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.
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.
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ReplyDeleteOh 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"....
ReplyDeleteHow 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.
ReplyDelete(sharp intake of breath)
ReplyDeleteThat just breaks my heart just thinking of a nineteen year old living under the vice of an 'if'.
ReplyDeleteHow long, O Lord, how long?
ReplyDeleteWill we ever get over this idiocy we call war?
If is such a big little word.
ReplyDeleteOne 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.
ReplyDeleteheartbreaking
ReplyDeleteI hope they all make it back.
ReplyDeleteI like how you write, becuase you express your thoughts and tell your stories in the most natural way. You made me feel able to become in a famous writer.
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