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.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Children of Soldiers

A Canadian National Film Board documentary premiering at the Global Visions Film Festival in Edmonton, Alberta this week should be a good one to watch for in the US.  “Children of Soldiers” is the follow-up to director Claire Corriveau’s acclaimed 2007 film, “Nomad’s Land,” about military wives.
"Canada's been at war since the Afghan mission began, but we don't talk about it," says Corriveau, quoted in an article by Jamie Hall in the Edmonton Journal. "Civilians don't feel it; it doesn't change our daily lives. But for thousands of people in Canada, they feel the war every day."

Corriveau was a military spouse before her husband’s retirement in 2007. “Children of Soldiers,” traces the lives of four military families during a parent’s deployment to Afghanistan in 2008.  The trailer shows French- and English-speaking Canadians between 11 and 14 talking about the experience of losing a parent. That was brought home tragically during filming, when the father of one of the families was killed in action. "We had to postpone some of the shooting,” Corriveau says. “We wanted to make sure these families wouldn't resent the fact we were filming their sorrows, and their difficulties."
Military children don't have a chance to build the same kind of relationships with parents as civilians do because of long absences and the life-changing work soldiers do. “I love my father, I love him deeply,” one child says in the film, “but sometimes I prefer him to be away because when he comes back, he's always angry, and he yells at us.” 
All this sounds very familiar, as of course it should.  War is war, and children are children, wherever they live. And so, apparently is the separation between the few who serve and the many who do not.“This isn't just the military's problem,” Corriveau reminds us. “The military is us, it's all of us: our brothers, our uncles, our friends, our sisters. We all have to share the burden that comes with these missions."
Posted by About AART at 6:55 AM

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