When my father, Odysseus, and his men sailed off to the Trojan War, they were confident their gods favored a quick victory. Instead, the siege of Troy lasted ten years. After Troy fell, the survivors made their way home to Sparta, Mycenae, Pylos, and elsewhere in the ancient Peloponnese. Neither my father nor any of his troops arrived home with the rest. We waited for years as the news grew worse. Odysseus was dead, we were told,or imprisoned, or, worst yet, he had married another woman and abandoned my mother Penelope, my brother Telemachus, and me.


If he is alive somewhere, his thoughts may wander to Penelope and Telemachus, but he won’t be thinking of me. I am the daughter he doesn’t know exists. Odysseus went off to the Trojan War when his son, Telemachus, was barely old enough to walk. His wife, Penelope, was a teenage bride, and is now a young wife, mother, and queen who has to try to rule Ithaca without him.


I was born seven months after he left. I am a hero’s daughter and a princess of his realm, but I have lived my entire life without a father. I’m nineteen now, and still waiting.


All over the world, and throughout history children grow up as I have. This website will focus on the children of those men and women who have gone off to fight America's wars, and provide information and resources for all who care about military families and want to help.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Other Kids Serve Too

I recently learned that a program called Camp Desert Kids was coming to Camp Pendleton, near my home. This Families United program was developed to help young children understand on their own level the place to which Mom or Dad has deployed. At Camp Desert Kids, participants (both children and the homefront parent) experience the deployed parent’s service location in a way that is both fun and educational. 
They learn that Iraqi and Afghan children are in many way the same, although they do many day to day things differently. I remember when I was the age of these children, the way to get my attention was to talk about kids from another culture--what they ate, how they dressed, what games they played, what songs they sang, what their words were for different things. The camp approaches the children on this level, as well as specifically focusing on the aspects of deployment that would be most interesting to a child, like being inside a tent and dressing up in camouflage.


This sounds like a great way to reduce the anxiety in military children by making them feel they know a little more about what is going on with their absent parent.  Here’s a video about the camp.



Posted by About AART at 7:12 AM

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