Once a Brat–

by Lauren Mosher, MAMF 2019 Writer-in-Residence

My mother tells a story where, at six years old, I walked into a room with bare windows, and exclaimed, “I don’t want to move again!” The curtains were in the washing machine.

Although my father retired from the military three years prior to the curtain incident, military moving memories remained. Military memories will always remain. Military memories continued to be made. “Once a Marine, always a Marine.”  The mantra applies to us kids, too, doesn’t it?

For, even after the end of formal military life, even after only officially knowing it as a toddler, the military blood was passed from father to daughter. He was in the Corps, and it’s in my core, right?

To me and my brother, a military life meant traveling all over the country with Dad (“Head ‘em up, and move ‘em out!” “Let’s go, Troops!”), visiting places at ages too delicate and naive to comprehend their events’ depth, or their meaning(s) on our history. Places like Pearl Harbor and the Alamo were vacationed by us with a bored, restless, preoccupied air.

It’s only been in my adult life, after becoming infatuated with World War II, by way of “Band of Brothers,” “Saving Private Ryan,” and books like, “Goodbye, Darkness,” that I have come to appreciate my father’s drive to enliven us with military history, and to appreciate his passion for the Corps, and ultimately to respect that I share the blood of Marine.