One of my first memories is climbing through the trenches at Vimy Ridge. My mother still has pictures of me there, wearing a shirt my father bought me while he was away in Alert, trying my best to balance on the sandbags there. There are pictures of me, tiny and holding my sister's hand, while we stand on a tank in Germany and grin like we are riding a circus pony.
There are other memories there too, things that were standard issue for my siblings and I, things that came from being a military brat that we didn't realize weren't particularly normal until we were much older. We did things like clomping around the house in my father's combat boots or running in terror when he'd put on his gas mask just to scare us. Things like endless summers while he was away for months at a time, and being told he was up north, helping Santa Claus, because the truth was classified. Things like walking through town after dark and being more familiar with artillery fire lighting up the nighttime sky than lightning.
I spent my third birthday inside a tank, aiming the gun, and we spent more summer days than I can recall wandering through displays of old guns, retired tanks, and grounded SeaKings at various open houses and family days.
I was in Kingston when the first Gulf War broke out, in a school on the base, surrounded by other military brats, and I can remember my teacher asking us to pray together so our mothers and fathers wouldn't be sent away to fight.
When I was in elementary school, we lived in Ottawa for a while, and I can remember my family taking me to the Canadian War Museum. I remember it was terribly boring, and it is immortalized in my memory as hall after hall of tiny photos of faces with medals beside them. I remember my footsteps echoed and the floors were very shiny, and I remember wishing my mother and father had taken me to the nature museum instead. I was a big fan of the giant mammoths outside.
I can also remember my mother reading a plaque out loud about a young soldier who was awarded whatever medal was in the case, and how he was killed on his way to receive it. I had the opportunity a few years ago to go to the new war museum with my father, and there weren't any halls of nameless faces and medals the way I remember. There were new displays that hadn't been there when I was a child, memorials to 9-11 and all the things that have happened since, all the soldiers lost in Afghanistan.
I worked at a daycare a few years ago where a large number of children in my care were fellow military brats. When one little girl's mother was deployed to Afghanistan for six months and the child suddenly developed behavioural issues, she and I sat together for hours building a mailbox for her to store all the letters to her mother in, so she could be sure her mother never forgot her.
This weekend, I was privileged to be invited to 4 Wing to be with the families while their loved ones returned from Libya. The room was filled with children who would grow up thinking moving every three years was normal, and who would grow up knowing their mothers and fathers could be called away to fight for freedom at any time, and they might not come home again.
Being a military brat has taught me many things, but the most important one of all is the importance of remembering.
I don't need Remembrance Day to help me remember, but I won't ever forget the importance of setting aside one day to pay tribute to all of those who gave up everything for our country, whether I'm attending a ceremony at the war memorial in Ottawa or the C2 in Bonnyville.
