I have been the victim of a forced marriage — what could be called a shotgun wedding. In all actuality, it could be called an “M16” wedding. With this union came facts (forced entry) into my brain’s database: An M16 is an issued Marine Military Rifle and to further worry me… they jam all the time. While an M16 is an accurate weapon (according to my son), these rifles are not the best and often fail to shoot. An M16 is the same weapon that is seen set up vertically with issued boots and issued helmets when Marines are killed on the battlefield. These personal effects of the dead become a memorial to be honored by brother Marines. The terror of the battle is often gauged by the number of rows of these “rifle, helmet, and boot” memorials which can be seen too regularly in news magazines.
I love little boys, and as if I need to prove it, I have had six of them. Unlike little girls who spend a good deal of their toddlerhood and beyond screaming and squealing… little boys’ yell and holler to show off their vivid imaginations.
I myself had to observe four of these little boys for years just to prove to myself that in their reality, a mere stick is a gun (or a sword), a fork is a gun, a knife is a knife (or a sword) and a piece of toast with a few bites taken out of it, is a gun. Fortunately, a banana is a phone (but in a pinch it can also be a gun). To put it plainly: with a boy, there is no way around an occasional gunfight.
Realizing that this “scheme” is one of the constructs of life, I reluctantly purchased “Nerf” guns. These soothed the desires of my small but tough little soldiers, and were given to them wrapped together with some military face paint (from Santa). These treasures provided cover for months while my little boys protected our family interests from the man they called, “Mr. Meany.” Mr. Meany would predictably run outside — out of his immaculate home — at the sight of a couple of these mini-soldiers wearing camouflage and rolling down the sidewalk toward his house. Sprawled on their stomachs and a skateboard, too often they had caught a wheel on the edge of his perfectly-manicured lawn, causing Mr. Meany to scream at them mercilessly. Worse, he had become “the enemy.” This meant that I could no longer be identified as a hip mom (Mr. Meany had a ponytail) and the PC police would soon be knocking at my door to force me to turn in my hippie peacenik license – I had botched the “no guns” test.
Since that day, this home has seen and heard countless bad guys meet their fate and many defenseless monsters have been terminated. And now on cue, the youngest boy at age two, grabs the frosting spatula and claims it as his weapon, his “sting”! At least experience tells me to stay 
calm and that he too (as with the other five), by destiny, will slay dragons and shoot bad guys until age 15 or so.
I herewith rebuke a fatal cultural error that has taken place in my lifetime: it has become unacceptable to play cowboys and Indians. If a child is caught at it, this type of playing showcases the lack of political correctness a parent has. Even if I did not know that my child had made a bow and arrow out of a hanger and a rubber band, I risked being labeled. Shhh, don’t tell: I bought my boy a six shooter powered by caps, and in doing so knew that I had to forget about being asked to play Bunco for the rest of my life. With the onset of high tech sophisticated weaponry, it seems no one even uses a bow and arrow any longer to declare war. There are no new western films being made for TV. Unless you are a tribesman waging war from deep in the Amazon Jungle, arrows come only from some un-relatable-to time and place. Bows and arrows are not able to manifest themselves into a child’s make-believe world any longer. If only this setting existed nearby: a horse, a prairie and a train to rob. I wonder: if my son had been allowed to play Cowboys and Indians, might I have been relieved of my new and unwanted marriage to the United States Marines?
Perhaps my grandmother is to blame.
While I was growing up in the 60’s and 70’s I just wondered why she was so grossly un-cool. Anna Mae was always talking wildly about the five most precious things in her very busy life- (over and over again that is.) They were: First, Her Catholic Faith. (She was a convert.) Second, The Little Sisters of the Poor, Third, Her Grandchildren and Great Grandchildren, Fourth, The Denver Broncos, and finally, the United States Military, of which she believed she was a part. For years, Grandma ran the USO in Denver, Colorado so I assume that Red, White and Blue blood flows through my veins, too.
My grandmother also had gone through a forced marriage to the military. She was proudly conscripted with her husband on separate shores; while he fought to drive the Nazi’s from France, she raised her 5 children to be outstanding adults. My grandfather was much less excited about the whole thing and when asked about the war would only say, “What the hell do you want to know about that for?”
So here I am at O–one hundred, knowing my 19-year-old leaves for combat training at Camp Pendleton at O-four hundred. He has been home for 4 weeks. He was “rewarded” for becoming the “most improved”. (The drill sergeant told me he was a “bucket of slop” when he got there… not to be insulted!) So, for his reward it was his “privilege” to work for a month in the local recruiting office.
He told me yesterday that the recruiting experience has taught him that going into Afghanistan is probably safer than wearing your Military Uniform out and about in our small Northern California town. Understandably, a mother may desire to call the guy who recruits her son into the Marines, “A_____le” (Alpha – Hotel) and even desire to throw her five-dollar coffee drink at him. But what ruination of civility allowed her thoughts to take flesh? Does she love her son more than I love mine? Does she know how much it costs to have your “dress blues” dry-cleaned? Does she, like the old Bunco mothers, consider it MY failure that my son quit college to join the Marines? No, No! I would tell her; it is because he loves his country open-eyed to its flaws, but also wholly and deeply. Does she consider that I like her, taught my son that, “No greater love hath a man, than one who will lay down his life for his brother?”
Among the other Marine Culture and life-broadening tidbits that I have learned since I have been a “newlywed” Marine Mom: Haircuts and shaving are BIG. My boy came home with a “High and Tight” (no sidewalls) and left with a “Fade” (no sidewalls). There in the barber’s chair I listen to him speak quietly to the barber about the Marines, and consider what he really learned at boot camp. First, an even more intense Love of his fellow man: He is now able to Love another person’s child as much as he loves his own brother! Second, he will be trained and would be willing to actually voluntarily die to save another Marine, perhaps even by jumping on a live grenade. I shudder…
Then the barber says, “My father and brothers were all military, I know what you are going to do, and I thank you.”
That being said, the lady sitting in the salon chair next to him sends a wink my way; she’s listening as he tells the barber, that he wants to go to Afghanistan with the rest of his platoon. Then sneakily, the barber says (trying to speak below earshot), “I know, they are like brothers to you now even if you don’t get along.” My son seeing that I am listening, raises his voice to say for my benefit that, “My MOS is just an ordinary desk job.”
My two year old has officially taken over the Superman Cape that was made by a friend of mine for my Marine when he was three. My friend did not know that my son and his brothers would actually believe that they “become” Superman when they don the cape. The cape has been weathered, yet still looked quite fine on my young Marine when he relieved the baby of it. Later that night, still wearing the cape, he told me that a teenage kid had yelled at him from across the street, purposefully mocking him in his uniform, “Hey, don’t you know the war is over?”
I asked, did you yell back, “Hey, don’t you know I am Superman?”
“Naw,” he said, “but I wanted to yell, ‘Hey did you know that I volunteered so that there wouldn’t be a need for a draft?’”
We agreed that most certainly he will be made a fool of again by some wise-cracking college student for believing in “Truth, Justice and the American Way.”
We laughed for a few seconds.
Then suddenly I became struck with fear at this realization — my son is not really Superman! He is not faster than a speeding bullet (which could definitely come in handy in his new line of work). He really can’t leap over tall buildings in a single bound, and while he became a much better runner at boot camp, he definitely cannot chase a speeding locomotive.
On Family Day in San Diego, four speeding-by weeks ago, the drill sergeant passed on what I thought was shocking but sage advice: new Marines are now warned, “not to drink, not to get too wild, and to keep your personal alert level to a level 5.” Sadly, there is a new enemy at home. These are gangs and others who disrespect the military and kill them as a trophy because they are identified with an unpopular war and an unpopular president.
Skirmishes in Pakistan and India may eventually collapse the fragile governance there. It may then be turbo-charged by nuclear capability — a threat to the progress that allows little girls like my own Olivia, to go to school. Little Olivia of Afghanistan was, for some reason, not lucky enough to be born in the U.S, free from the acid-throwing, beheading Taliban. I expect that as with the Vietnam War, the lines of the good guys and the bad guys will be blurred further by those who do not understand the mind of a young Marine. The young Marine understands there really IS a war going on, and that he may be one of the troops who will be placed in harm’s way to protect the advancements already made with American Blood in a foreign country. All politics aside, he goes forth to relieve a tired brother Marine.
As for now, my son, who is a lover of the Great Books, of Bach, of Hayden of Stravinsky, of Aquinas, of Fulton Sheen, of Christ, of God, of Blues Guitar — this son of America will leave this morning for combat training with man tears in his eyes. He leaves to serve, I emphasize serve his country, just not in the cool, acceptable, Ameri-Corps way.
There were firsts on this visit: he asked me to “hang out” with him while he ran his last minute errands, the cleaners, packing his sea bags, and finally stopping by the recruiting office to pick up his orders.
There under the porch, in the cold, was a vagrant — a homeless guy shouting cusswords to the sky. I said to my son, “Don’t go out there!” My boy laughed and said, “Lock your door.” As my son walked by him, I heard the bum pause from his four-letter-word rant, and say through his parched, lips, “Way to go devil dog.” To which my son replied, “Thank you, Sir.”
The bum too was a Marine, a once-strapping young man like my son, who in the ‘60’s left as a hero and came back a “baby killer.” After taking part in the horror of war and hating it more than anyone could understand, he came home to hearing insults like those that my son heard all week, and the cruelty and disbelief had taken their toll on him. Was his Mom dead and gone by now? Did she die of grief?
I began thinking how for the last four decades, at his high school reunions, the bum’s friends probably gather and consider the absence of “poor old him” who just went “nuts.” The broken old hobo — once a well-traveled uniformed man and veteran of the battles of some war — could find his only comfort under the porch of the Marine Recruiting Office, with my son, his brother, while I, reluctantly drafted into marriage with the Marine Corps, wept uncontrollably over him as though for another son.
In the morning, at 04:00, and for the next four years, I will turn my beloved son over to my country, like hundreds of other reluctant mothers have. I know that it is possible he will ship out and I will never see him again. I know that there are many mothers enduring this nightmare and I love them, like a sister. Strangely, I find that I do not shirk or fear this. I thrust my son into the arms of Divine Providence, comforted in knowing that there are some who still believe that this beautiful and free country together with its flawed people, must continue to exist — and exist to spread liberty, in truth, in justice and in the American way.
[Editor’s note: This article was conceived in 2007. Carolyn’s Marine is getting ready for another deployment to Afghanistan this year.]
