Guys, this is a very powerful post, I think, because I'm copying over a journal entry I made after my son deployed to Fallujah with the Marine Corps in the fall of '04. His unit would fight bravely in a battle there that has become Marine Corps history, and would appear in various books written about it, such as "No True Glory, A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah, by Bing West.

In that deployment, he was very fortunate in that they lost no one in their platoon. This would not be the case in his second deployment to the Anbar a year later.

Though this post will be longer than is customary on blogs, and though I could probably publish it somewhere, I am posting it here, and over at Talking Points Memo, on my blog as http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/deanie_mills because I have not read anything else that makes the war seem so personal.

Ironically, I tried to interest my literay agent in this journal, and he claimed that there was "no market for it." And that is the tragedy. That less than one percent of our population has had to deal with the personal cost of this war, not once, but many times.

Truly, it is a crime.

Why They Call It "Leave"

I sit quietly and watch as my son, the poet-warrior, packs cherished and timeworn copies of Thoreau, Twain, C.G. Jung, and the Tao te Ching into his duffel bag, next to his Bible, his copy of the Koran, and his Arabic texts.

Buried deep in the bag somewhere, I know, is the spiral sketch pad he takes everywhere that contains his poems, sketches, and broodings--this one is five by seven inches and covered with sturdy cardboard so it can withstand the rigors of the desert. He will carry these items on his back, along with boots, camouflage clothing and gear, and his M-16, thousands of miles away from home, to war.

We raised our two children on a remote country home, a small west Texas ranch some one hundred miles from a shopping mall. They grew up surrounded by horses and a menagerie of pets and learned to provide their own entertainment, making hay forts in the barn and racing across the pastures like little wild creatures. As a family, we were each other’s best friends, and in spite of our isolation--or maybe because of it--we always encouraged them to follow their dreams and explore what the wide world had to offer.

And so, when they graduated college, my son, Dustin, took the oath to defend our country and our daughter, Jessica, packed her bag with dreams and bought a one-way ticket to New York. While our son trained for war, our daughter fought battles of her own and even managed to land three off-Broadway roles in her first ten months in New York.

It was thrilling, watching them spread their wings and fly, and we missed them desperately. It’s not always easy, watching your children succeed.

While a student at Texas A&M University, our son had been a member of the Corps of Cadets and rode with the Parson‘s Mounted Cavalry, firing the authentic World War I cannon at football games. And though he had not signed a contract while in ROTC to enter the military after graduation, and had no original intention of doing so, all of that had changed with 9/11.

Soon after that horror, he had called me. “I don’t feel comfortable being one of the ones who needs protecting,” he’d said, “I think I’d rather be one of the protectors.”

He’d promised me that he would finish his degree in Psychology, and so he did, entering the Marines as soon after his graduation as they could take him. Though many encouraged him to go on to Officer Candidate School, he passed, because it would mean he would then be in training for another whole year.

“I didn’t sign up to spend my whole tour in training,” he’d said. “I just want to go over there and get it over with. Besides,” he added, “I’m single and don’t have any kids. Maybe I can take somebody else’s place who has a family.”

And now, he has finished boot camp, spent months training in the Mojave desert, learned to shoot, practiced urban combat tactics, studied Arabic for a month in the military’s intense language school, (he was tapped for this because of his degree), and learned that his unit will be posted to Fallujah, site of some of the deadliest fighting in the war.

Consequently, this leave home has taken on a surreal aura. His sister has flown in from New York to see him--our first time to look on her face in nearly a year. We do the same things we always have as a family--cooking steaks over an open mesquite fire while gazing out over the sprawling valley and watching hawks dangle in the arching sky above, watching videos, sitting talking and laughing around the kitchen table.

But it’s different, because although nobody wants to say it out loud, this may be the last chance we get to do these simple pleasures.

Sometimes, my son catches me unawares and gives me a big hug. I’m hungry for them because...anyway, he seems to understand. Later, I always slip into another room and cry.

While my son is home on leave before deploying to Iraq, I go with him to the lawyer’s office to sign a Power of Attorney that will enable me to handle his bills and other affairs while he is overseas. He is reluctant to tell strangers where he is going, because he is made uncomfortable by gushy outpourings of sympathy and pseudo-patriotism. I tell people anyway--cashiers in stores, bank tellers, acquaintances whose names I don‘t even remember--and find that every person I talk to has been touched by this war. They either know of someone who was killed, or have a family member or friend or loved one of some kind either in the war now, soon to go, or just returned.

I don’t know whether to be comforted by that or terrified.

Though nobody really wants to, it is necessary that we discuss my son’s will on this leave-taking, and what he wants done at his funeral, should “something happen” to him. “You know I want to be cremated,” he says softly. “I don’t want a grave for someone to stand over and mourn, like with Jack.” (Not his real name.) Dustin was referring to his best friend, who shot himself to death at 19 years of age.

“I want my ashes scattered in the Chinaberry Grove and King’s Mountain,” he instructs. These are rugged and treasured landmarks where he played as a boy, hiked and rode horseback as a youth, and visited as a young adult. “And some at A&M,” he adds.

My son is 26 years old.

While we talk of these unpleasant necessities, I am oddly detached, like a prosecutor poring over crime-scene photos, looking for evidence as if not seeing destroyed human beings in the picture. I am able to discuss these things in a calm, quiet manner. The trick is to touch on something lightly, deal with it, then move on to something funny or otherwise unrelated, then skip back over the heavy stuff later.

I’m amazed at myself, and thankful I have not burdened my son with my poisonous fear.

Though it is a month too early, we have a family birthday party for him. I bake his favorite chocolate cake, and he opens gifts like a webbed liner for his helmet that, when wet down, expands and cools the head. I had read about it in Newsweek and ordered it online.

He is very pleased, but his favorite gift, by far, is the medallion his father had worn around his neck, along with his dog tags, thirty years before, while slogging through the jungles of Viet Nam as a platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division. At first glance, it is shaped like and resembles a peace sign, but up close, you can see that in place of the trademark three inner lines of the circle are lines which spell out WAR.

We tell him it must be a lucky talisman, because his father had come home from war, alive and in one piece. If he wears it too, the theory goes, so will he. He is thrilled with the gift. “I grew up looking at it,” he says, grinning.

Then he tells us how, now, they ask soldiers to carry two sets of dog tags--one around the neck and one in the boot, in case he or she gets blown apart.

“They started that in ‘Nam,” says my husband quietly.

“What?” asks Dustin. “Wearing two sets of dog tags?”

“No,” his father answers. “Explosive devices designed exclusively to blow one man to smithereens.”

After these remarks, my daughter and I start doing what all women do at such times: cleaning up the dishes and struggling to hold together the frayed and tattered pieces of our sanity.

Although we consider ourselves patriots, and my husband is a Republican and supporter of the President, I didn’t want this war. Afghanistan, to my reasoning, was a justified invasion, and we should have continued to pour our precious human and financial resources into tracking down every Al Qaida rat in every rat hole in that godforsaken place.

Instead, we squandered those precious resources by rushing headlong on a fool’s mission and a foolish, ill-conceived and poorly-managed Iraqi war, where a thousand young American men and women as of this writing have given up their lives with no end in sight.

I know that many people--including a number of my family members--disagree with that assessment, but I am bitter and angry, and now, helpless as my own beloved boy, son of my soul, joy of my heart, packs away a copy of Walden into his overstuffed duffel bag and prepares to put his life on the line...for what? A media war? A photo op? An election campaign? To unseat one of dozens of ruthless dictators from one of many miserable third-world countries? Oil? Freedom? Whose freedom? He’ll be hated by many of the very people he’s trying to “liberate.“

Anyway, most of the men who start these wars don’t ever have to send their sons and daughters over there to die. If they did, maybe they’d think a lot longer and harder before they did.

My son has volunteered for this, and I must respect his decision. Of course I am very proud of him. I know he will meet his measure, and if he survives, may come back a better man than those who never made that sacrifice. He keeps a quote on his desk by Theodore Roosevelt that says, in part, “It is the man who actually strives to do the deeds, who knows the great enthusiasm and great devotion, who spends himself on a worthy cause, who, at best, knows in the end the triumph of great achievement. And who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly...”

Ironically, for my daughter’s birthday, I have given her a real peace sign, to wear around her neck at her first protest. She intends to demonstrate against the Republicans at their New York convention.

“If my brother is willing to risk his life for his convictions,” she says simply, “then I ought to be willing to risk getting arrested for mine.”

You would think her brother would be furious and argue with her over her decision, but surprisingly, he is proud and supportive of her. In many ways, our eclectic little family of independent-minded souls are a microcosm of the whole country--divided and confused about a number of life-and-death issues. But unlike so many of the polarized viewpoints expressed on the rude and hateful scream-fests that pass for talk shows these days, we respect one another and trust each other’s judgment, one way or the other.

My husband votes red, I vote blue, and we are both proud of our son and daughter, each in their own way.

Two nights before my son is set to leave, a series of terrible and awesome thunderstorms roll across the plains, pile up overhead, and light up the night sky in a terrifying display of horizon-to-horizon lightning so dazzling it blinds, a strobe-light show eerie and powerful and frightening. It lasts for three hours.

Before the rains unleash, I go outside and crane my neck to watch, and the first thing I think of is the so-called “Shock and Awe” campaign of the United States military at the start of this war.

The media, I recall, was positively orgasmic to air the pictures. And that’s what the night sky looks like. It looks exactly like a national anthem of rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air.

I lose it.

So no one will hear my wailing, so my son will not see me like this, I wander blindly down the dark country road a quarter-mile from the house, and double over, clutching my guts as if my heart will explode out of them. While the wild night swirls madness around me and whips my hair into my eyes, I scream and weep and rail at the indifferent heavens and the fiery sky.

Most days, my fears are kept at cautious bay--a fence between me and my demons--by my faith. But there are times they scale the wall and attack, leaving me raw and vulnerable, and this is one of them.

Headlights, coming from the house. Furiously, I swipe at my face and try desperately to calm myself. It is my son and his sister. They are going to drive a short distance from the house on one of the ranch roads to a favorite hilltop spot, drink a few beers, and watch the storm. I know they need this time together, so I smile and encourage them, tell them to be careful, and watch the red taillights slowly recede.

Turning away, I trudge back toward home, my way on the muddy road lit up before me by the screaming storm. By the time I get back, rain is slashing the century-old rock house.

My six-foot, four-inch husband of thirty years is standing like a solid oak tree on the front porch, looking out at the storm. He enfolds me into his arms and holds me up while I tell him that our son wants his dad, A&M Class ’70, to have his Aggie class ring “if something should happen to me.”

“He said he didn’t want full military honors,” I sob.

“He’ll get them anyway,” he says, pressing my disheveled head against his chest, where I can hear the solid beating of his heart. He thinks I don’t know he is weeping too, but I do.

As I cry, I tell him about the day Dustin had spent with me, one whole, perfect day, where we didn’t talk about death and destruction and war. We talked of friends and family, politics and religion, and we had laughed a lot. He’d found me sitting in bed reading, and he’d stretched out beside me, talking quietly, and as he talked, his head had inched a little closer, and a little closer, until it was within my reach, and I had rubbed his Marine-short hair and studied him while he drifted into exhausted sleep.

His hands were bigger, I noticed, muscles built from carrying heavy weapons and packs and hiking many miles during desert and urban combat training. They were a grown man’s hands, now, I mused.

And now, here was my son, no longer a child, I sobbed to my patient husband, a Marine going off to war, and here was I, a Mama with her heart cracking wide open, watching him sleep, dreading the passing of the hours.

Our time together, I thought, was like a blazing comet arcing across the night sky, beautiful and powerful and oh, so brief. On this night, after ten years of crippling drought, it seems the skies have burst open, like my heart, and are pouring out the moisture we’ve needed so much.

But with the rain comes earth-shaking storms, and it is no different when we leave the house a couple of days later at six a.m. to take both kids the two hour drive to the nearest airport, in the President’s hometown of Midland. Once again, terrible lightning rips open the skies and pummels the earth while rain thunders against the windshield. We all huddle in my little car, my husband folded into the driver’s seat, steering calmly through the floods, and while the heavens rage, we are all silent, wordless, each keeping company with our own tortured thoughts.

And I wonder if, ultimately, that is how we will all manage to survive this awful storm...hugging close together--in spirit if not in body--while the world explodes all around us...bound tightly and sustained, in the calm and quiet of our love.