Prudential and The Class Action Lawsuit

When you enlist in the armed services, one of the first sets of paperwork you'll fill in during training is for the Servicemember's Group Life Insurance (SGLI). It is still optional and sadly, many young enlistees opt out of it - to their families' detriment later down the line.

I, however, did not. I carried the highest premium I could (which effectively made me worth a whole lot more dead than alive) and I even carried the SGLI Spouse policy (therefore making my husband worth far more dead than alive too - call it mutually assured continued existence if you will). (I kid!!!)

I had no idea, however, what games Prudential has been playing with our money. And I also had no idea that once the company was contacted to pay out, the beneficiary could also opt for lump sum payment or payment over time, as this rather less than objective article states. It turns out that the plaintiffs in this case were allowed to choose for themselves even though the form has never changed and we, the servicemember's, make that selection when we fill it in.

I don't know how I feel about this. For one thing, I didn't even know that Prudential was the insurer. It was just the SGLI and I paid 37 bucks a month to have it. I wanted to know that my family would be very well kept if the worst should happen during a deployment, a training accident, or, for that matter, any accident.

I suppose I do feel like we're being used as a money market for this company if these allegations are true. We're a profit maker. And I loathe the idea that my money has earned them money that my family could certainly use and would most certainly never see if the worst happened. The average age of the policy holder is probably around 22 or 23. Healthy kids, too. There is some risk here yes, but it seems to me that the risk is nominal compared to the rewards this company appears to be reaping.

I also feel like I should have known about this when I elected to carry the SGLI. It may have made me think harder about it and perhaps even made me shop around way back when I first elected to carry it (I carry life insurance through work as well and it does NOT cost me 37 dollars a month for a nearly identical pay out - that just dawned on me actually...). Something stinks here and I hate feeling like I've been had simply by virtue of my profession and my concern for my family's financial well-being if they lost the primary income earner.

I suppose it will be interesting to see how this all plays out - and another lesson to be added to the ever expanding Box of Lessons to Pass Along to My Offspring.

Like a Bucket of Ice

I am an emergency responder. A attends day care at my place of work. These two facts don't seem, on the surface, to be at all related and in fact, I had neatly compartmentalized them into two separate bins myself...until a couple of weeks ago.

When I dropped A off, her teacher said, "Hey, big day tomorrow, Miss A!" and looked at me. "She doesn't do well with evacuations. It scares her."

Because I was currently rummaging about in the "Dropping of fat Daycare" bin in my brain, I gave her a blank look. "Um, and what's tomorrow?"

She looked at me funny in turn. "The active shooter exercise? You know? The whole base?"

Oh. Damn. I did know. I knew because my job puts me in the nerve center for response and command and control. But then, I didn't know because daycare is...well, not located in that mental compartment.

I knew when A was evacuated, twice the week prior, for smell of smoke in the facility. And I knew about what had happened during the first evacuation. But I wasn't part of that because it was small in scale and easily handled by first responders. I also knew that she, along with many other kids, didn't do well with it. So, we talked about it on the way home and now, she's walking us through fire drills. She doesn't like the alarms, but she's working through it.

What I never really considered though, was the simple fact that, if something does happen here that requires a full reponse, I'll be, well, responding. I suppose that some people might find that comforting, but the problem I see with it is that my job mandates that I know what's going on. Most other parents with children in day care don't know what's going on until a while after it's happened.

And then I did the unthinkable in this particular situation: I started to think, as I drove from daycare to my office, about high impact targets on the base. And if I were a gunman, I'd go for the heart and soul. And to me, that's the kids. It was like I'd been punched in the stomach.

What danger have I unthinkingly put my daughter in? It gnawed at me all day and most of that night. I also berated myself for not thinking about it before. What kind of parent am I?

The exercise, however, came and went. Instead of dwelling on my daughter, hunkering down in the designated safe room with the rest of the class, my focus was on command and control and what was happening out there and what we needed to do in here.

In the end, the kids, including my daughter, did well. They played games involving being quiet and actually had fun. They had no idea what was happening, or why. As it should have been. I try not to think too much about it either, but sometimes, it creeps up on me. I work on a potential target for bad people to do bad things, moreso than most other places of business. My daughter is growing up in many ways there too. The benefits outweigh the risk, but what sort of parent am I that I never before thought of that risk?

What do you think? Is civilian daycare safer than military daycare or are military parents inherently more at risk?

I Never Thought I Would See This Day...

As A and I walked out into the beautiful, sunlight afternoon today, I looked down at her while she trotted alongside me, watching her feet for anything interesting they might happen across. I stroked her golden hair and thought, I did this for you. No one else but you.

Today was a bittersweet day. In my last post, I made brief mention of the fact that I would probably be going into the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR). There's no more probably about it. I submitted my letter requesting the transfer today, knowing that I had my commander's verbal authorization already.

I don't know how I feel right now. The idea of not wearing a uniform for a period of years is foreign to me and it makes my skin crawl. Knowing that I can come back (and will) isn't exactly the consolation prize that I had hoped for. I do, after all, have 11 years of my life invested in this endeavor and part of me feels like I should have my boots in the sand right now - not my butt in a comfy chair.

Yet, I know that I'm doing this for all of the right reasons. I can't operate effectively when I'm needed at home in the way that I have been. So even though I feel adrift and more than just a little lost right now, I also feel a sense of relief and freedom. I'll have more time here. More time to just be here, with her. With M. More time to support them without worrying, even if it was only subconsciously. If something happens, I'll be here. There won't be any more conflicting work schedules to worry about for a long time. It is a relief.

And yet...

I can't fully express how hard this decision was for me. I put off the letter for as long as I could. But it's done, with no takesies-backsies. I'm not sure when I'll return yet, or even where I'll return to. But I will come back. I have to.

Just...not now. Not while I have this golden haired viking's tiny little hand still holding so tightly to mine. Not at this time in her life.

Thoughts?

Today We Remember

Today, some flags were flown half-mast. Most were not. Some people were sleeping off the weekend food and drink hangovers. Most were continuing the revelry with barbeques and beach trips. And as we celebrated the unofficial start to summer like most other Americans, doing much the same, a small part of my brain kept whispering, "Remember".

While some, as evidenced in the Davis Square Live Journal community, believe that Memorial Day is a day to celebrate war, others, like my family, take the time to remember.

Memorial Day is not a day to celebrate. Nor is it a day to warmonger and it certainly shouldn't be a day to further polarize an already split populace.

It is just a day to remember.

• 
  
  Buckley, Eugene        US Navy                       WWII      Died: 2005
• 
  
  Coughlin, Richard      US Navy                       Vietnam    Died: 2006
• 
  
  Greenwood, Robert  US Army                        Korea      Died: 2003
• 
  
  Harrington, Fred       US Army Air Corps        WWII      Died: 2004
• 
  
  Hersey, Kenneth       US Navy                        WWII      Died: 2009
• 
  
  Jack                         US Army Air Corps        WWII      Died: 2003
• 
  
  Mahoney, John         US Air Force                  Vietnam   Died: 2009
• 
  
  Nadeau, Ralph          US Marines                    Vietnam   Died: 2008
• 
  
  Thoms, Robert          US Army                        Korea     Died: 2008

All of these men touched me in a way that will remain with me, in my heart, for the rest of my life. Were it not for their service, I wouldn't know them. Were it not for their service, they wouldn't have wended their way into my life to leave their lasting marks, their memories, their stories.

Today, I heard them in the surf as I laid on the beach. I saw them in the light of my child's eyes as she laughed and played with friends at a neighbor's cookout. They were all buried with military honors, though too many of them left this world alone, in pain, and in ways we never would have expected.

So take a moment before you go to bed tonight, please. And just...remember. That's really what this weekend is all about.

A New Way to Feel Bad

It's no secret that most working mothers feel some form of guilt over...well...the fact that they work. Of course, so do stay-at-home moms. Some speculate that, as mothers, we're pre-programmed to beat the hell out of ourselves for failing somehow (usually in our own minds).

I've been a little smug on this topic. I never felt it. Nope. Not a lick. Our family is the way it is, I do what I do, it's different from you, you're different from me which, by the way, is the stuff life's made of...soooo...

I pressed on.

Until now. Right now, I'm not sure if I actually feel guilty for wanting what I want or guilty for not actually feeling guilty, but there's certainly some element of "Bad Mommy!" playing out in my head. Why? Well...

Your Momma Wears Combat Boots - So What?

While searching for the end of the internet a few days ago, I came upon Stanford University’s Hoover Institute. There, I discovered Mary Eberstadt, a contributing editor to Policy Review. What caught my eye in the first place was her February feature, Mothers in Combat Boots. I would like to note, now, that I really wanted to post about this THATVERYMOMENT but was ultimately too enraged to write coherently. For a few days.


I have so many feelings regarding this piece that it’s almost impossible to disentangle them. In her piece, Ms. Eberstadt lambasts the “military policy” that deploys mothers. Not just single mothers. Not fathers. Just…mothers. But in order to make her point (which is, to spare you the eye strain, that the US, it’s people, it’s military, must stop this practice forthwith and offer incentives for women to either not have children or to defer their service completely), she took a long and winding road that touched on everything that had to do with mothers and women in the military.

To make her point, she cited the case of Army Spc. Hutchinson who refused to deploy last year. I wrote my own assessment of that situation here, and I was not alone in my thinking if Ms. Eberstadt is to be believed

In the end though, Ms. Eberstadt’s ultimate goal appears to be the expulsion of mothers from the military (active, reserve, and guard) for the betterment of our culture, our country and, of course, for our moral well-being. Oh. And the children. Won’t somebody please think of the children??

It’s true that the military does not give mothers of newborns the recommended period of one-year to breast feed before

Keeping Up With the Joneses isn't Easy to do in Uniform

It's been almost a month since A started daycare but only about a week since M started job hunting. As we've all finally adapted to the new routine and are finally getting comfortable, M was offered a job with the following hours: Noon to 8 pm, Sunday through Friday. He accepted the job but...

Learning to Leave

When I first started reading other, so-called, “Mommy Blogs”, I was both amused and surprised by the types of questions the authors would pose to situations that I had previously considered nothing more than one of life’s “givens”. For instance, this question, did your mother work and if so, did that inspire you?, gave me pause – not for the deep or profound nature of the question (as it is neither deep nor profound), but because someone actually found it worth asking! In retrospect however, it is worth asking.


For the record, yes, my mother worked and works still and no, it didn’t inspire me. It was simply what parents did and still do. They work. I was raised to know that I would work too because, well, bills need paying, necessities (and niceties) need buying. In short, I do not come from an area or time when mothers stayed home. In fact, there was only one stay-at-home mother that I can remember in my group of schoolmates and friends. It was an anomaly.

Of course, in the macrocosm, it isn’t an anomaly, it's a norm. Then again, no child thinks macrocosmically and frankly, if you grow up and remain in a larger version of your childhood microcosm, it’s tough even for adults to think that way (or acknowledge that a vast majority of others might).

So it was with this sort of thought in mind that I realized this weekend that the decision I make now will unwittingly and unknowingly impact my own daughter later and I wonder how she’ll reflect or even if she will, on the choices she’ll know that I had to make for the sake of my family.

Refusal to Deploy?

I first caught wind of the story of the soldier who "refused deployment" two weeks ago over at the forums on Our Mom Spot and my initial response was to call shenanigans. Yes. There. I said it. I Call Shenanigans.

Since then, I've seen it posted and re-posted 10,002 times and it has, of course, touched of firestorms on Mommy Forums and War Forums alike. It has also had me seeing red. I can't actually read any of the forums discussing this article because I'll go nuclear. So, I would like to take this time and space to clear the air. Consider this my blanket response to the people who have asked my opinon directly on the matter - and my response to the wingnuts frothing at their e-mouths all across the great, wide internetz...

1. This soldier didn't refuse to deploy. She intentionally failed to get on the plane under orders. Part of her enlistment oath said something about "obeying and upholding" all "lawful orders"...can't quite get the verbiage straight in my head, but since I have taken the same oath 4 times now (initial and re-enlistments), I do recall those words being strung together in approximate order. Anyhoo - that she decided not to show up to the airport does, if I recall rightly, make her AWOL, possibly a deserter and definitely in violation of a couple of UCMJ articles, as well as at least one General Order.

2. Now that we've cleared the air on those finer points, let's dig in:

a. Every single parent in the military, as well as every parent married to another military member, is required to complete a Family Care Plan. This soldier had one. She enacted it. Her designated provider for her son decided that she couldn't "do it" for a year and went trucking back to GA to hand over the infant. This is where, by the way, I would like to ask her designated provider, the soldier's mother, why she agreed to this plan. Did she think that this was a game?

b. Army Regulation 600-20 gives detailed guidance for units and leadership on the FCP and other requirements for single parents and pregnant soldiers. It says that soldiers who fail to provide a workable FCP should be considered for separation from the service and are not deployable. It also notes that pregnant soldiers are to be given the option to voluntarily separate from the service at the time of their pregnancy, with honor (this means that they're eligible for all follow on benefits). I can personally attest to this since, during both pregnancies, I had to fill in this "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" paperwork. In both instances, I elected to stay.

c. AR 600-20 finally states that any FCP found to be unworkable when implemented will be reassessed and amended within 30 days (longer at the discretion of the commander, up to 90 days). If a workable plan cannot be created, the member will be separated from the service.

In short, this soldier's FCP failed. There are other options besides disobeying an order and going AWOL in this case and there's no real evidence yet that she tried to do the right thing.

Now, maybe it's because I'm anal. Maybe I'm heartless...but I have no pity for this soldier. I've had to have a FCP and it's something that a lot of thought went in to. My first thought was, what if my primary designee can't do it? There are, in fact, sections to designate alternates and alternates to alternates and so on ad infinitum. In fact, in the Special Power of Attorney I filled in to accompany the FCP, there are further designees I chose to add in case something happened.

It's not a piece of paper that you just fill in with some names because you need to check a box to be world wide qualified. It's something that needs to be considered and discussed with all potential designees - and everyone needs to fully understand what agreeing to care for the child or children will mean, as well as what may happen to the military member if the designee does an about face just before the boots hit the sand, but just after the plane's taken off, so to speak.

But here's the thing that's really sticking me in the side: The claim that she was told she would have to place the child in foster care by her commanding officer. I've known some jerks in command in my time. I've even known one or two who have only one or two brain cells fizzing around their heads and one of those two cells is wearing a tinfoil membrane and declaring itself to be the dead Duchess of Borogravia (the other cell generally appears to be in hiding from it's mate). Yet, even THEY aren't foolish or crazy enough to say something like that to a soldier, especially in this current climate where such a statement will assuredly come to the public's knowledge and probably end your career.

As an aside, if this commander really did say that and we find out that it was true, I will do 100 push ups a day for 100 days while chanting, "This Sergeant Doesn't Deserve Her Stripes". You can take that to the bank because I know that I'm supposed to care about the junior enlisted and look out for them. It's what we NCOs (are supposed to) do. And by publicly calling Shenaningans on this, I know that I'm not.

I just find it very hard to believe any of this. The first we hear of it is in a public release by her lawyer, after the Soldier lawyered up to begin with...it reminds me of the AWOL turn-in we had at my place of work a few years back. He showed up on a bus, chartered by family, filled with friends and relatives and just about every news agency in the Greater Boston Area on hand to document his story. It was designed specifically to embarass the military and ensure an expeditious discharge from the military (he deserted while on leave from Iraq). I'm having deja vu with this case too.

Oh! To the individuals who have called for all pregnant women to be discharged from service or who are using this to further your own flawed arguments about why women shouldn't serve period, please go to hell and give the devil my regards. To the military women out there, one and all, who feed these idiots' fires with silly stunts that go viral, feel free to join them and let the remainder of us not suffer the fallout that will surely happen in cases like this.

That's my not so nice opinion on this case. Do you have one?

A Day to Honor

Mom on Reserve will be closed today in honor of Veteran's Day.

Today, we honor living American combat veterans. Looking for ideas how? Volunteer at a homeless shelther for veterans or your local VA.

To those who have served and fought, I salute you.

At Work...But Barely

Over on the Work it Mom! blog, Nataly’s recent entry with respect to parents receiving special treatment at work caught my eye. It wasn’t something that I’d thought about, even after having A. My office is a mere handful – 5 folks – and each of us has such unique family situations that flexibility and covering for one another is simply part and parcel of the job and always has been. I mean, sure, I end up taking more time to ferry our daughter to appointments now and that can mean leaving early or coming in late, but with only one non-parent in the shop, it’s just understood as a given during the earlier years of parenthood.


Before I was a parent, Special Needs for Parents was never even a blip on my Work Radar. I knew that other people left early, came in late or stayed home with sick children but I was never asked to cover for them simply because I was childless at the time. And let’s face it, all of us young ‘uns back then certainly took our fair share of time when we needed it for personal things too. If I ever covered for a parent to go and do parently things, it was probably because they approached me directly and I had nothing pressing going on so was more than happy to oblige, regardless of why it was they were asking me.

In thinking about it though, being a parent has changed the way I view work. If I’m going to work overtime, I’ll take my laptop home and I won’t work until after A is in bed for the night. I used to just stay late and think nothing of it. Up until my recent return to my old Air Force reserve Flight, I never stayed overnight on drill weekends unless I had to after becoming a mom (now, I have to so it’s a moot point I suppose…) but before that, I looked forward to the weekend getaway.

But the real area in which my becoming a parent changed is the frequency with which I will willingly travel or go “TDY” (temporary tour of duty). Last Friday, I got an e-mail at work from my reserve unit asking if I could take a short-notice school tour for a course I do need to eventually attend. By short-notice, they wanted me to leave that Sunday (mind, this was Friday, almost noon) to be gone for two weeks. I responded with a simple “Are you EXPLETIVE kidding me?!”

On the way home that day, I realized that if the same opportunity had presented itself before I had my daughter, I probably would have been packing my bags that night and down at the unit bright and early to finalize paperwork. My, how things had changed!

In 2003 alone, I was gone for at least a week out of almost every month to a conference or a course. In 2002, I was deployed but even after my return, I would spend a month in Georgia working at Higher Headquarters and then a month at my reserve base – rarely did I see the light of home.

It got so bad between late 2002 and 2003 that the TSA agent at the airline I used most frequently (a small terminal in a mid-sized airport) knew me by name and commented if he hadn’t seen me in more than a few weeks. We chatted a lot, he and I. He was a nice guy.

2004 saw a lot of travel as well, as did 2005 and 2006. But then, sometime in 2007, I got pregnant and my willingness to go places started to wane. Now, we’re coming to the close of 2009 and, in the last two years, I have only been on 3 business trips for work and zero TDYs for my reserve unit.

Next year is going to be different. I already know that I have two 7-day trips for exercises, one 2-week course, one 3-week overseas trip, two 5-day conferences and…oh, one 5-day course I’ll have to attend. That’s as of now. Who knows what’ll be coming my way after the new year? But I’m dreading being away for every last one of those trips, even the overseas one (to Europe again). It means I’ll be away from my family. I’ll be away from my daughter who will still be growing and constantly changing before our eyes.

I feel like I miss out on enough of the fun stuff as it is. Just yesterdaymorning, M called me at work to tell me that he was making pancakes and she was on her step-stool at the counter, “helping”. He turned his back to get something, heard her declare, “PLOP! Stir stir stir” and turned around to see that she’d thrown her giant Nemo-beanbag fish in the pancake bowl and had taken up the whisk and was stirring it in.

I’m a “little things” type of person. Those are the “little things” that make me want to spring out of bed each day to witness. I’ve missed a lot of them just by working full time and being absent for 3 consecutive days of the month, each month now. Of course, this is our choice and I am by no means whining – but it’s funny how the thought of missing a week or two or more worth of the little things isn’t as appealing after you have a child.

It’s what comes of introducing yourself to someone new in your life who takes precedence over everyone and everything you ever knew before. THAT is what being a mother has done to me. And I think that it’s payback too…

It’s payback for all of those times when we were sitting in a bar somewhere while I was TDY, listening to the guys moan about how much they were coming to hate the travel because they missed their kids so much – and spritely dumbass me would pipe up, “Hey! Just look at it like it’s a vacation away from being a parent!” Right. Lesson learned. Being a parent isn’t the chore I used to imagine it was. It’s a life changing thing that softens your heart and makes you actually miss people, no matter how short and small those people may be.

In the end, it really means more opportunity for others around me to travel now that I’m not hogging all of the good trips and, given my druthers, would never go anywhere away from home again (at least, not without my family in tow). Well, that’s how I justify not taking up my fair share of the trips these days anyway.
What about you? Do you still look forward to business trips or special events or would you rather be home with S/O and offspring? Has being a parent changed how you work?

Bye Bye Baby Einstein, Hello Real World

In late August of this year, I packed up my laptop, hugged my co-workers good bye and said, "Hopefully this will be over soon." My husband had been recalled from Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) and had been ordered, on somewhat short notice, to report to Fort Knox, KY.

This was the first time he'd be gone from home and it was going to be momentous. Our daughter would be with me all day instead of her father. I was going to have to sort out the best way to keep her routine, one she was and still is firmly attuned to; to work from home while simultaneously keeping both eyes firmly planted on her the entire time (at 16 months and running, her main mission in life was to find new and interesting ways to attempt to end her life and give us both as many heart attacks as was possible in one day without actually ending our own as well); and to try desperately to find affordable daycare if my husband's appeal to be released was denied.

As the leading opponent to TV for toddlers in our household, day 1 found us both in a funk. Daddy was gone. The house felt empty and, for the first time, not at all home-like. Both toddler and I went through the motions and even sort of chatted a little bit, but in the end, we spent the day watching TV and waiting for a phone call.

Oh, we had a walk and lunch and some outside time before the temperature got too frightfully hot...

But mostly, we just watched TV. When, for some reason, PBS and PBS Sprout channels both started repeating themselves in the afternoon, I went searching for the Baby Einstein DVD we'd been given as a gift when she was born. I found it in the study, collecting dust. I had cringed when we received it, I remember that. To me, these things were worse than "normal" kids television...they were actually trying to market genius in babies. I was smug about that, I will admit it. No gullible yuppies were we! With spending money at a premium in this household, we were both wise and frugal enough to know that the best way to turn a baby into a genius was hands-on teaching and interaction, o ho! But, never look a gift DVD in the...well...

My husband had previewed the video some time before and I recalled him telling me that it was the most mind-numbingly boring thing he had ever seen. Of course, he wasn't a baby, so that review probably wasn't the most reliable in the history of children's educational programming reviews, but I also remembered him saying that he would only ever show it to a child if he wanted to be accused of torture, it was just that bad. Similarly, I have banned Blues Clues from the house for the same basic reason.

But it was enough to make me put the DVD back where I'd found it. It was serving the household well as a collector of dust. Being too hot to play outside, daughter and I wandered in to her room instead and threw styrofoam blocks at each other .

Flash forward to now. That DVD only just now saw the light of day after our move a month ago when it was packed from it's dust collecting location into a drawer and I purposefully hunted it down and took it out. There's a note on it: Return to Store.

Over on Yahoo! Shine, I learned that Disney is offering refunds for all of the suckers...er...well meaning parents who really believed that plopping a child in front of a television watching a video specially designed to numb the brains of parents everywhere but "stimulate" infants was, indeed, to parenting what snake oil is to cancer, flux, indigestion, disease of the liver and any other ailments you can think of. Nothing more than a placebo that, in too many cases, actually caused a malady rather than cured anything.

I'm not sure, though, how this is so "stunning" to parents. The only thing that's stunned me about the refund is the fact that Disney is actually offering refunds at all. Sure, this will probably save them money in the long run (is it this or suffer a class action lawsuit?), but it's practically an admission of guilt - it's almost saying, "Yeah, we suckered you. And now your kid has attention span issues because we suckered you so here's your 25 bucks back, OK? That should cover the next bottle of Rittalin, right?"

The debate over childhood TV viewing and attention span disorders will forever rage long after this has subsided and parents will still draw their lines in the sand, prepared to label one another as Very Bad Parents for allowing/disallowing TV in the household at or under or around certain ages, or even at all!

But on that sad August day when neither of us wanted to do much of anything and both of us missed Daddy/Dear Husband and couldn't quite articulate our feelings to one another, Sesame Street and Curious George helped distract us just that little bit...and somehow, brought us closer together too. We snuggled a lot that day - and our decidedly independent hellion is not a big snuggler so that was something extra special to hold on to.

As for Baby Einstein's "Numbers Nursery: Discovering 1 Through 5" video, the cash I get back will definitely come in handy during the next diaper run. Or maybe to purchase another couple of sets of feetsey pajamas as we settle in for the winter to come.

At 18 months now, she already counts to 3 as it is...and that's just from a lot of silly songs with Mommy and Daddy and counting of fingers and toes. There really is no substitute for the Real McCoy - interacting with your kid and maybe even teaching them to count while you cook instead of hoping a video does it for you.

A Reflection on War

On September 11, 2001, I evacuated Boston in what could arguably be called the most civil, flowing crush of rush hour traffic ever. Never before had I gotten home so quickly in such a body of vehicles. Everyone, including myself, seemed inclined to drive like a normal human being and yield to others. To this day, I think that's because everyone, including myself, was completely shell shocked that they were actually evacuating a city because of the devastating attacks on NYC and the Pentagon.

When I got home to Medford, a 5 mile drive that used to take in order of 1.5 - 2 hours to make each day, I started packing my military bags and gear. Throughout the day, during intermittent periods of telephonic stability, my unit had been calling me at work to tell me to be ready to move to NYC for search and rescue efforts.

As an Emergency Manager for the Air Force and then, for the Air Force Reserves, that is one of the many, many "hats" we are trained to wear. Search and rescue. Oversight and getting our hands dirty.

While I packed and watched the images of people leaping to their deaths from the Twin Towers, I wondered how a beautiful, early autumn day had gone so horribly wrong. I tossed my bag in my car and retired to my back porch with a coffee, a pack of cigarettes and my phone. Waiting.

And then, inexplicably, I broke down and sobbed. I couldn't do it. I could not go to that site and start digging out scores of dead civilians. Dead military? Painful but do-able. There's a certain understanding (for most) that when one signs the proverbial dotted line, one is signing up for some inherent risk. But those civilians had done what I did that morning - kissed loved ones good-bye (or worse, rushed out thinking that it would just be another day), sat outside and enjoyed a coffee before heading in, checked e-mail, chatted and caught up with office gossip...all of those things that come with being an office worker, a civilian, a person who does not normally think of their cube farm as being a potential high threat area.

And now they were dead. They died a horrible death, many of them choosing to jump to their deaths rather than face the flames.

I just. Couldn't. Do it.

I didn't have to. I was in the first wave to head overseas and to this day, I'm grateful to have faced war than to have faced so much carnage in one place. Yes, there are those who will argue against it and feel free to rant and rave, but...I know of which I speak and thus far, little has been said or done to change that.

Flash forward to now and a night not too long ago...I was cleaning around the house and for some reason, I thought of that night, of crying on that porch, alone and hearing the eerie silence punctuated only by the occasional scream of an F-16 patrolling the skies. I was 26. Engaged, no children desired.

I am now 34. Divorced, re-married and with one child. I was thinking of a pending possible deployment late this fall or early next year, of my daughter and my husband and how much life had changed so unexpectedly.

What gave me real pause though was this: My 10-year old pen pal when I was deployed the first time, a student from somewhere in Texas who reached out with a care package and a "Dear Soldier, thank you.." letter is now old enough to be one of my subordinates. I wondered if he was going through basic training now (he really, really wanted to be a soldier back then) or had graduated from it and was heading to his first unit...or if he changed his mind somewhere along the way.

Of that entire 4th grade class, how many of them will I encounter in future deployments? "You wrote to me when you were a child, and now you serve under me." If that isn't enough to make one feel old...and war weary...

So I took it a step further and pictured my sweet smelling, silly little girl enlisting to carry on a tradition of fighting that started with her father in Gulf 1, is carried on by her mother in Gulf 2 and wondered, perversely, if she'd like Iran. Then realized that she, too, has every likelihood of serving alongside me should she choose that route. After all, by the time she's 18, I'll still be almost 10 years away from high-year tenure in the service and, barring any unforseen events (like an IED), I'll probably still be in uniform.

And we'll still be in the same war. Only, the way things are going, bigger. And I'll probably be on a first-name basis with Afghani farmers at that point. "Oh! Sergeant! So good to see you here again!" "Good to see you too, Mr. Al Khali. How's the wife? The kids? Seen any Taliban lately?" < / cynicsm>

And THAT thought made me sit down and put my head in my hands for a while. A long while.