"You Had Such an Unusual Childhood"

Unlike thousands of other Americans who never leave their neighborhoods until high school, by the time Marilyn Sutton Loos was four years old, she had lived in Palestine, England, and America, and twice crossed the Atlantic and Mediterranean by boat. By the time she was fourteen, she had been evacuated once, lived in the Middle East unscathed through World War II, and added to the list of countries she had lived in or visited: Trans-Jordan, Cyprus, and Lebanon, with short times in Syria. She had become acquainted with Anglicans, Quakers, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Seventh Day Adventists, and Plymouth Brethren, as well as Muslims, Druze, and Jews of various denominations. She had learned to speak English, French, and simple Arabic, and occasionally used words of Turkish and Armenian. Embroidery—whether tangible or figurative—was a leitmotif of the family’s life. This is her attempt to write, from memory (unembroidered), about that life as they lived, taught, learned, traveled, and vacationed during the late 1930s and World War II. At the time, all these experiences seemed perfectly normal to her, but the many adjustments to American living showed how unusual they were to Americans. From 1946 to 1953 the family’s lives became more similar to other American lives, but often seemed quite unusual to her.