Not your average kid

I wasn't your average American kid.

I never had the happily ever after family

With 2 parents, 2.4 kids and a dog.
There was never a white picket fence,
And Saturday birthday parties were never filled 
With crinoline and lace and party favors.
Most of my friendships were short lived.
We moved a lot.

Every year was a new face and a new place; 

A new space to call our own.
By the age of six I was a foreigner
Living in a foreign land with foreign friends
The child of war and a product of the 60s.
Living in Post-war cinderblock compounds 
With a Thai maid and modern conveniences
In a country where half of the houses had no running water
And the other half lived on riverine cesspools

I joined the military and saw the world

Surrounded by young men with rifles
Juke joints and head shops and tattoo parlors.
Every Navy base in the world looked the same
Except for the signs, which were always written
in a language I had to  learn.
I can order beer in 7 languages,
And find the bathroom in 6.
I try not to drink beer in the seventh place.

I still haven't learned to settle down.
When it’s time to transfer, I pack up my dolls and my teapots

and my photos of places long forgotten
And move from town to town
Trying to outrun my demons and my fears
and the ghosts of Christmases past.
 
Like Scrooge’s dreams, I carry the unsettling  memories of life
The back of a hand coming out of nowhere
The unprovoked, raging scream over spilled milk
The bombshells of divorce and separation and reunification.
The terror of a brain I could not trust
The neurosis and paranoia and fear
That only the unfettered mind can produce.
Artillery and terrorists of my own making.