December 30, 2005

Pause

Most of them sophomores in college, they are home with their families for the holidays, and they have a few carefree weeks to hang out with all their old high school friends.
My daughter has been getting together with local friends to talk, eat junk food, and watch movies.

Not all of my daughter's high school friends are home, though. Some are missing. The kids who went into the military are overseas.

Daughter says that her friend Crewcut is in Iraq now but plans to be back this May. "He keeps saying that if he makes it back, we’ll all be just getting out of school for the summer and we will have a big party."

She paused, "He always says it like that … if I make it back…."

He is nineteen years old.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just wanted to say that reading your beautiful writing is a joy. Thank you. Happy New Year. I'll pray for Crewcut and all of them.

Anonymous said...

(o)

Sue said...

Oh my. I don't even know quite how to process the word "if" in the young man's sentence. How terribly tragic that a nineteen year old should have to plan around "if"....

Leslee said...

How sad. It amazes me constantly how some words in our language can have such a profound meaning. Like this tiny little word if. it's not something you'd expect to hear from a boy with his WHOLE life ahead of him.

Phantom Scribbler said...

(sharp intake of breath)

nancy said...

That just breaks my heart just thinking of a nineteen year old living under the vice of an 'if'.

Rev Dr Mom said...

How long, O Lord, how long?

Will we ever get over this idiocy we call war?

purple_kangaroo said...

If is such a big little word.

Artichoke Heart said...

One of my colleagues lost his 19-year-old nephew (his brother's only son, and a boy close to the same age as his own son) in Iraq this fall. Simply incomprehensible. Absolutely devastating.

listie said...

heartbreaking

Liz Miller said...

I hope they all make it back.

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