Telling Ian About War

Grown-up television programs, like the News, are not viewed by the younger half of our family. They are too violent. Enough turmoil exists within these walls. There is no need to add more. This week it was unavoidable.

Late Monday night I received a phone call from my parents. Any phone call from them that comes after 7:00 p.m. should be considered a warning that something bad has happened. My cousin, a Marine serving his 5th tour in Iraq, was seriously injured when an IED (improvised explosive device) detonated in front of him. His best friend, a fellow Marine, was killed.

It was difficult to sleep that night, or any night since. I have been haunted by a terrible ache that has been reawakened, one that I first felt the night I went into labor with Ian. Steve and I watched the movie Simon Birch. After the conclusion of the story, I wondered if my child would be born normal or if he would have a birth defect that would present challenges he could not overcome. It was a sense of sudden panic that this fully developed baby in my belly might not be perfect. As I lay in bed crying, feeling completely unprepared to become a parent, my water broke.

Those insecurities were quickly replaced by the excitement of knowing I was in labor and would soon see my son. Twenty-four hours later, as I nursed my newborn, neither of us had a clue what was going on two floors below us in the Emergency Room of the Bryan, Texas hospital. It was just the two of us in a dimly lit, quiet labor and delivery room, getting to know each other as only mother and baby can.

The next morning when I turned on the television to watch the news, the ache returned when I learned that during the night, the Texas A & M bonfire structure had collapsed, killing 12 students and injuring 27 others. They were kids - teenagers and young adults in their early 20s. I cried as I watched the families and friends mourning helplessly. To myself I wondered, "How long will I get to keep this precious baby? 18 years? 25? 30? Will I see him marry and raise kids of his own? How long will he be mine to hold?"

A few months ago I was told by a life insurance company that I could add Ainsley to my policy, but not Ian. When I asked why, I was told it was because as he enters his teens, he will be a high suicide risk. Great. Now people who have never even met my son are laying odds on the probability that he will take his own life before he reaches adulthood? The ache was back again. It was beginning to sink in that our life as a family might not go the way we had planned.

My cousin, Kathie, has probably wondered if her plan to see all of her children live long and happy lives would come to fruition. It is her son, Brad, who underwent at least 5 surgeries this week to save his life after shrapnel entered his body and severely damaged his stomach and intestine. She agonized from Monday to Friday evening when she finally got to see that her child of nearly 24 years was still alive, and he was safely back in the U. S. It has been a heartbreaking week for all of us knowing that another soldier's parents were waiting to see their son come home in a casket. This is not the way it's supposed to be.

How do you explain any of this to a 7 year-old? Every sentence creates new questions that often have no satisfactory answers.

"Why did Brad go to Iraq?"
"Why is there a war?"
"How did Brad get hurt?"
"Why would someone do that to him?"
"Why do people get killed in a war?"
"How will we know when the war is over?"
(It would have been easier to tell him where babies come from.)

Ian has mulled these questions for several days and still seems perplexed by it all. He knows where Iraq is, he knows where Brad is now and where his home is, he knows where we are. It is all too complicated. Ian has concluded that "War is stupid." Right now, as far as I am concerned, that is an acceptable position to take.

As a mother, I cannot hope that my son will go to war. In fact, we should all hope that the armed forces will never want him. It takes him forever to make a decision. If he ever pulls the pin on a grenade, he and everyone around him will be toast. Thanks to ADHD he will get distracted by something and forget he has the grenade in his hand; or his sensitivity to loud noises will cause him to shield his ears from the impending explosion using the device as an earmuff. Thinking quickly on his feet is not Ian's forte. They would probably kick him out of boot camp for insubordination. I threatened today to send him to military school for arguing with me so much, then laughed in my head at the thought of him doing the same to someone in command of a military establishment.

For this characteristic, too, I shall be eternally grateful, even when he is driving me crazy.