Friday, January 7: my 20 year old son arrives for dinner. He lives with his father, and I've been embroiled in a toxic divorce for far too long, so I assume he's taking on some sort of emissary role. Still, I'm glad to see him. He looks good: short hair, plain white T shirt, muscles. He rummages through the video games and exchanges a few terms of endearment ("loser!") with his younger brother.
Over swordfish, he drops his bombshell.
He's joining the Marines. He'd made the decision about a month ago, but waited this long to tell me because he worried about my reaction.
He'll start boot camp in Camp Pendleton, outside San Diego, in June. He'll be a grunt machine gunner. The battalion and regiment numbers he rattles off mean nothing to me. Despite his father's recommendation that he start as an officer, he wants to be a grunt. Oddly, I respect that decision despite the greater danger he'll undoubtedly face, because I'm of the "never ask anyone to do anything you can't or won't do yourself" school of delegating duties. He's been working out every Thursday with his recruiter. And he's already learned stereotypes about the other branches of the service; among them, only the "Chair Force" is suitable for the dinner table.
His news doesn't surprise me much. Smart but rebellious in high school, he's been drifting through odds and ends of classes at a local community college without much of a clear plan. In some ways, he'll be a good fit: intensely loyal toward his friends, instinctive grasp of military strategy and tactics, keen student of history's wars. Nothing that I say will change his mind. His decision. His life.
I tell him that I can honor and respect the warrior even if I hate the wars. I tell him of Netroots For The Troops: my small part in our community's small effort to provide some small comforts to some soldiers far away from home. But his eyes don't accept my words.
What he remembers are the battles over gun toys and the dinnertime rants on the folly of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A birthday gift for a 4 year old disappeared. Every summer, he improvised with water balloons what other kids did with SuperSoakers. His participation in the airsoft pellet gun phase was clandestine. If I were to tell him that I now understand the need for guns and wars in certain situations, he wouldn't believe me.
As he leaves, I express my pride and tamp down my fears. He seems pleased, a little, that I haven't freaked out. I go to sleep resolving to be a supportive military parent.
The next morning, the bullets fly in Tucson.