One's In Afghanistan, One's In Iraq

We have two sons. They were born in 1973 and they've been a source of pride and joy since the two moments when they were born - ten minutes apart.

So how did it come to be that one is in Afghanistan and one is in Iraq?

Back when the boys were seniors in high school, we finally came to the realization that it was too late to start making financial plans for college. We had six kids and the strain financially had been enormous for years.

It's more complicated than this, but in a nutshell this was the crux of our difficulties. When Mr. Right came home from the Air Force he'd accrued enough seniority to walk back into one of the highest paying jobs in the mill where he worked. And everything in our lives was based on that high paying job - our house, our habits, and our family. But when an opportunity arose for him to take an apprenticeship that would lead to no more shift work, we couldn't let him pass it up. He hated shift work and so did I. The only problem was that his pay plummeted. Conversely, as his pay plummeted, the bills spiraled, and for years it was all we could do to keep our heads above water.

Now the kids were in high school or had just graduated and I had an archaic philosophy that was about to shape the lives of both our sons. The boys had to go to college no matter what, because some day they would have wives and families and they needed to support them properly. What about the girls? Well, someday they should have husbands with educations that would allow them to support their families. If the girls went to college, great! But it wasn't vital in my mind like it was vital for the boys to go. Although they were both talented athletes with good grades, there were no scholarships for talented athletes with good grades. Then one day they came home and said that there were scholarships available for boys with good characters. Bingo!

The Army turned out to be such a good fit for them. One of their first challenges was to compete for a medal that required weeks of practice and tests. One hundred young men from their unit started the challenge. Three finished. Two were our sons.

The next big challenge was Ranger school - a test of endurance so challenging that men had lost their lives during it's course. To successfully graduate, a soldier has to prove himself capable of operating effectively under conditions of extreme mental and physical stress. And that doesn't come close to describing the physical endurance requirements, the sleep deprivation, and the sustained austere conditions they endure plus all the ways they can fail including, at the conclusion of the hardest 61 days of their lives, when they can be peered out. In other words, someone in each unit, after all their sacrifice and effort, is voted out. Both boys proudly wear Ranger tabs on their left shoulders.

I was determined to write this post without sounding like I was bragging but it seems like everything I write is bragging. It's not. I'm just telling you how it is. The Army was a great fit for both of them.

They both have Bachelors and Masters degrees and have taken advantage of just about every training opportunity that the Army offers. They've lived in or trained in dozens of locations in the United States - many together for awhile - mostly separated lately.

They have the most beautiful families you could imagine. Loving wives who sacrifice so much while their husbands are away and then open their arms and lovingly, gratefully embrace them when they return. Their children are all awesome and part of the reason has to be that their dads were never satisfied to be less than an integral part of their lives. They both have fine homes in lovely neighborhoods and both have beautifully renovated every property they've ever owned. They're very important in their families.

And they're very important in their jobs. They do things that the normal citizen could not begin to fathom. And their careers so far have been stellar with promotions we could only have dreamed of and experiences unparalleled in a normal lifetime.

So when I write a post like this or like this, I'm trying to say that I'm sad that they're making such an enormous sacrifice in being deployed. But what I should also be saying is that I'm proud beyond measure of our amazing sons. I'm proud of what they do and how stoically and conscientiously they do it. And I'm proud that they embrace yet another difficult challenge with one thought - there's a job that needs to be done well and he's the man to do it.

And that's how it came to be that I'm baking cookies tonight and tomorrow I'll send one box to Afghanistan and one to Iraq.