Letter #1

April 16, 2008 e.v.

Dear Damien,

Well this is it. Today's the big day -- a day that promises to change your life forever. Did you even sleep at all last night or were you too excited, like a kid at Christmas? I think I would have tossed and turned all night, or been up at the crack of dawn. You didn't mention what time you'd be shipping out or when your flight would be, so all day long I didn't even know where to put you in my imagination. On a plane? On a bus? Getting settled in at Fort Benning? It's 6:50 p.m. now so I'm certain it has to be the latter by now. I've just gotten home from a long and grueling day at work and am sitting here sipping a nice Australian shiraz.

I've decided to start writing to you even though I don't have your address yet, so by the time I hear from you where to send these you will have a nice bunch coming. And I hope to do some fun things too, maybe print out some of my artwork for you (if the Army powers that be will permit you to have it) or send photographs, or something. I know exactly one thing and one thing only about military life and it is this: those men and women serving overseas, or even just starting out in training like you are today, love to get cards and letters and other tangible reminders of how much they are loved and missed, to know when the going gets rough that they are not forgotten. So I've decided to type out letters to you here in the blog and then print them out later for sending. My goal will be to send you something every day -- a letter, a picture, a fascinating article, whatever. Something so you will have a part of me with you every day sharing in your new adventure. I'll be sure to keep copies as well, in case you ever lose anything and need a replacement.

Naturally I'm curious as all get-out about life in boot camp, what the routines are, what you will be doing everyday, what jobs you get assigned, what you like so far and what you don't, and how you are doing. Please keep me posted on all your progress, your successes and fallbacks, everything. Details, I want details! I want to feel like I'm right there with you when I read your letters or talk to you on the phone.

I listened to the Alter Bridge CDs you left with me last night and on my way to & from work today. I gravitate toward the 2nd CD for some reason and have been playing that over and over. The songs on there are just so deep and meaningful. They make me think about my life, my feelings, people I care about and think about, and of course they remind me of you. And because I'm a big softie and miss you so much already I bawled my eyes out over a couple of the songs. You forgot to leave me a title list so I could tell you which ones though, or which ones I like best, even! I'll have to go online and search by lyrical keywords, see if I can find them, or put the CDs in my laptop and see if the player picks up the info from the internet.

It occurs to me that I never had a chance to finish telling you my "life story" which we started a few months ago. I think I got somewhere up to about the age of 13, which leaves most of the more interesting stuff yet to be told! So I thought I might use that material in days to come to make letters to you when I don't have anything interesting going on at the moment to talk about. You'll have to let me know if the Army screens your mail and whether I should avoid discussing certain things specifically as a result ... *hehheh*

Well, AA has put some soup on and doubtless it's ready by now, so I'll close for the time being. Miss you already!! Hope all is well with you so far and that I will hear from you soon.

Love, Mom

This is it!

Well here we are and there he goes: at some point today Damien will be travelling to a hotel room near the airport, where he will spend the night with whomever else is shipping out to basic tomorrow. Tomorrow morning he will get up, get on an airplane for the first time in his life, travel the distance by air to Georgia, and then get on a bus from the terminal to Fort Benning.

We spent this past weekend together and had a great time. Went downtown to Sakura Matsuri on Saturday, out for ice cream in the evening, and watched some episodes of Joan of Arcadia on DVD, something we've been doing off & on over the past year or so. On Sunday morning we went to a local UM church. We aren't members, but they have been doing a series in world religions open to visitors which started March 30th, featuring a brief overview of the religion during the sermon, some elements of its worship incorporated into the service, culturally-relevant foods afterwards and an hour-long discussion time. This past Sunday they featured Buddhism and served some very nice Thai food. Damien enjoyed the visit and wore his new blue yukata, kamikaze headband and mala that day. We watched a few more episodes of JoA and then did a video interview with him about his goals and aspirations going into the Army, which I hope to upload to YouTube and then to this blog once we run it through some editing.

All in all we had a great time together, though I wish now in retrospect we'd had more time to talk. His father wanted him over Sunday night and that cut into our time together. We had started a session a couple months ago telling him my "life story" and got up to around my time at age 13 or thereabouts -- and never finished the telling. Well maybe this can be something I do to fill letters to him, though some of the contents of that telling might not be suitable for screening by the Army!

Flashing before my eyes

On the way to work this morning I was listening to "Leave Out All the Rest" by Linkin Park and suddenly had this horrible flash of "what if" ... like seeing myself in the future after some horrible nameless tragedy involving my son and listening to this song and remembering him. It was bloody awful and no words can describe what you feel like in those moments. It's like you're trying on scenarios all the time, getting a taste for the worst, and God only knows if this constitutes more senseless torture than it does preparation for anything, because none of us knows for certain what the future holds. Even those of us with precognitive skills or heightened pattern recognition cannot parse something so highly charged with heart-wrenching emotions, because the emotional component renders such a thick layer of subjectivity as to make spiritual discernment impossible.

Am I ever going to get used to this??? I don't think so. I don't think there will be a day going by when I will not worry for Damien's ultimate welfare and temporal well-being as he embarks on this journey. I have so many of my own personal emotional and spiritual issues entangled from the past 25 years ever since a certain tragedy and affliction befell me that it adds an extra layer of frustration to the mix and even my prayers for his safety come out angry and bitter. There had better be truth -- beyond everything else and anything else, and taking precedence over it all -- to the notion of God being Love, for both our sakes.

On the Processing of Uncertainty

My son mentioned in his email last night that while he felt excited about going to boot camp, the longer he had to wait, the more "hazy" this feeling got. For some reason this triggered something inside me, as if suddenly a panoramic view of all the patterns converging here came together in my mind and I could see clearly right into the heart of what had gone into him making this decision. This is what I wrote him on that account:

I think maybe that hazy feeling might be part of why you committed yourself to this, the fact that deferral from goals you envision can make it very difficult for you to focus on those goals. I think a part of your impetus to do this comes from a very smart sense that if you don't master that business, it will master you, and lay waste to your hopes and dreams through inactivity. And I think in the sense that once you commit to something like the military, things are out of your hands until such a time as you are truly ready to take them back arrives, you found something that ironically made you feel safe: something bigger than you that you can't get out of, can't get around, can't slip out from under. From my own experience ... I know how downright terrifying it can be at times to recognize all that you are capable of -- note I do not qualify that word ALL -- and in the next breath realize the implications of that in ways that have eluded my capacity for words at the moment. By choosing the program you have chosen, you have chosen deliberately to invest a great deal of trust in an entity with whom you have no previous experience, the Army. So I know you must have seen something in them to warrant believing that they possessed a combination of attributes as an organization uniquely suited to provide you with what you need.

To put it in no vague terms, you chose to put yourself someplace where the choice would be taken away from you for awhile. Where the only thing truly stronger than yourself -- do or die -- becomes your master for a time so that you may learn to master yourself and by so doing, master life. Unless I miss my guess, that seems to be what I am hearing in you making this decision. I know it cannot have been an easy one, and I know it will not get any easier. And you probably knew that too, which is why you picked something that would not ask you every day if you're sure you want this or not, but would possess you and own you, having taken you ONCE at your word and letting that once suffice. Oh yes there will be times of fear. There will be times of doubt. There will be times of feeling trapped by your decision, of missing what you are giving up for a little while -- your former notion of freedom, which you actually discovered to be a form of bondage -- of imagining you might have made a terrible mistake and asking yourself what have you gotten yourself into?

But there will also be times of absolute crystal clarity ringing right down to the core of your being. There will be times of pure magic, of bonds with other human beings you could never have imagined, of the stark juxtaposition of the deepest love amidst the harshest, grittiest interactions and realities. There will be moments when your blood will course with fierce fire through your veins of growing strength and acumen, of determination, of absolute surety and confidence transcending the moment, that you will truly know what it means to be both glad and grateful to be alive. There will be moments of breathtaking elation, or sobering realization, or quiet satisfaction. And like everything else in life, the trick is to pay attention to the good, take the bad with it but don't let the bad write the story or set the tone. "Remember ye that all existence is joy, that the sorrows are but as shadows. They pass and are done, but there is that which remains." You are a natural spiritual and philosophical alchemist and memeshaper; I KNOW you know how to make gold out of shit. ;-) You'll have even those shadows (which cry) questioning what side they serve.

The man from whom your middle name is derived once wrote,

"In order to obtain freedom to do your will, it is necessary to submit voluntarily to discipline and organization. Evolution implies structuralization. The power of man is greater than the power of the amoeba, because he has specialized the function of the protoplasm of which he is composed. In order to do the one thing which you will truly you must therefore renounce all those other things which may tempt you to swerve from the one purpose of your sojourn amongst us."

To enter the experience described here is the best type of initiation, one that unfolds naturally in life experience itself, and grows inside you and with you. As you have already correctly divined that Love is the greatest Magick on earth, let Love be your inspiration when things seem dark or confusing. Let it be your guide to an eternally self-renewing source of courage, hope and strength that will spring forth from inside you. And turn to it in private with your worries and troubles. This is the true essence of real prayer, which has nothing to do with religion when it's honest, earnest and personal -- just like the military has nothing to do with politics when someone you love goes into service.

His subsequent email informed me, among other things, that I'd nailed it on the spot. Which I knew I had done while I wrote it. It was one of those times you can just feel it, and no doubt whatsoever.

It's not about me, but ...

It's not about me, but I'm the one who has to sit there biting my tongue because I can't bring myself to say "shut up" to people I love and care about. We live in a world where everyone seems to take verbal or even written statements with a degree of finality they could not possibly be intended to have, where every statement issued, we expect to be "definitive."

Well right now nothing for me is definitive. I'm still tripping over how to support and encourage a son diving into the one arena in life I could not be less equipped personally to offer him a lick of solid advice about, while figuring out how to not compromise my own beliefs politically, spiritually, socially, about war in general and this one in particular. All of a sudden the war I wanted the least to do with has become the one that stands the biggest chance of becoming the one most personal to me.

So right now it grates to hear people talk about it. The same kind of talk I've been hearing -- hell, participating in myself -- for the past five years, suddenly abrades awkwardly against my eardrums, rubs my heart funky like petting fur backwards or something. I want to just say "STOP!" Don't talk about the war right now, because I can't bear having other people's opinions about it jostling me around while I'm still trying to make sense of my own feelings. Don't talk about the war right now when my son ships out to boot camp next month. It's confusing enough trying to figure out what to do with this massive disconnect inside myself, between a son I'm simultaneously awestruck proud of and bewilderingly terrified for, and a war I've always considered "illegitimate" which he may very well end up serving in. Don't talk about the war until I can figure out how to root sincerely and enthusiastically for the players while swallowing the bitterness of believing the game itself not worth playing.

I went out surfing on the web last night just out of curiosity, Googling for sites or forums that might have support, advice or perspective to offer a new military mom. I've started a link list for some of the stuff I came across, over in the sidebar of this blog, but links lead to links lead to links, and before you know it you find yourself surfing tangentially to your original focus. And one cannot surf far into the blogs of military members and families before running smack into the inevitable hardline conservatism out there, a mini-war of its own and an uncivil "civil" one at that, pitting those "dirty godless liberals" against "us good guys who believe in our country".

I'm one of those "dirty liberals" -- not entirely godless but I keep my theological explorations and spiritual struggles reserved for writing elsewhere -- and so is my son. We both support Barack Obama and genuinely believe he's the breath of hope and fresh air our nation needs this year. But to be anti-war in general, or anti-THIS-war in particular, is not to be anti-military. My son is putting his neck out there just as surely as any redder one from a red state, and doing so of his own free agency and volition. He knows with what he's signed on for there's a very strong chance he will get deployed to Iraq but that isn't stopping him. No one has drafted him. No one is forcing him. He made his own decision. And while I'm struggling to make sense of all the conflicting emotions inside over it, I'm behind him 100%. So why, then, should any of you others consider us your enemies?

The Adventure Begins ...

My entire world has just been turned upside down. My son has enlisted in the Army and ships out to basic training on April 16, 2008.

How can one person be excited, terrified, proud, dismayed, confused, scared, elated and worried all at the same time? Too many emotions all tangled up to even begin to sort them; this turns my world upside down in ways I cannot even articulate. For starters, in case anyone has failed to notice, there's a war going on -- a war of questionable integrity from the beginning, a war I never wanted, never voted for, never supported. Support the Troops? Of course. Support those willing to exploit their youth and energy, strength and courage, nobility and sacrifice for unworthy conflicts based in outright lies? Sorry, not so eager.

It's like a fly in the ointment, a taint of sour in a fine wine. You think of the risks involved, the dangers, the hazards, the worst-case scenarios, and a sinking fear grips your heart. You think of the courage, the determination, the sacrifice, the nobility of a young hand reaching for direction and responsibility in a chaotic and selfish world, and your heart yearns toward them, particularly as you face the jarring juxtaposition between the amazing opportunities for which they reach and some of the unspeakable uses to which the "powers that be" can put those. You desperately wish you could stretch forth your own hand before them, as you have done so many times before as a parent, to arrange the situation properly so that it brings forth fulfillment and blessing to reward those noble impulses, not disappointment or heartache to discourage and jade the spirit in a marinade of bitterness. Only this time you cannot. This time it's the adult world and you have no control over the outcome. You can only stare into the night sky counting the stars and hoping there really is something bigger than yourself with a heart full of compassion and a predisposition to hear a mother's pleas and care about her tears.

--And never mind religion with its sectarian squabbles; it's got no place in this sanctuary. Just like the military ceases to be about politics when someone you love chooses its path, prayer ceases to be about religion when raw heart conflict drives you to your knees, or out under the stars, seeking hope and guidance through the turmoils, and not much caring how anyone defines who or what provides them so long as the provision be true.

Stuff it never thought it would be reading:
Married to the Army (Army parents' page)
A Soldier's Mind

A world it never thought it would enter:
Military Moms

A song it used to hear on the radio and cry its eyes out over but never knew why ...
Letters from War - Mark Schultz

And now this is my life: this strange new element has entered. I am now an army mom. I join a community of thousands of other families with a membership that cannot be bought, sold or earned, nor does it depend in any way, shape, or form on who you are, what you look like, where you came from, what your beliefs might be. You belong to this community purely on the basis of someone else's decision -- your son's, your daughter's, your fiance's or spouse's -- to take the path of military service.