From fog of war a son emerges a soldier
This lady is a very talented writer. She captures perfectly what it means to be a parent to a child growing up...Annie and I see our kids growing up, much, much faster than we'd like.
Follows are a few of the writer's stories about her son, her father and her family. By the time you've read them, you will feel you know them, testimony of Ms. Diaz' writing skills. (I tell Annie all the time -- just write. She has it in her - writing - as well.)
Walking the walk: From fog of war a son emerges a soldier
By Sue Diaz
SAN DIEGO - Through the wavy triple-digit heat of the Mojave in midsummer, the Humvee headed our way up the long sloping road. From the front seat of our parked car, I tracked its progress, stepping outside as it got closer.
"Think that's him?" I asked my husband. "Hard to tell," he said, peering in the same direction.
It was Saturday, late in the afternoon, at the main entrance to the Army's Fort Irwin, near Barstow, Calif. Our son, Roman, a soldier with the 101st Airborne in Kentucky, was there with his unit for three weeks of desert training. When it was finished, they'd be flying back to Kentucky to prepare for deployment to Iraq next month. It would be Roman's second 15-month tour of duty there.
Earlier, just after lunch, he'd called us here at home with news that he'd been given the night off: "You guy's wouldn't by any chance have plans to be near Barstow later today, would you? Because if you did, you know, we could maybe get together for dinner or something."
The invitation was vintage Roman. Wry. Low-key. Unassuming. He knew, of course, that we were as likely to be near Barstow as we were to be planning a weekend in Baghdad. But he also guessed his parents would be happy to make the three-hour drive on the spur of the moment for one more chance to see him. He was right.
The plan wasn't without complications. When we arrived at the guard station at the fort's south entrance, the MP there informed us we wouldn't be allowed on base unless we were accompanied by our soldier.
"Wait over there," the guard said pointing to a paved spot nearby. We pulled over. Parked. Rolled down all the windows. Opened the front doors. My husband used his cellphone to call Roman on his.
"Hey, all right! You made it!" Roman answered. "Soon as I can find a ride, I'll be there."
My husband got out, sighed, stretched, and paced. I unbuckled my seat belt, leaned back, and took in the scene around me: low hills dotted with rocks and scrub, trails etched into the hard, dry terrain. In spite of the small city of boxy buildings a couple miles down the road, and all the cars and trucks passing the guard station on their way out, Fort Irwin seemed to be mostly sky and sand. In a place like that, thoughts have lots of room to wander. Mine did, to Roman - 21 and on the brink of going to war for the second time.
No matter how old our children are, it's hard as a parent not to still think of them as kids. And whenever my son's been home on leave, he hasn't gone out of his way to change this view. He'll typically sleep in. Shuffle into the kitchen in bare feet and baggy jeans. Open the refrigerator, idle there for a while, bypass the V-8 juice in favor of a can of Pepsi. Schlep to the family room sofa for some channel surfing, happy as can be to rediscover SpongeBob SquarePants.
And that's OK. If anyone deserves to be cut some slack, it's a kid who's been to Iraq and back. And is headed there again.
No longer a lowly private, this next time he'll be in charge of a group of men. Most are older than he is, he's told us. Some married, with children.
I tried to imagine the little boy I used to call "Bunky" barking orders to men carrying machine guns. Tried to picture the laid-back teenager I knew now giving instructions in how to clean a weapon, pack a duffel, carry a wounded comrade. Try as I might, I couldn't do it.
And wondered if I'd ever begin to understand what he's been through and how he's changed; if I'd ever be able to see him, really see him, not so much as my son, but as someone separate from my memories, someone coming into his own in the complicated world beyond our backyard. It would require a fundamental shift in perception. And in those families where this sea change somehow happens, it means, I think, not only that the child has grown up, but that the parent finally has, too.
The Humvee we'd been watching stopped about a block away, just before a turnaround point. I saw the door on its right side swing open, a backpack land on the pavement, a tall soldier in camouflage khakis jump out. I would recognize Roman, I was sure, even from a distance, just by the way he moved. I looked for that ambling walk of his I knew so well.
The manner in which this fellow carried himself was something else entirely. Back straight. Chest out. He'd scooped up his pack with one hand, and with the other gave the hood of the Humvee an authoritative thump, then pointed as if giving directions. With a quick, full-arm wave to the guys inside, he turned and headed up the road toward us and the guard station. His stride, smooth and sure.
I shrugged. Not him.
I turned to get back into the car, when somebody called out. "Hey, Mom! Dad!" I heard him say, in a voice familiar as my own.
UPDATE: I did a Google and found a prior article by Sue Diaz, also about her son.
Reunion with soldier son was cheerful - if a bit hair-raising
Monday, August 1, 2005
By SUE DIAZ
WHATEVER it is, let's be cool about it. We can act as if we don't even notice," I suggested. My husband and I were driving to the airport to pick up our 21-year-old son, Roman, an infantryman with the 101st Airborne in Fort Campbell, Ky. Specialist Diaz was coming home to San Diego for 10 days before heading back to Iraq to begin his second 15-month deployment there.
In a call shortly before we left for the airport, his sister, whom he'd just visited, told us we were in for a surprise. But the only clue Anne offered was that it had something to do with her brother's hair.
"Now, Mom, just keep in mind where he's been and what he's going back to. Who can blame him right now if he just wants to have a little fun?"
"New color?" I guessed.
"You'll see," was all she'd say.
Roman's height alone - 6'2" - would have made him easy to spot, standing there near the curb in front of the terminal. But his hair made him impossible to miss. There's something head-turning about a Mohawk - even when it stands no more than an inch-and-a-half high - especially a bright red one, with the tips dyed black.
"Oh," his computer-engineer dad gulped, catching sight of him.
"Oh, my," I elaborated.
But after a curbside flurry of car doors opening and a couple of quick hugs, we simply said to Roman, with all the nonchalance we could muster, "Welcome home!" and "Good to see you!"
On the drive back I turned from time to time in the front bucket seat to ask him about his flight from San Jose, his weekend with Anne and Erick. His dad chatted offhandedly about the weather, asked about the soldiers in the unit he now leads - "my Jedi," Roman calls them.
But there was an elephant in the room. Twenty minutes into the trip, I could ignore it no longer. "Hmmmmmmmm," I said, twisting to look at Roman full on. "I can't quite put my finger on it. But something's definitely . . . different."
"Hmmmmmmmm. What could it be?" he teased, fingertip touching one corner of his smile.
Roman has always had an independent streak. And as far as surprises go, this one was small compared to his decision three years ago to join the Army instead of going to college. It's taken me nearly this long to come to terms with that choice. And I think I have, as much as any mother can.
In fact, just a few days earlier, I'd told friends and neighbors about our soldier's brief visit home and invited them to come say "Hi" at a block party barbecue on Sunday in the cul-de-sac - the same place Roman learned to ride a two-wheeler.
A recent picture of him graced one corner of the photocopied invitation. Smiling in his dress uniform, complete with medals, ribbons, and the blue cord of the infantry, he looked handsome, clean-cut and all-American. His hair was dark brown, not DayGlo red. And in that photo, it still grew on the sides of his head.
The former PTA mom in me wrestled at first with what the neighbors would think. I wondered if I might convince them he was actually a member of an elite, top-secret special-forces unit.
"You've heard of the Green Berets?" I imagined myself saying. "Well, Roman is with the Airborne's Red Mohawks."
"Don't worry, Mom. I'm going to shave it off at the end of this leave. I'll have to," he said. "It's just that I've always wanted to do something crazy with my hair. And I figured this was my last chance."
I trust he was looking ahead to his role someday as a responsible post-Army adult. But like the dark smoke of a roadside bomb, the idea of "lasts" inevitably hovers over a leave like this one and colors it in ways Clairol never thought of. Anyone with someone they love heading into harm's way knows this. War has a way of making clear what really matters in this life. "What the neighbors think" is not high on that list.
To their credit and his, the 60 or so who came to the block party seemed to take Roman's hair in stride. It was a vindication of sorts, if any was even needed. Men clapped him on the back and laughed. Kids said, "Cool." Moms wrapped their arms around him. In spite of differing views about the war, everyone there wished our unconventional soldier well.
I must confess I still thought this new, albeit temporary, look of his was not the most mature thing my son's ever done. And then he surprised me again - with something that was. It came in answer to a question I asked the day before he left.
We'd been talking about how time flies, and how the end date of his four-year stint in the service will come up while he still has three months left in Iraq. "Well, then. Think the Army might let you come back sooner?" I asked. "You know, before the rest of your unit?"
Roman sent me a look that said he couldn't believe I was asking that. "Mom, even if the Army would, I couldn't do that. Say to my men, 'See ya! I'm outta here'? No way. No. I'll come home when they do."
The next time you see a dusty group of U.S. soldiers in the news, remember these stories - the funny hair, the serious conversation. Think about the unique individuals who wear those look-alike uniforms - their goodness and goofiness, their complexity and their courage. Think about all we as a country lose when even one of them falls.
Sue Diaz, a freelance writer, wrote this article for The Christian Science Monitor. Send comments about this article to oped@northjersey.com.
UPDATE, AGAIN: I can't get enough of this writer. I found her website, suediaz.com, and found another article on her son (below), and one about her father (below it), one about her family at the beach (below it), and, finally, one about her kids going to school. All good stuff.
From a Corner of Hell, a Moment of Beauty
by Sue Diaz
I peeked into the sunny bedroom at the end of the hall, and for a moment, it seemed as if the last two years had never happened. As if my son, Roman, had never left home at eighteen to join the army. As if he’d never been deployed for fifteen long months in Iraq. Because when I glanced over at the desk in the corner, there he was again -- in blue jeans and T-shirt, hunched in front of his computer, a bottle of Dr Pepper near his right hand, yesterday’s socks scattered on the floor. But in place of his old high school backpack, a weathered green duffle bag now leaned against the wall.
In the luggage claim area at the airport earlier in the week, I had tried to lift that bag and couldn’t budge it. Roman quickly stepped over and scooped it up with one hand.
This wasn’t the first time he’d been back for a visit since his deployment to Iraq. Six months earlier his dad and I had welcomed him home from the war with a big party. This time the hand-painted banner we’d tacked to the garage door then was taped above the sofa in the family room.
“Hey, Mom,” Roman said catching a glimpse of me at the bedroom door. “Come here. Check this out.”
He wanted to show me the small computer he had bought, packed, and sent here from Germany. That’s where the 1st Armored, the division he’d served with in Iraq, is based, and where he’d lived the past six months. The new orders he’d received in Baumholder a few weeks ago were sending him now to the 101st Airborne in Ft. Campbell, Kentucky. That would be his next stop after the 10-day leave he was on here was over.
Roman’s infantry unit with the 1st Armored had the distinction of serving in a combat zone longer than any group since World War II. And now, according to a recent Pentagon announcement, soldiers from the 101st Airborne – where he’s headed – “will make up a significant part of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan starting in 2005.”
We didn’t talk much about the likelihood of his return to the war. Instead we chatted that day about his computer. Its speed. Its size. Its amazing graphics.
“And what are those?” I asked, pointing to two on-screen icons labeled “Iraq I” and “Iraq II.”
“Pictures I took with my digital camera when I was over there,” he said.
“Can I see them?”
With a couple clicks of his mouse, the digital slide show he created began, and its images are seared in my memory:
Hovering helicopters in silhouette against a blood-red sky.
Acres of confiscated mortar shells, AK-47s, rifles.
Humvees with no doors.
Buildings with no walls.
The head of a child’s doll lying in the dust, its plastic face blistered, its tiny ears singed.
The back seat of an empty car, mottled with stains the color of terra cotta tile.
A spider hole, half-hidden by brambles. “The hole Saddam didn’t crawl out of,” my son said with a wry grin.
The only other times he smiled were at pictures of his buddies in Bravo Company. Before each of those photos faded into the next, he’d hurry to name every one of his comrades, even though from most distances, they all looked alike to me -- with their army haircuts and their desert khakis.
“That’s Ramirez. Stanfel. Davis. Sgt. Hurd. . . .” he said, touching the screen again and again with the tip of his finger. As if I would remember all their names. As if he could ever forget.
Off in the distance in one of those group shots, I couldn’t help but notice black smoke coiling into an impossibly blue sky.
“Were there any places over there that you’d walk through the streets and say, ‘Nice neighborhood’? You know, like here?” I asked.
“No. Not really,” he said, shaking his head. “Not any more.”
Just then a tight close-up of a big, bright-yellow sunflower filled the screen, and just as quickly, disappeared.
“Wait. Go back,” I said. And when he did, I added, “Where’d that come from?”
“The flower? I took that picture one morning after the warehouse we’d been holed up in had taken a lot of enemy fire. It seemed so weird to come out and see something so pretty still standing in the middle of. . .well, in the middle of all that.”
And on the screen, more snapshots from that dusty corner of hell continued.
And now he’s gone again. Roman left a few days after that slide show on another plane heading east, but the improbable beauty of that sunflower has stayed with me. It’s with me still. And through whatever lies ahead for this soldier of ours now with the 101st Airborne, I will hold on to the stubborn hope embodied by that bloom, embodied, too, by the young man who, after one particularly long night at his post in Iraq, put down his machine gun to point a camera at its petals.
On Reading My Father's WWII Diary
by Sue Diaz
Self-appointed Keeper of Assorted Family Artifacts, my older sister, Kathy, mentioned the book off-handedly in a long-distance call, as if, of course, I knew about it. As if I’d known all these years that our father’s D-Day diary rested in a box in a closet in her home in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, near the christening dress made from our Grandmother’s wedding gown.
But I had no idea.
“Whoa! Wait a minute! Daddy kept a diary when he was in the war?”
“Yeah. One of those government-issue things. Small enough to fit in a back pocket.”
“And he actually wrote in it?”
I remember my father as a doer, not a chronicler. A reader, not a writer. Essentially, a man of few words. Oh, sure, I often heard him, my mom, and their friends talking politics and Green Bay Packers as they leaned against the rec-room bar he built in the basement of our home on the south side of Milwaukee. But around his three daughters, Frank T. Bindas could be almost shy -- a genial foreigner in our world of Toni home permanents, Beatles songs, and nylons hanging like Spanish moss over the bathroom shower rod.
I asked my sister to send me the diary, thinking it would provide a fascinating first-person account of a pivotal time in history, that it might fill in some of the details Saving Private Ryan left out. And I thought, too, I just might get to know my no-nonsense father in a way that wasn’t possible when I was younger, and he was still alive.
A week later, the book arrives. I slide it out of its cardboard Priority Mailer, run my fingers over the words, “My Life in the Service,” embossed beneath the golden eagle on the creased, blue leatherette cover. Opening it, I draw my thumb across the outer edges of the diary’s lined sheets. They make a fluttering sound, and a faint mustiness rises up from the yellowing pages. For the most part, this diary is empty, except for twenty pages or so in the middle filled with my father’s slanting, elegant handwriting.
June 2, left Plymouth, boarded LC1 (L) 419
My eyes lock on to the next entry – June 6, 1944.
Arrived on D-Day, invasion day on the shores of Normandy, France. Was strafed by the “Jerries” that day. Stayed near the beach area for a few days and found things to be really hot.
That’s it. That’s all my father has to say about what must have been the scariest, most horrific day of his life, a day that changed the course of the war and with it, the history of Western Civilization. No mention of the pounding of his heart as his boat headed toward the beach. Not a word about wading through surf red with the blood of fellow soldiers. Nothing at all about the scream of bullets or the sudden and forever silence of fallen friends.
Found things to be really hot is all this 21-year-old corporal in the Seventh Corps can bring himself to say.
The next time he writes, it’s June 10.
Received first mail here in France. Really boosted my morale.
I continue reading, entry by entry, looking all the while for what I consider the real stuff of history -- the whine of bombs, the heat of combat –- detailed by this battle-tested soldier under the command of Lt. General J. Lawton Collins, or “Joe Lightnin’,” as he’s called in a 1944 edition of the Saturday Evening Post. According to that same article, “Collins’ divisions were given the job of breaking up the bloody, costly hedgerow fighting at the base of the Peninsula. They broke through the German lines west of St. Lo and ripped open a gap through which General George Patton’s 3rd Army made its great drive. Into the boiling cauldron of smoke and dust, Collins sent his infantry.”
A few of my father’s diary entries touch – but only briefly -- on such things.
In early July, for instance, he writes, Spent in a fox hole. Plenty of noise and one of those Fourth of Julys I hope I never have to spend again.
Really have the Nazis on the run, he says on the 25th of that same month.
On November 22, he notes, Buzz bombs came over all day.
But for the most part, my father’s wartime diary chronicles -- in addition to the frequent movements of his division -- a different kind of story. One filled with the beauty of distant hills. Letters and cookies from home. The sweetness of the young ladies he meets and dances with. The news that the Browns beat the Cards, 2-0, in the first game of the World Series. The joy of the liberated Belgian people:
Shall never forget this day and the welcome we received, he writes on September 5. Rode in an open car. People came running and shouting, “Viva La Amerique,” getting in our car, hugging and kissing us, throwing flowers, apples, pears, plums, confetti, beer, champagne, extending their hands for us to shake. Women and men running with their young ones after us. People were so happy. Tears were running from their eyes. Girls were dressed in colors of their flag, throwing ribbons from their hair, kissing us (some were beautiful also), giving us flags. Certainly a happy lot of people, and made me feel the same.
Then, with the formality I recognize as my father’s, he says, once again, I shall never forget this day.
Other entries talk about things like buying eggs from a French farmer and enjoying coffee and doughnuts, compliments of the American Red Cross. There’s champagne, too, plenty of it, left behind by the Germans. And pretty girls who tuck their pictures into the pockets of his Army jacket.
One snowy January day in Belgium my father and a friend, Sgt. Neubrand, hike to the top of a hill for the pure pleasure of it. Took pictures when we arrived at the top where there was a crucifix and got a wonderful view of the town.
Describing a few days spent on leave in a hotel in Brussels, my father notes with obvious delight the hot and cold running water and a real bed with foot-thick mattresses and clean white sheets.
In early February of 1945, he receives a “Dear John” letter from his girlfriend back home. Her name is Dolores, like my mother’s, but she is not my mom. And this jilted soldier writes, Hope I don’t have too much trouble getting over it, but somehow or other, I think we will both see things in the same light.
Good thing for me they didn’t. If they had, I wouldn’t be here. And I wouldn’t have had these moments with the pages of my daddy’s wartime diary. I always thought of my father as a good, hard-working man – soft-spoken, private, unemotional. I knew him as someone who stored household bills in an old cigar box, who loved a thick T-bone, Glenn Miller’s music, and all of us – Mom, Kathy, Janet, and me. He was the grown-up I remember glimpsing one night from the hall as he knelt by his bedside, head bowed in prayer at the end of the day. These impressions still hold.
Yet now I see, too, that beneath those neatly pressed Van Heusen shirts of his thumped the heart of a cock-eyed optimist. A soldier who somehow managed to view the glass as “half full,” even when it was, in fact, completely shattered. My father. Frank T. Bindas. A man who, like so many of his generation, was no stranger to the horrors of war, but who chose to focus instead on the things in this crazy life that are worth fighting for.
The Family on the Beach
by Sue Diaz
We’re sitting in our car, my husband and I, parked near the shore of Torrey Pines Beach, watching the sun slide below the wall of granite-gray clouds rising up from the long line of the horizon out where the ocean ends.
It’s chillier now than when we headed out to dinner earlier this evening. We didn’t think then to bring along jackets or sweaters. So instead of walking off our desserts along this favorite stretch of beach, we decide to take in the scenery tonight from the comfort of two bucket seats, to hear the call of gulls through the car’s open moon roof.
It’s a beautiful evening. Here at sunset the shore is awash with muted pinks, pale yellows, and opalescent grays. Drained of daytime color, this seaside world of breaking waves and wet sand shimmers like the inside of a oyster shell.
Nudging my husband’s arm, I nod toward the young family ambling into view a few yards from the water’s edge. A mom. A dad. A little girl about five. A boy who looks to be three.
The dad, jacket collar turned up, hands deep in the pockets of his Dockers, stops to peer out at a big ship dredging sand about a half-mile offshore. The mom’s gaze wanders from the setting sun to the seagulls overhead to the floppy cloth bag she’s setting down in the sand.
From the bottom of this bag, the boy pulls out a plastic shovel and promptly sets to work -- digging, scooping, patting. With the pointy corner of the shovel, he draws in the sand a circle the size of a center-stage spotlight. His sister, all knees and elbows and Buster Brown bangs, sees this as her cue to jump in and perform for any beachcombers who care to watch what appears to be The Dance of the Purple Leggings. No one notices, least of all the little fellow building aqueducts at her feet.
The boy’s intense focus, the girl’s dramatic flair remind me of our two kids some fourteen years ago.
“Remember when Anne and Roman were that age?” I say to my husband.
“Just barely,” he answers with a bemused laugh.
It’s not that his mind is going. For a middle-aged guy, it’s actually still quite sharp. Before our daughter headed off to college, she’d often come to him for help with her calculus homework. Our soon-to-be-eighteen son, who currently knows everything, also knows his father can be counted on to answer to any and all questions about microchips and motherboards and computer memory.
But it’s the other kind of memory -- the kind measured in minutes and heartbeats -- that is harder, much harder, to hold on to.
Where does the time go? How is it possible that one minute we’re feeding strained bananas to a little person wearing a Big Bird bib, and the next minute we’re watching in amazement as that same individual finishes off three slices of leftover pizza as an appetizer? How can it be that one evening we’re toting sand toys to the beach, and the next night, or so it seems, we’re asking our teenagers, “So, who are you going with to the dance?” I can’t take my eyes off this family. And for an instant, there is no such thing as time. There is only Life, leaving its footprints on the beach. The tide is on its way in. But at this moment, that doesn’t matter. All that matters is these four people -- with their zippered jackets and plastic shovels, their windblown hair and sand-filled sneakers. And this family is us -- me, my husband, our daughter and son. And we are them.
They won’t know it, but I’ll be there when they arrive back home -- when the dad brushes the sticky sand from between his son’s fingers, and the mom pours a couple capfuls of Mr. Bubble into the warm, running water of the tub in the kids’ bathroom. When the light from the lamp next to the family-room sofa falls on the pages of tonight’s bedtime story, I’ll be there, too. In truth, I already am. My voice is rising and falling, my eyes growing big, as one of these parents adds a bit of extra drama to this day’s rendition of Green Eggs and Ham. Next, I’m following the static-y rustle of the kids’ footed PJs down the carpeted hall. With their mother and father, I’m tucking the covers under their chins, planting a kiss their foreheads, and turning off the bedroom lights with a soft, “Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
The family’s about to leave the beach now. The dad scoops up the toy bag and reaches for the girl’s hand as he turns to navigate the small incline that leads toward the cars. The little boy, still clutching his shovel, lifts both arms toward his mom. She picks him up. He wraps his legs around her waist, rests a cheek on her shoulder. Faces expressionless, they shuffle past our parked car.
In Thornton Wilder’s Our Town there is a character, Emily, who asks in that play’s final act, Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? Wondering that very same thing, I feel impelled to pop up through the moon roof and call after these strangers, Stop! Pay attention! Look, really look, at one another! I want to tell them, Tomorrow your little girl will be a coed at a university hundreds of miles away! The day after that, your son will get his driver’s license! Before you know it, you’ll have a condo in Sun City and five grandchildren! Stop. Stay. Look. Really look.
Of course, I don’t say any of this. Instead, my eyes follow them all as they head toward their car and home -- toward days, nights, and years that will, I’m sure, pass far too quickly. But they can’t possibly know that. Not now. Not next week or even next month. Maybe they’ll have an inkling in another fifteen years or so, when one evening after dinner, this mom or dad or both drive to a nearby beach to watch the sun slide below a wall of clouds rising up from the horizon out where the ocean ends. There they’ll notice a young family stopping near the water’s edge. For a short while that holds within it echoes of eternity, they’ll find they won’t be able to take their eyes off that strangely familiar foursome. And without a word, they’ll watch the long, end-of-day shadows stretching toward them across the sand -- of a little boy and a dancing girl and a floppy bag of beach toys.
First Day of School
by Sue Diaz
Early September, 1988. With a group of other parents, I am lingering on the school yard blacktop, heart in throat, as my youngest child and his new classmates line up for the very first time behind a paper sign that reads: Kindergarten – A.M. When the 8 o’clock bell rings, Roman’s public school education will officially begin. Soon he’ll be learning the rudiments of phonics, new number concepts, and the importance of sharing -- not to mention the second verse of “Itsy-Bitsy Spider” and where to find the bathroom pass. My little boy -- going out into the larger world. A Milestone Moment.
I sigh, bite my bottom lip, blink back a few silly-me tears. Gazing off into the distance, I square my shoulders and silently vow – for both our sakes -- to be strong.
Suddenly, I feel a small tug on my arm. It’s Roman. He’s slipped out of line and come over to me. Curling his forefinger, he indicates there is something he needs to tell me, something important, but it’s a secret. What? I wonder, bending towards him. Does the little guy, here on the brink of The Great Unknown, need some last minute reassurance? A quick kiss? A kind word to carry with him to the crafts table?
His brown eyes narrowing slightly, he cups his dimpled hand over my ear, takes a deep breath. After a moment’s pause, I hear him whisper, “You can go now, Mom.”
The bell rings. Faster than you can say, “Good morning, boys and girls,” Roman’s back in line. Tossing a crooked grin in my direction, he bustles with the others towards Room B-3. If I want a long last look, I’ll have to settle for the back of his head.
The morning passes with the loose routines of a writing mom who works at home: dishes, laundry, time at the computer. It is close to noon. I’ve come back this time with my mom, Roman’s grandmother, and the two of us are sitting on a low concrete bench near the kindergarten room, waiting to greet him after his first day.
“I don’t see him, do you?” my mother says with a cluck of concern as her eyes scan the line of five-year-olds wriggling its way back from the playground.
“Well, he’s gotta be there somewhere,” I say, “That’s his teacher, Mrs. Bennett, near the front.”
We look again, our eyes bumping across a line that’s advancing with all the precision of a drunken centipede. Arriving at the classroom, Mrs. Bennett smiles benevolently and waits for the last of the kids to disappear inside. Then her arm reaches behind and closes the door.
My mother and I look at each other.
“He wasn’t with them, was he?” I say.
“I don’t think so, dear.”
I get up and peek through the narrow window of the door. I see the children clustered on the carpet, sitting cross-legged, looking up at their teacher. Clearly she is saying Very Important Things. It is also clear to me that my son isn’t in the room to hear them.
“I’ll be right back,” I turn to tell my mom. On a hunch, I head over to the playground. In the distance, on the far side of the slide, I catch a glimpse of a small figure in a red polo shirt sitting in the sand. His head is bent down. I see only the top of it, but I’d know that wispy, white-blond hair anywhere. Roman is hard at play, oblivious to anything but the grains of sand streaming through his fingers.
“Roman, what are you doing?”
He looks up. Smiles.
“Oh, hi, Mom.”
His attitude is ultra-casual, la-dee-da.
“Recess is over, Roman. The teacher called the rest of your class inside. Why on earth are you still here?”
“Well,” he says, patting a growing mound of sand, “No one called me.”
Some kids cling. Others, right from the start, can’t seem to crawl away fast enough. They are who they are, these children of ours. Sometimes early on, life grants us an illuminating glimpse of those traits of theirs that will perplex and challenge us for years to come. On that first day of kindergarten, for instance, I was struck by my son’s self-possession, his singular focus, the strength of his independent spirit. Good things, all. At the same time, too, I couldn’t help but worry, that in marching to the beat of a different drummer, he would also risk missing a good part of the parade.
It’s not easy, finding the right balance between our need to protect vs. theirs to pull away, or our faith in the word “we” vs. their right to say “me.” If I’ve learned anything in the years since that September, it’s that developmental stages may vary, individual needs may differ, but one thing is certain: today, every day, is always the first day of school.
Follows are a few of the writer's stories about her son, her father and her family. By the time you've read them, you will feel you know them, testimony of Ms. Diaz' writing skills. (I tell Annie all the time -- just write. She has it in her - writing - as well.)
Walking the walk: From fog of war a son emerges a soldier
By Sue Diaz
SAN DIEGO - Through the wavy triple-digit heat of the Mojave in midsummer, the Humvee headed our way up the long sloping road. From the front seat of our parked car, I tracked its progress, stepping outside as it got closer.
"Think that's him?" I asked my husband. "Hard to tell," he said, peering in the same direction.
It was Saturday, late in the afternoon, at the main entrance to the Army's Fort Irwin, near Barstow, Calif. Our son, Roman, a soldier with the 101st Airborne in Kentucky, was there with his unit for three weeks of desert training. When it was finished, they'd be flying back to Kentucky to prepare for deployment to Iraq next month. It would be Roman's second 15-month tour of duty there.
Earlier, just after lunch, he'd called us here at home with news that he'd been given the night off: "You guy's wouldn't by any chance have plans to be near Barstow later today, would you? Because if you did, you know, we could maybe get together for dinner or something."
The invitation was vintage Roman. Wry. Low-key. Unassuming. He knew, of course, that we were as likely to be near Barstow as we were to be planning a weekend in Baghdad. But he also guessed his parents would be happy to make the three-hour drive on the spur of the moment for one more chance to see him. He was right.
The plan wasn't without complications. When we arrived at the guard station at the fort's south entrance, the MP there informed us we wouldn't be allowed on base unless we were accompanied by our soldier.
"Wait over there," the guard said pointing to a paved spot nearby. We pulled over. Parked. Rolled down all the windows. Opened the front doors. My husband used his cellphone to call Roman on his.
"Hey, all right! You made it!" Roman answered. "Soon as I can find a ride, I'll be there."
My husband got out, sighed, stretched, and paced. I unbuckled my seat belt, leaned back, and took in the scene around me: low hills dotted with rocks and scrub, trails etched into the hard, dry terrain. In spite of the small city of boxy buildings a couple miles down the road, and all the cars and trucks passing the guard station on their way out, Fort Irwin seemed to be mostly sky and sand. In a place like that, thoughts have lots of room to wander. Mine did, to Roman - 21 and on the brink of going to war for the second time.
No matter how old our children are, it's hard as a parent not to still think of them as kids. And whenever my son's been home on leave, he hasn't gone out of his way to change this view. He'll typically sleep in. Shuffle into the kitchen in bare feet and baggy jeans. Open the refrigerator, idle there for a while, bypass the V-8 juice in favor of a can of Pepsi. Schlep to the family room sofa for some channel surfing, happy as can be to rediscover SpongeBob SquarePants.
And that's OK. If anyone deserves to be cut some slack, it's a kid who's been to Iraq and back. And is headed there again.
No longer a lowly private, this next time he'll be in charge of a group of men. Most are older than he is, he's told us. Some married, with children.
I tried to imagine the little boy I used to call "Bunky" barking orders to men carrying machine guns. Tried to picture the laid-back teenager I knew now giving instructions in how to clean a weapon, pack a duffel, carry a wounded comrade. Try as I might, I couldn't do it.
And wondered if I'd ever begin to understand what he's been through and how he's changed; if I'd ever be able to see him, really see him, not so much as my son, but as someone separate from my memories, someone coming into his own in the complicated world beyond our backyard. It would require a fundamental shift in perception. And in those families where this sea change somehow happens, it means, I think, not only that the child has grown up, but that the parent finally has, too.
The Humvee we'd been watching stopped about a block away, just before a turnaround point. I saw the door on its right side swing open, a backpack land on the pavement, a tall soldier in camouflage khakis jump out. I would recognize Roman, I was sure, even from a distance, just by the way he moved. I looked for that ambling walk of his I knew so well.
The manner in which this fellow carried himself was something else entirely. Back straight. Chest out. He'd scooped up his pack with one hand, and with the other gave the hood of the Humvee an authoritative thump, then pointed as if giving directions. With a quick, full-arm wave to the guys inside, he turned and headed up the road toward us and the guard station. His stride, smooth and sure.
I shrugged. Not him.
I turned to get back into the car, when somebody called out. "Hey, Mom! Dad!" I heard him say, in a voice familiar as my own.
UPDATE: I did a Google and found a prior article by Sue Diaz, also about her son.
Reunion with soldier son was cheerful - if a bit hair-raising
Monday, August 1, 2005
By SUE DIAZ
WHATEVER it is, let's be cool about it. We can act as if we don't even notice," I suggested. My husband and I were driving to the airport to pick up our 21-year-old son, Roman, an infantryman with the 101st Airborne in Fort Campbell, Ky. Specialist Diaz was coming home to San Diego for 10 days before heading back to Iraq to begin his second 15-month deployment there.
In a call shortly before we left for the airport, his sister, whom he'd just visited, told us we were in for a surprise. But the only clue Anne offered was that it had something to do with her brother's hair.
"Now, Mom, just keep in mind where he's been and what he's going back to. Who can blame him right now if he just wants to have a little fun?"
"New color?" I guessed.
"You'll see," was all she'd say.
Roman's height alone - 6'2" - would have made him easy to spot, standing there near the curb in front of the terminal. But his hair made him impossible to miss. There's something head-turning about a Mohawk - even when it stands no more than an inch-and-a-half high - especially a bright red one, with the tips dyed black.
"Oh," his computer-engineer dad gulped, catching sight of him.
"Oh, my," I elaborated.
But after a curbside flurry of car doors opening and a couple of quick hugs, we simply said to Roman, with all the nonchalance we could muster, "Welcome home!" and "Good to see you!"
On the drive back I turned from time to time in the front bucket seat to ask him about his flight from San Jose, his weekend with Anne and Erick. His dad chatted offhandedly about the weather, asked about the soldiers in the unit he now leads - "my Jedi," Roman calls them.
But there was an elephant in the room. Twenty minutes into the trip, I could ignore it no longer. "Hmmmmmmmm," I said, twisting to look at Roman full on. "I can't quite put my finger on it. But something's definitely . . . different."
"Hmmmmmmmm. What could it be?" he teased, fingertip touching one corner of his smile.
Roman has always had an independent streak. And as far as surprises go, this one was small compared to his decision three years ago to join the Army instead of going to college. It's taken me nearly this long to come to terms with that choice. And I think I have, as much as any mother can.
In fact, just a few days earlier, I'd told friends and neighbors about our soldier's brief visit home and invited them to come say "Hi" at a block party barbecue on Sunday in the cul-de-sac - the same place Roman learned to ride a two-wheeler.
A recent picture of him graced one corner of the photocopied invitation. Smiling in his dress uniform, complete with medals, ribbons, and the blue cord of the infantry, he looked handsome, clean-cut and all-American. His hair was dark brown, not DayGlo red. And in that photo, it still grew on the sides of his head.
The former PTA mom in me wrestled at first with what the neighbors would think. I wondered if I might convince them he was actually a member of an elite, top-secret special-forces unit.
"You've heard of the Green Berets?" I imagined myself saying. "Well, Roman is with the Airborne's Red Mohawks."
"Don't worry, Mom. I'm going to shave it off at the end of this leave. I'll have to," he said. "It's just that I've always wanted to do something crazy with my hair. And I figured this was my last chance."
I trust he was looking ahead to his role someday as a responsible post-Army adult. But like the dark smoke of a roadside bomb, the idea of "lasts" inevitably hovers over a leave like this one and colors it in ways Clairol never thought of. Anyone with someone they love heading into harm's way knows this. War has a way of making clear what really matters in this life. "What the neighbors think" is not high on that list.
To their credit and his, the 60 or so who came to the block party seemed to take Roman's hair in stride. It was a vindication of sorts, if any was even needed. Men clapped him on the back and laughed. Kids said, "Cool." Moms wrapped their arms around him. In spite of differing views about the war, everyone there wished our unconventional soldier well.
I must confess I still thought this new, albeit temporary, look of his was not the most mature thing my son's ever done. And then he surprised me again - with something that was. It came in answer to a question I asked the day before he left.
We'd been talking about how time flies, and how the end date of his four-year stint in the service will come up while he still has three months left in Iraq. "Well, then. Think the Army might let you come back sooner?" I asked. "You know, before the rest of your unit?"
Roman sent me a look that said he couldn't believe I was asking that. "Mom, even if the Army would, I couldn't do that. Say to my men, 'See ya! I'm outta here'? No way. No. I'll come home when they do."
The next time you see a dusty group of U.S. soldiers in the news, remember these stories - the funny hair, the serious conversation. Think about the unique individuals who wear those look-alike uniforms - their goodness and goofiness, their complexity and their courage. Think about all we as a country lose when even one of them falls.
Sue Diaz, a freelance writer, wrote this article for The Christian Science Monitor. Send comments about this article to oped@northjersey.com.
UPDATE, AGAIN: I can't get enough of this writer. I found her website, suediaz.com, and found another article on her son (below), and one about her father (below it), one about her family at the beach (below it), and, finally, one about her kids going to school. All good stuff.
From a Corner of Hell, a Moment of Beauty
by Sue Diaz
I peeked into the sunny bedroom at the end of the hall, and for a moment, it seemed as if the last two years had never happened. As if my son, Roman, had never left home at eighteen to join the army. As if he’d never been deployed for fifteen long months in Iraq. Because when I glanced over at the desk in the corner, there he was again -- in blue jeans and T-shirt, hunched in front of his computer, a bottle of Dr Pepper near his right hand, yesterday’s socks scattered on the floor. But in place of his old high school backpack, a weathered green duffle bag now leaned against the wall.
In the luggage claim area at the airport earlier in the week, I had tried to lift that bag and couldn’t budge it. Roman quickly stepped over and scooped it up with one hand.
This wasn’t the first time he’d been back for a visit since his deployment to Iraq. Six months earlier his dad and I had welcomed him home from the war with a big party. This time the hand-painted banner we’d tacked to the garage door then was taped above the sofa in the family room.
“Hey, Mom,” Roman said catching a glimpse of me at the bedroom door. “Come here. Check this out.”
He wanted to show me the small computer he had bought, packed, and sent here from Germany. That’s where the 1st Armored, the division he’d served with in Iraq, is based, and where he’d lived the past six months. The new orders he’d received in Baumholder a few weeks ago were sending him now to the 101st Airborne in Ft. Campbell, Kentucky. That would be his next stop after the 10-day leave he was on here was over.
Roman’s infantry unit with the 1st Armored had the distinction of serving in a combat zone longer than any group since World War II. And now, according to a recent Pentagon announcement, soldiers from the 101st Airborne – where he’s headed – “will make up a significant part of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan starting in 2005.”
We didn’t talk much about the likelihood of his return to the war. Instead we chatted that day about his computer. Its speed. Its size. Its amazing graphics.
“And what are those?” I asked, pointing to two on-screen icons labeled “Iraq I” and “Iraq II.”
“Pictures I took with my digital camera when I was over there,” he said.
“Can I see them?”
With a couple clicks of his mouse, the digital slide show he created began, and its images are seared in my memory:
Hovering helicopters in silhouette against a blood-red sky.
Acres of confiscated mortar shells, AK-47s, rifles.
Humvees with no doors.
Buildings with no walls.
The head of a child’s doll lying in the dust, its plastic face blistered, its tiny ears singed.
The back seat of an empty car, mottled with stains the color of terra cotta tile.
A spider hole, half-hidden by brambles. “The hole Saddam didn’t crawl out of,” my son said with a wry grin.
The only other times he smiled were at pictures of his buddies in Bravo Company. Before each of those photos faded into the next, he’d hurry to name every one of his comrades, even though from most distances, they all looked alike to me -- with their army haircuts and their desert khakis.
“That’s Ramirez. Stanfel. Davis. Sgt. Hurd. . . .” he said, touching the screen again and again with the tip of his finger. As if I would remember all their names. As if he could ever forget.
Off in the distance in one of those group shots, I couldn’t help but notice black smoke coiling into an impossibly blue sky.
“Were there any places over there that you’d walk through the streets and say, ‘Nice neighborhood’? You know, like here?” I asked.
“No. Not really,” he said, shaking his head. “Not any more.”
Just then a tight close-up of a big, bright-yellow sunflower filled the screen, and just as quickly, disappeared.
“Wait. Go back,” I said. And when he did, I added, “Where’d that come from?”
“The flower? I took that picture one morning after the warehouse we’d been holed up in had taken a lot of enemy fire. It seemed so weird to come out and see something so pretty still standing in the middle of. . .well, in the middle of all that.”
And on the screen, more snapshots from that dusty corner of hell continued.
And now he’s gone again. Roman left a few days after that slide show on another plane heading east, but the improbable beauty of that sunflower has stayed with me. It’s with me still. And through whatever lies ahead for this soldier of ours now with the 101st Airborne, I will hold on to the stubborn hope embodied by that bloom, embodied, too, by the young man who, after one particularly long night at his post in Iraq, put down his machine gun to point a camera at its petals.
On Reading My Father's WWII Diary
by Sue Diaz
Self-appointed Keeper of Assorted Family Artifacts, my older sister, Kathy, mentioned the book off-handedly in a long-distance call, as if, of course, I knew about it. As if I’d known all these years that our father’s D-Day diary rested in a box in a closet in her home in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, near the christening dress made from our Grandmother’s wedding gown.
But I had no idea.
“Whoa! Wait a minute! Daddy kept a diary when he was in the war?”
“Yeah. One of those government-issue things. Small enough to fit in a back pocket.”
“And he actually wrote in it?”
I remember my father as a doer, not a chronicler. A reader, not a writer. Essentially, a man of few words. Oh, sure, I often heard him, my mom, and their friends talking politics and Green Bay Packers as they leaned against the rec-room bar he built in the basement of our home on the south side of Milwaukee. But around his three daughters, Frank T. Bindas could be almost shy -- a genial foreigner in our world of Toni home permanents, Beatles songs, and nylons hanging like Spanish moss over the bathroom shower rod.
I asked my sister to send me the diary, thinking it would provide a fascinating first-person account of a pivotal time in history, that it might fill in some of the details Saving Private Ryan left out. And I thought, too, I just might get to know my no-nonsense father in a way that wasn’t possible when I was younger, and he was still alive.
A week later, the book arrives. I slide it out of its cardboard Priority Mailer, run my fingers over the words, “My Life in the Service,” embossed beneath the golden eagle on the creased, blue leatherette cover. Opening it, I draw my thumb across the outer edges of the diary’s lined sheets. They make a fluttering sound, and a faint mustiness rises up from the yellowing pages. For the most part, this diary is empty, except for twenty pages or so in the middle filled with my father’s slanting, elegant handwriting.
June 2, left Plymouth, boarded LC1 (L) 419
My eyes lock on to the next entry – June 6, 1944.
Arrived on D-Day, invasion day on the shores of Normandy, France. Was strafed by the “Jerries” that day. Stayed near the beach area for a few days and found things to be really hot.
That’s it. That’s all my father has to say about what must have been the scariest, most horrific day of his life, a day that changed the course of the war and with it, the history of Western Civilization. No mention of the pounding of his heart as his boat headed toward the beach. Not a word about wading through surf red with the blood of fellow soldiers. Nothing at all about the scream of bullets or the sudden and forever silence of fallen friends.
Found things to be really hot is all this 21-year-old corporal in the Seventh Corps can bring himself to say.
The next time he writes, it’s June 10.
Received first mail here in France. Really boosted my morale.
I continue reading, entry by entry, looking all the while for what I consider the real stuff of history -- the whine of bombs, the heat of combat –- detailed by this battle-tested soldier under the command of Lt. General J. Lawton Collins, or “Joe Lightnin’,” as he’s called in a 1944 edition of the Saturday Evening Post. According to that same article, “Collins’ divisions were given the job of breaking up the bloody, costly hedgerow fighting at the base of the Peninsula. They broke through the German lines west of St. Lo and ripped open a gap through which General George Patton’s 3rd Army made its great drive. Into the boiling cauldron of smoke and dust, Collins sent his infantry.”
A few of my father’s diary entries touch – but only briefly -- on such things.
In early July, for instance, he writes, Spent in a fox hole. Plenty of noise and one of those Fourth of Julys I hope I never have to spend again.
Really have the Nazis on the run, he says on the 25th of that same month.
On November 22, he notes, Buzz bombs came over all day.
But for the most part, my father’s wartime diary chronicles -- in addition to the frequent movements of his division -- a different kind of story. One filled with the beauty of distant hills. Letters and cookies from home. The sweetness of the young ladies he meets and dances with. The news that the Browns beat the Cards, 2-0, in the first game of the World Series. The joy of the liberated Belgian people:
Shall never forget this day and the welcome we received, he writes on September 5. Rode in an open car. People came running and shouting, “Viva La Amerique,” getting in our car, hugging and kissing us, throwing flowers, apples, pears, plums, confetti, beer, champagne, extending their hands for us to shake. Women and men running with their young ones after us. People were so happy. Tears were running from their eyes. Girls were dressed in colors of their flag, throwing ribbons from their hair, kissing us (some were beautiful also), giving us flags. Certainly a happy lot of people, and made me feel the same.
Then, with the formality I recognize as my father’s, he says, once again, I shall never forget this day.
Other entries talk about things like buying eggs from a French farmer and enjoying coffee and doughnuts, compliments of the American Red Cross. There’s champagne, too, plenty of it, left behind by the Germans. And pretty girls who tuck their pictures into the pockets of his Army jacket.
One snowy January day in Belgium my father and a friend, Sgt. Neubrand, hike to the top of a hill for the pure pleasure of it. Took pictures when we arrived at the top where there was a crucifix and got a wonderful view of the town.
Describing a few days spent on leave in a hotel in Brussels, my father notes with obvious delight the hot and cold running water and a real bed with foot-thick mattresses and clean white sheets.
In early February of 1945, he receives a “Dear John” letter from his girlfriend back home. Her name is Dolores, like my mother’s, but she is not my mom. And this jilted soldier writes, Hope I don’t have too much trouble getting over it, but somehow or other, I think we will both see things in the same light.
Good thing for me they didn’t. If they had, I wouldn’t be here. And I wouldn’t have had these moments with the pages of my daddy’s wartime diary. I always thought of my father as a good, hard-working man – soft-spoken, private, unemotional. I knew him as someone who stored household bills in an old cigar box, who loved a thick T-bone, Glenn Miller’s music, and all of us – Mom, Kathy, Janet, and me. He was the grown-up I remember glimpsing one night from the hall as he knelt by his bedside, head bowed in prayer at the end of the day. These impressions still hold.
Yet now I see, too, that beneath those neatly pressed Van Heusen shirts of his thumped the heart of a cock-eyed optimist. A soldier who somehow managed to view the glass as “half full,” even when it was, in fact, completely shattered. My father. Frank T. Bindas. A man who, like so many of his generation, was no stranger to the horrors of war, but who chose to focus instead on the things in this crazy life that are worth fighting for.
The Family on the Beach
by Sue Diaz
We’re sitting in our car, my husband and I, parked near the shore of Torrey Pines Beach, watching the sun slide below the wall of granite-gray clouds rising up from the long line of the horizon out where the ocean ends.
It’s chillier now than when we headed out to dinner earlier this evening. We didn’t think then to bring along jackets or sweaters. So instead of walking off our desserts along this favorite stretch of beach, we decide to take in the scenery tonight from the comfort of two bucket seats, to hear the call of gulls through the car’s open moon roof.
It’s a beautiful evening. Here at sunset the shore is awash with muted pinks, pale yellows, and opalescent grays. Drained of daytime color, this seaside world of breaking waves and wet sand shimmers like the inside of a oyster shell.
Nudging my husband’s arm, I nod toward the young family ambling into view a few yards from the water’s edge. A mom. A dad. A little girl about five. A boy who looks to be three.
The dad, jacket collar turned up, hands deep in the pockets of his Dockers, stops to peer out at a big ship dredging sand about a half-mile offshore. The mom’s gaze wanders from the setting sun to the seagulls overhead to the floppy cloth bag she’s setting down in the sand.
From the bottom of this bag, the boy pulls out a plastic shovel and promptly sets to work -- digging, scooping, patting. With the pointy corner of the shovel, he draws in the sand a circle the size of a center-stage spotlight. His sister, all knees and elbows and Buster Brown bangs, sees this as her cue to jump in and perform for any beachcombers who care to watch what appears to be The Dance of the Purple Leggings. No one notices, least of all the little fellow building aqueducts at her feet.
The boy’s intense focus, the girl’s dramatic flair remind me of our two kids some fourteen years ago.
“Remember when Anne and Roman were that age?” I say to my husband.
“Just barely,” he answers with a bemused laugh.
It’s not that his mind is going. For a middle-aged guy, it’s actually still quite sharp. Before our daughter headed off to college, she’d often come to him for help with her calculus homework. Our soon-to-be-eighteen son, who currently knows everything, also knows his father can be counted on to answer to any and all questions about microchips and motherboards and computer memory.
But it’s the other kind of memory -- the kind measured in minutes and heartbeats -- that is harder, much harder, to hold on to.
Where does the time go? How is it possible that one minute we’re feeding strained bananas to a little person wearing a Big Bird bib, and the next minute we’re watching in amazement as that same individual finishes off three slices of leftover pizza as an appetizer? How can it be that one evening we’re toting sand toys to the beach, and the next night, or so it seems, we’re asking our teenagers, “So, who are you going with to the dance?” I can’t take my eyes off this family. And for an instant, there is no such thing as time. There is only Life, leaving its footprints on the beach. The tide is on its way in. But at this moment, that doesn’t matter. All that matters is these four people -- with their zippered jackets and plastic shovels, their windblown hair and sand-filled sneakers. And this family is us -- me, my husband, our daughter and son. And we are them.
They won’t know it, but I’ll be there when they arrive back home -- when the dad brushes the sticky sand from between his son’s fingers, and the mom pours a couple capfuls of Mr. Bubble into the warm, running water of the tub in the kids’ bathroom. When the light from the lamp next to the family-room sofa falls on the pages of tonight’s bedtime story, I’ll be there, too. In truth, I already am. My voice is rising and falling, my eyes growing big, as one of these parents adds a bit of extra drama to this day’s rendition of Green Eggs and Ham. Next, I’m following the static-y rustle of the kids’ footed PJs down the carpeted hall. With their mother and father, I’m tucking the covers under their chins, planting a kiss their foreheads, and turning off the bedroom lights with a soft, “Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
The family’s about to leave the beach now. The dad scoops up the toy bag and reaches for the girl’s hand as he turns to navigate the small incline that leads toward the cars. The little boy, still clutching his shovel, lifts both arms toward his mom. She picks him up. He wraps his legs around her waist, rests a cheek on her shoulder. Faces expressionless, they shuffle past our parked car.
In Thornton Wilder’s Our Town there is a character, Emily, who asks in that play’s final act, Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? Wondering that very same thing, I feel impelled to pop up through the moon roof and call after these strangers, Stop! Pay attention! Look, really look, at one another! I want to tell them, Tomorrow your little girl will be a coed at a university hundreds of miles away! The day after that, your son will get his driver’s license! Before you know it, you’ll have a condo in Sun City and five grandchildren! Stop. Stay. Look. Really look.
Of course, I don’t say any of this. Instead, my eyes follow them all as they head toward their car and home -- toward days, nights, and years that will, I’m sure, pass far too quickly. But they can’t possibly know that. Not now. Not next week or even next month. Maybe they’ll have an inkling in another fifteen years or so, when one evening after dinner, this mom or dad or both drive to a nearby beach to watch the sun slide below a wall of clouds rising up from the horizon out where the ocean ends. There they’ll notice a young family stopping near the water’s edge. For a short while that holds within it echoes of eternity, they’ll find they won’t be able to take their eyes off that strangely familiar foursome. And without a word, they’ll watch the long, end-of-day shadows stretching toward them across the sand -- of a little boy and a dancing girl and a floppy bag of beach toys.
First Day of School
by Sue Diaz
Early September, 1988. With a group of other parents, I am lingering on the school yard blacktop, heart in throat, as my youngest child and his new classmates line up for the very first time behind a paper sign that reads: Kindergarten – A.M. When the 8 o’clock bell rings, Roman’s public school education will officially begin. Soon he’ll be learning the rudiments of phonics, new number concepts, and the importance of sharing -- not to mention the second verse of “Itsy-Bitsy Spider” and where to find the bathroom pass. My little boy -- going out into the larger world. A Milestone Moment.
I sigh, bite my bottom lip, blink back a few silly-me tears. Gazing off into the distance, I square my shoulders and silently vow – for both our sakes -- to be strong.
Suddenly, I feel a small tug on my arm. It’s Roman. He’s slipped out of line and come over to me. Curling his forefinger, he indicates there is something he needs to tell me, something important, but it’s a secret. What? I wonder, bending towards him. Does the little guy, here on the brink of The Great Unknown, need some last minute reassurance? A quick kiss? A kind word to carry with him to the crafts table?
His brown eyes narrowing slightly, he cups his dimpled hand over my ear, takes a deep breath. After a moment’s pause, I hear him whisper, “You can go now, Mom.”
The bell rings. Faster than you can say, “Good morning, boys and girls,” Roman’s back in line. Tossing a crooked grin in my direction, he bustles with the others towards Room B-3. If I want a long last look, I’ll have to settle for the back of his head.
The morning passes with the loose routines of a writing mom who works at home: dishes, laundry, time at the computer. It is close to noon. I’ve come back this time with my mom, Roman’s grandmother, and the two of us are sitting on a low concrete bench near the kindergarten room, waiting to greet him after his first day.
“I don’t see him, do you?” my mother says with a cluck of concern as her eyes scan the line of five-year-olds wriggling its way back from the playground.
“Well, he’s gotta be there somewhere,” I say, “That’s his teacher, Mrs. Bennett, near the front.”
We look again, our eyes bumping across a line that’s advancing with all the precision of a drunken centipede. Arriving at the classroom, Mrs. Bennett smiles benevolently and waits for the last of the kids to disappear inside. Then her arm reaches behind and closes the door.
My mother and I look at each other.
“He wasn’t with them, was he?” I say.
“I don’t think so, dear.”
I get up and peek through the narrow window of the door. I see the children clustered on the carpet, sitting cross-legged, looking up at their teacher. Clearly she is saying Very Important Things. It is also clear to me that my son isn’t in the room to hear them.
“I’ll be right back,” I turn to tell my mom. On a hunch, I head over to the playground. In the distance, on the far side of the slide, I catch a glimpse of a small figure in a red polo shirt sitting in the sand. His head is bent down. I see only the top of it, but I’d know that wispy, white-blond hair anywhere. Roman is hard at play, oblivious to anything but the grains of sand streaming through his fingers.
“Roman, what are you doing?”
He looks up. Smiles.
“Oh, hi, Mom.”
His attitude is ultra-casual, la-dee-da.
“Recess is over, Roman. The teacher called the rest of your class inside. Why on earth are you still here?”
“Well,” he says, patting a growing mound of sand, “No one called me.”
Some kids cling. Others, right from the start, can’t seem to crawl away fast enough. They are who they are, these children of ours. Sometimes early on, life grants us an illuminating glimpse of those traits of theirs that will perplex and challenge us for years to come. On that first day of kindergarten, for instance, I was struck by my son’s self-possession, his singular focus, the strength of his independent spirit. Good things, all. At the same time, too, I couldn’t help but worry, that in marching to the beat of a different drummer, he would also risk missing a good part of the parade.
It’s not easy, finding the right balance between our need to protect vs. theirs to pull away, or our faith in the word “we” vs. their right to say “me.” If I’ve learned anything in the years since that September, it’s that developmental stages may vary, individual needs may differ, but one thing is certain: today, every day, is always the first day of school.
posted by Rope Burns at 8/23/2005 05:16:00 AM
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