Who Are You? Where Are You From?

Currier & Ives. American Homestead Winter. , ca. 1868.
[New York: Published by Currier & Ives, 152 Nassau St]
Photograph

Good questions. Neither of which, for me, have simple answers.

Who I am has a lot to do with where I'm from. As you grow and experience different things, these things become a part of you and make you who you are as a person. You might not even notice.

I've lived all over the place, Vermont, Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Japan, Korea, and Germany. Different places, different cultures, different experiences. All of those places and what I did there, experienced there, had their effect on me.

Where I'm from, originally, is Vermont. But the Vermont of my youth seems long gone, as alien to the current place as Japan is to Germany. The Vermont I remember best of all is when I was a kid, in the early '60s.

Both sets of grandparents were still alive, all of my cousins, aunts, and uncles were as well. We all lived within a twenty-mile radius (centered on my house, of course, that's the way kids think) and we gathered on the two major holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas. Picnics in the summer, family dinners throughout the year, we knew each other.

So part of me hails from Vermont of the early '60s, I have strong memories of those days.

But I'm also "from" the Air Force, spent twenty-four years there. Who I am these days was shaped heavily by my time in the service. Truth be told though, I was a terrible airman. Hated authority, drank too much, and generally played the fool. A couple of good sergeants helped straighten my ass out. At least enough to recognize the person with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life with when I met her. She completed my transition to being a responsible adult. (And she has the gray hairs to prove it!)

I spent a lot of time in Asia, specifically Okinawa and Korea. Never "went native," whatever that means, but I was comfortable there. Spoke enough Korean to get by (once caught a train from Taegu to Taejon then a cab to Kunsan all by myself) never picked up much Japanese, living on the base you don't interact much with the locals, something I regret.

My best assignment? Germany just edges out Korea, primarily because I speak a lot of German. Got pretty good at it when I was there, spoke (much of it has atrophied) decent conversational German. According to one of my acquaintances I had no accent, which The Missus Herself laughed at until my friend explained that when I spoke German, I sounded German. Which I thought a good thing, until I went to Belgium.

We were at a military remembrance ceremony in the Ardennes and I was in an establishment where I ordered a red wine, in French. The guy sitting next to me started laughing. Wanting to improve my abysmal French I asked the chap if I had said something incorrectly.

"Non monsieur, but you speak French with a German accent."

Kinda cool, but not in a place where the folks have long memories.

Returning to the civilian world back in 1999 was strange to say the least. It took some getting used to but fortunately I had (and still have) an interesting job working with really good people. Yes, we have our share of knuckleheads, so did the military, but once you identify them you can work around them or avoid them.

So who am I? Well, I'm a dad, a granddad, a son, and a brother. All those things shaped me.

Which me is the most fun? The granddad, that's for sure.

Am I from Rhode Island? Nope, I live there. No doubt I have picked up a few Rhode Islander traits as this is the longest I've lived anywhere. Lived twenty-two years in Vermont, twenty-three (and counting) in Little Rhody, but where you spend your formative years, those are the most telling. So at heart I'm a Vermonter, always will be, but a Vermonter of the 1960s. So I'm out of place and out of time in many ways.

My kids? Well, one born in Korea, one in Colorado, one in Wyoming, ask them where they're from and you'll get different answers. My son considers himself a New Englander as he went to college there. He's a big Red Sox fan. The daughters? Hard to say, The Nuke is very fond of Colorado and considers it her "home state," but she spent a number of formative years in Germany, though her friends were mostly American and Canadian. LUSH, well she spent the same amount of time in Germany as the rest of us did, she has kind of adopted Michigan as her home state because her husband Big Time is from there. But I think deep down inside, she's a New Englander like her brother and Yours Truly.

So yeah, who I am varies with who I'm with. Where I'm from? Let's just say that I have a peculiar fondness for maple syrup and snowy landscapes. And speaking French with a German accent.