community of Buyck, in the Titus zip code, about ten miles northeast of Wetumpka. They both attended Wetumpka High School, as did all of my aunts, uncles and cousins on both sides of my family. When my dad’s tour in France was over, we moved back to the States and he was stationed in Alexandria, Virginia; but we lived in Falls Church. Then we moved to San Antonio, Texas for a few months before he was sent back to Alexandria. He was with Army Intelligence, so he would go on long TDYs (temporary duty) occasionally. Between San Antonio and the second tour in Alexandria, my mom and I lived with my grandmother on Long Island, because my mother was pregnant with my sister, who was born in Queens. Then we moved back to Alexandria. We lived there until I was three years old in 1967, and then we moved to what was then West Berlin. We lived there for a year and then moved back to Alabama in 1969 for a year while my father served as a Green Beret in Vietnam. In 1970 we moved to Munich, Germany and lived there until 1973. Then we moved stateside and lived in Joppatowne, Maryland until 1976 while my dad worked out of Aberdeen Proving Ground and Middle River Intelligence Agency. Then my parents got divorced and my mom took us back to her home in Alabama. We lived with her parents in Wetumpka for a few months while she got us on our feet, and then we lived in Montgomery. Even though we were no longer moving with my father’s Army assignments, we continued to move (from Montgomery to Birmingham by my junior year in high school). Then I moved to Cumberland, Maryland to live with my dad and I finished high school there at Allegany County High School. Then I moved to Starkville, Mississippi (because my mother and her new husband lived there) and attended Mississippi State University. I lived in Starkville for seven years; the longest I had ever lived anywhere. Upon graduation from there I moved to Montana, where I have been ever since, for the last thirty four years. Brats come in all varieties, but generally speaking there are two types when it comes to moving around or staying in one place after we’re no longer required to do so. Many of us feel a sort of itch to move on to someplace new every two to three years. I’m of the variety that digs in and stays, now that the choice is up to me. Montana was the first place that I ever chose to move on my own. I realized while I was in college that every move I had ever made in my life up to that point was to a place that had been chosen for me. That realization caused me to ask myself where I would live if I could live anywhere I chose to live. I had no idea, so I did some research into places around the States that had things that I either preferred or had always thought it would be enjoyable to experience. I chose Montana for its lack of humidity, biting and stinging insects, reduced number of poisonous snakes, four seasons, cooler temperatures, spectacular mountain views, and snow. When I drove into Montana for the very first time, I was immediately confronted with the realization that I had chosen a place that was nearly identical to the Bavaria of my childhood. My favorite place that I had lived to that point had been Munich, Germany. Here I was in a place that could pass for that region. I felt at home. I had unconsciously chosen a place that reminded me of another place that had felt like home. However, Bavaria had not been home. It had just been a place that I had lived as a child. Even so, it had wonderful memories for me. Montana did not create the same experience for me as Bavaria had. Nevertheless, it created a new experience that I had chosen for myself. It was hard acclimating to life in Montana at first. It was lonely. People were less welcoming here, and more self-sufficient. There was no immediate community like the ones I had experienced on all of our moves as a military child. I had moved two thousand miles from my nearest relative and had a hard time getting to know people and making friends for the first time in my life. Over the course of my first year here I watched others who had set out on the same bold adventure as me leave Montana in droves after just a few months when they found it to be too difficult to make friends, and too dissimilar to what they were used to where they had come from. Why was I able to endure it and stay for thirty four years? I’m a Brat, that’s why. Change and discomfort in new surroundings was what I had been raised with. Sucking it up and seeing it through was how I was taught to endure uncomfortable situations. After a year, I was completely at home in Montana, and had made some good friends that are still my good friends. At this point in my life, Montana is home. That wasn’t always the case. Until I moved to Montana, Alabama had felt like home. When I was a child, my parents sent my sister and I to my grandparents’ farm in Buyck, Alabama every summer, after we returned permanently from overseas. To this day I don’t know why they did that, and they never did tell us. I am so glad they did because spending time with my grandparents, getting to know our cousins, and working on the farm rooted us in our family, and our family history. It gave me a sense of who I am and where I come from; who my people are. I have known a lot of people over the course of my life–Brats and non-Brats alike–who never had that sense of belonging to their extended family. Because of that experience, I learned that no matter where I go in this world, no matter where I live, my extended family is my home. A few years ago I was introduced to a couple of terms that perfectly describe what it feels like to me to be a Brat trying to find a sense of home. The first is the German word fernweh, which, directly (although not accurately) translated, means wanderlust. However, the colloquial translation and deeper meaning is farsickness, or a deep-seated longing for faraway places, new horizons, and new places.1 The second word is hiraeth, a Welsh word. In its original context, it referred to “homesickness tinged with grief and sadness over the lost or departed, especially in the context of Wales and Welsh culture. It is a mixture of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness or an earnest desire for the Wales of the past.”2 It has evolved into wider use to mean homesickness for a place that may not exist anymore, and can never be reached. Because of the constant moving every few years as a military child, I suffer chronically from fernweh, even though I have come to understand first hand the meaning of the old adage, “Wherever you go, there you are.” What I discovered for myself is that the itch to move all the time is a search for belonging and constancy, or a desire to leave behind difficulties and start fresh. However, the reality is that we will never truly find what we are looking for that way; it’s just become a habit that we can’t shake. When we keep moving every two to three years we become unable to settle and be comfortable anywhere. There are Brats who do find comfort in moving every few years, and do seem to be at home in that practice. I envy their ability to be at home while ever on the move. Because my childhood Brat friends no longer live in the places I lived as a child, I suffer chronically from hiraeth. Even if I could return to those places, they wouldn’t be the same, and in fact they don’t even truly exist anymore, except in my memory. The same is true of my grandparents and their farm. My grandparents made that farm feel like home, and since they are gone it will never feel like home again. It has taken me a lifetime to learn that home is wherever I am and choose to build my life. I made that choice when I moved to Montana. Home is also in the memories and mementos that I keep with me of those places and people who made all the places I’ve ever lived feel like home. Home is where I am. Home is where the Brat is. 1“Fernweh: What it means & when to say it,” iTranslate, accessed, December 30, 2023 https://itranslate.com/blog/fernweh#:~:text=The%20literal%20English%20translation%20of,longing%20for%20home%20while%20away 2“Hiraeth,” Wikipedia, accessed December 30, 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiraeth.