Colloquial Soliloquy

Writ­ten in 2007 with much love and affec­tion. This came to my heart and mind as my son fought in the surge in Baqubah Iraq and buried more friends in a year than any young man ought to. The Lord has been faith­ful and good. My son’s heart has been bro­ken, but not hard­ened. That has been my faith­ful prayer.

I am will­ing to bet most folks believe there are no bless­ing to be found by the mother of a sol­dier dur­ing a time of war. I am of the mind­set that there is some­thing we are oblig­ated to learn regard­less of our cir­cum­stances. Suf­fer­ing in this life is inevitable, but learn­ing and grow­ing is optional. What can a mother learn, or per­haps remem­ber in a new light, about her sol­dier when he is at war? This is a good place to start if you are search­ing for blessings.

She may look through photo albums and com­pare his younger pic­tures to his most recent one. She may try and remem­ber at exactly what point in his life did he become a sol­dier? I know the tech­ni­cal answer is after the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of Basic Com­bat Train­ing, but I mean when did his mind, heart and soul begin to real­ize that duty is a good thing, and pro­tect­ing the inno­cent is a life that is worth liv­ing and a life worth giving?

She will learn in time that he is a grown man. He is more grown than she was will­ing to admit before. He is com­pe­tent, brave and pos­sesses a work ethic that out­shines his civil­ian coun­ter­parts. She may remem­ber his cross coun­try races in High School. She will remem­ber his coach telling her that for his build he should not be able to run like he does. “He has a heart for it!” Yes, indeed he does.

She may get a rare glimpse into the hopes that are buried deep in his heart, but hopes he can not quite bring him­self to speak of at this moment. Hopes for a fam­ily of his own some day. Hopes for com­ing home from this war and rest­ing in the knowl­edge that he did good work, and he was able to com­plete his mis­sion. She may remem­ber his hopes from child­hood that were based on boy­hood fan­tasies. His hopes today sound more like the same hopes she had at that age.

If she lis­tens closely on the phone she will hear exhaus­tion, fear, para­noia and other deep stresses that he tries to pro­tect her from. She knows him too well to not notice the inten­sity and fatigue in his voice. She sits in rel­a­tive safety as he stands in the midst of deadly con­flict, and yet, he is still sen­si­tive to her wor­ries. It is rem­i­nis­cent of con­ver­sa­tions from years past, when he used the phrase “Mom, I hate to bug you, but I need to talk.” One day when he is a father he will know that it is never an impo­si­tion to lis­ten, but rather it is a bless­ing to sup­port your child.

Read­ing may become her new obses­sion. She won’t read nov­els about romance or home décor. She will read all she can about the place her son will call home for the next 15 or more months. She will remem­ber get­ting to know the par­ents of his friends when he was much younger, so that her mind could rest when he was with them. This time, though, she will not find any peace in the knowl­edge she gains. Instead it will haunt her until he is home for good.

When my old­est son, Mike, was in Mid­dle and High School there were a cou­ple of inci­dents that I remem­ber most vividly. The first inci­dent in my mem­ory took place in his 7th grade year. His first real dance was announced and he was excited to go. He is a pretty hand­some guy, and he was also fairly pop­u­lar in school. When he showed up at the dance there were a few friends already there wait­ing for him. There was also a young boy who was labeled “Edu­ca­ble Men­tally Retarded.” That is the pro­fes­sional term, but to make it easy just think “high func­tion­ing retardation.”

Mike had felt pro­tec­tive of this young kid from the first day of school. His name was John, and he picked up on Mike’s sense of under­stand­ing and empa­thy right away. John fol­lowed him around quite a bit, but Mike didn’t mind. John found Mike at the dance and hung around the safe para­me­ter of his new found friend. When the dance music started play­ing, John decided he wanted to dance. It didn’t mat­ter to him that he did not have a dance part­ner. It should not have mat­tered to any­one else either, but some peo­ple became hurt­ful and they shamed John off of the dance floor with remarks, mor­bid mock­ing, and cruel names.

Mike was furi­ous. He stood up to his friends and reminded them that they were, after all, at a dance! “John is the only one danc­ing! You are all stand­ing here act­ing like jerks. Now, leave him alone!” Yes, even back then he was not afraid to speak his mind. Mike stayed until John’s mom got there to pick him up and then he called me to come and get him. Even though Mike was furi­ous when this hap­pened he kept his com­po­sure and dealt with the mat­ter at hand. Noth­ing more, noth­ing less.

I think he was becom­ing a sol­dier then, but I just didn’t know it.

I also think he was becom­ing a sol­dier the day that a buddy of his jumped on him jok­ingly before 1st period in Mid­dle School. When his friend knocked him to the ground he acci­den­tally broke Mike’s shoul­der. Mike had a huge test in his 1st period com­puter class. He forced a smile, hob­bled to class, sat at his desk, and took that test. He had an oblig­a­tion to ful­fill, and he was going to do it come rain, shine, or high water!

After answer­ing the final ques­tion on the test, he went up to his teacher and said “I need my mom to come and get me. I am pretty sure I broke my shoul­der.” His teacher was both mor­ti­fied and very proud of him. I took him to the doctor’s imme­di­ately, and through x-ray exam­i­na­tion it was evi­dent that the child had taken his test with a very bad break. I can now clearly see that he had another char­ac­ter­is­tic of being a sol­dier instilled in him that day too.

I could tell you sev­eral sto­ries about Mike stand­ing up to bul­lies, ful­fill­ing his oblig­a­tions, and yes some sto­ries of him being imper­fect and not doing those things too. He’s human. I could tell you of his very strong con­vic­tions around jus­tice, and his deep sense of loyalty.

I can point to many things that molded him into some­one who can make a dif­fer­ence in the world at a time when a dif­fer­ence is des­per­ately needed. Bless­ings abound when you stop and think back on all of the things your sol­dier did while he was grow­ing up that was evi­dence of an inner-being devel­op­ing into a ser­vant, a leader, and a soldier.

I like to think that the way his cra­dle was rocked had a lit­tle some­thing to do with it too.

The Hand That Rocks The Cra­dle
William Ross Wal­lace (1819 – 1881)

Bless­ings on the hand of women!
Angels guard its strength and grace,
In the palace, cot­tage, hovel,
Oh, no mat­ter where the place;
Would that never storms assailed it,
Rain­bows ever gen­tly curled;
For the hand that rocks the cra­dle
Is the hand that rules the world.

Infancy’s the ten­der foun­tain,
Power may with beauty flow,
Mother’s first to guide the stream­lets,
From them souls unrest­ing grow–
Grow on for the good or evil,
Sun­shine streamed or evil hurled;
For the hand that rocks the cra­dle
Is the hand that rules the world.

Woman, how divine your mis­sion
Here upon our natal sod!
Keep, oh, keep the young heart open
Always to the breath of God!
All true tro­phies of the ages
Are from mother-love impearled;
For the hand that rocks the cra­dle
Is the hand that rules the world.

Bless­ings on the hand of women!
Fathers, sons, and daugh­ters cry,
And the sacred song is min­gled
With the wor­ship in the sky–
Min­gles where no tem­pest dark­ens,
Rain­bows ever­more are hurled;
For the hand that rocks the cra­dle
Is the hand that rules the world.