Thoughts On Veterans' Day

Growing up with a dad in the military, and moving so many times I don't really have an accurate count--I wonder sometimes if I would have become a different person if I had grown up in the same house, in the same neighborhood.  Actually had a hometown.  (If you aren't a military kid you must understand that sometimes people will ask us where we are "from"--where we call "home"--and if we were honest we would tell them that we don't know.  I think most of us just pick the place we have lived in the longest.  But we pride ourselves in calling "Home" wherever we are all together.  For a soldier's family, being together is a gift.

Anyway, it wasn't always easy, all those moves.  I think the worst one for me was when I was ten, and we had to leave Carlisle, Pennsylvania--(Dad was at the War College there)--and move to Virginia.  It wasn't Virginia I dreaded--we had lived there for 4 or so years a couple moves back, and we loved it. Although Dad was in Vietnam during one of those years, I remember happy times there, anyway; friends by the score, greek dodgeball in the street...beautiful seasons in Virginia.  I loved the snow and the leaves in Autumn.

Anyway, the sadness I felt at our move from Pennsylvania was having to leave all of my friends.  It was literally ten year old girl heaven.  We lived in a complex of apartments---Young Hall, I believe it was---and throughout the complex lived four of the best friends I had ever had.  Maybe have ever had to this day, in some ways.  We just shared so much, like all ten year old girls.  But I think mostly we understood each other--we knew this military kid secret that only a military kid could know. It was only by the luck of the draw that we were placed here together.    Nothing lasts forever. Make every single moment count..every single one.  There's no time to be shy, or to hold back.  I think that even then, when others our age couldn't imagine anything ending--we knew, instinctively, that we had to be very careful.    Things change fast.  And Time, not our friend, never gives back, even when we aren't given as much of it as we should have been.  So we shared what we had, and we took what our days together granted us, and we never wasted a single second of it.  Friends for life, forever, absolutely.  For life.

I think I will observe this Veteran's Day by looking back on the little piece of it that I lived..and the people that came into my life because I was the daughter of an Army Colonel.  I will honor my mother, also--something I never did during all of those moves, and the year Dad was away from us on the other side of the world. I see it clearly now, Mom--how you wouldn't let us be afraid for Dad, even though I know that there were times you yourself were terrified. And there was no one above 4 feet tall to comfort you. I will never forget my sisters and I sitting around the kitchen table with a tape recorder, talking to Dad so far away...and the cookies and goodies we would pack for him and send...  I remember you putting our little letters and artwork in the box.  And I was so very proud that you would think they were important enough to send. I remember the Christmas Eve when Dad called you, somehow--on a radio from some horrible and frightening place--and your trying to hold it out so that we could hear him tell us that he loved us all so very, very, much...And you just crying, and crying, and telling him loudly how very, very much we loved him back...

To our soldiers and their families--I think I understand a little bit.  If you are away from those you love---I do pray for your strength, and that God will comfort those you love until you are home, at last.

To our veterans of war--and their families, who are also veterans in their own right...God bless you.

And hang in there...Time is weak.  It passes quickly.

I learned that when I was ten..