Daddy's Home

I’m an early riser, so around 6AM, I get up, hit the button on the coffeemaker, check my email and Facebook, review my website statistics for the day before, and then settle in to write my daily blog for Xanthe’s World. This has been my routine every day since I launched this blog in August.

Sometimes, as I go to the file where I keep links to interesting articles about military children, I wonder whether I haven’t covered it all already. Is there anything new to say about the stresses on families of repeated deployments, any new help program that sounds really different and original?

Then something always happens, something that tells me it’s not about saying things once and moving on. This morning, this photograph jolted me out of the doldrums. Here is a little boy who looks to be around two, who clearly does not recognize his father, home from a tour in Afghanistan.

How heartbreaking this must be for both the father and the mother, who must be encouraging the child to overcome his bewilderment and greet this stranger. On this day of excitement, of family unity, their little boy is speaking eloquently in his own way about the less obvious but still traumatic cost of war.

How long will daddy be home? Long enough for games, tickles, and the little rituals to feel natural. Long enough for the slobbery kisses and the sticky fingers slipping into his. And then, the news that he is leaving again. Perhaps this Marine is home for good, but most are not. Many size up their chances for a better life as a civilian in this economy and decide this is as good as it gets.

So what does this child have ahead of him? What will the pictures look like at four? At ten? What will have happened to his father and mother in the interim? How will war have affected dad? How will the stress of parenting alone affect mom? What lies ahead for this child’s whole family?

Repeated long deployments have created an entire subgroup of American children growing up largely without one of their parents at home, living with the knowledge that a parent is in danger, coping with visits of a parent whose war experiences make him or her a stranger in the house. This little boy is just at the beginning of what will grow more complicated for him than making the connection between this man and daddy, and liking having him home.

What do we owe this child? He is serving too.