2 posts tagged “dad”

If you could go back and change one thing you've done in your life, what would it be?
Submitted by Devinoid.

What is with these questions?  They're big on the deaths and regrets lately.  I've never understood this particular type of question.  If I changed something I had done in my life--anything--I would be a different person than I am today, in a different place.  Why would I want that?  I like who I am, I have a fantastic marriage, great friends, a lovely extended family, my own house with two unteachable hounds living in the backyard, a good relationship with my parents, and a son who is a really terrific person whom I enjoy spending time with.  So, if I went back and changed something that I've done, any choice I've made, I wouldn't be here now.  Maybe the alternate ending in that Choose-Your-Own-Adventure would be nice, too, but I like this one.  Besides, you never know when you're going to end up in the dungeon of some evil lord.

I do, however, often wish that my dad had lived long enough to meet his grandson.  Nothing would have made my father happier--or it might be better to say that meeting him would have been the only real happiness in my dad's life, since he felt he fucked things up with me pretty badly, and he would have had a second chance with his grandson.  And my son would have loved my dad's singing and bizarre sense of humor.  I sing a lot of crazy songs to my son, but I can't remember the words to "One-Eyed Flying Purple People-Eater" which my dad used to sing to me all the time.  My stepdad is a fantastic grandpa, too, absolutely, but my son and my father would have really hit it off.  Admittedly, I kind of all around wish my dad hadn't died, but I never wished so more than when I had my baby.

But, see, there again.  It is possible that if my first husband had not been a completely self-absorbed prick when my dad died and we went back for the funeral and everything, I might not have divorced him when I did (oh, it would have happened someday, but to be a self-absorbed prick at the funeral of your wife's father is just unacceptable and kind of pushed me over the edge)--and if I hadn't divorced him when I did, I wouldn't have flown off to Japan just when I did, and I wouldn't have been in that street in Numazu that sunny day in March, and I wouldn't have met the T and had this gorgeous son...

I'm going to stop short of saying something cloying like "everything happens for a reason," but you can't go back and change anything.  The bad choices and mistakes had just as much influence over where I ended up, so we have to leave them in there to get here. 

Or, as Rascal Flatts says, "God bless the broken road that led me straight to you."  Yick.

Do you know any war veterans?
Submitted by Fightin' 6th Marines.

Yes.  Many.  I have among my family and friends veterans of every war America has been involved in since (and including WWII).  Oh, wait--I don't know any Korea vets.

My grandmother's current husband (#4 in a series) was in the Pacific theater of WWII.  He still has nightmares.  I believe he was a POW for a while.  Later, during the American occupation of Japan, he was stationed in Hokkaido for a while.  It is from this experience that he is prone to referring to my husband as a "Jap" and a "nip" and saying things like, "The Japanese are evil people."  It is also a result, apparently, of his being stationed in Hokkaido that he likes to reminisce about Japan with my husband and ask him many questions such as:  Do Japanese still use rickshaws? (Can you say 'Honda' dickweed?) Does Japan have fruit? ("I don't recall seeing any fruit while I was there.")  Does Japan have salt and pepper?  Ah, yes, it makes for fun times. 

My father and several of my uncles are veterans of the Vietnam War.  Most of them were Marines.  My father was a mechanic for a tank battlion.  Everyone in my family came home, somewhat miraculously, alive from Vietnam.  Alive, yes, but not especially well.  They all suffer (or have suffered) from varying degrees of mood disorder, depression, alcohol and/or drug abuse, and PTSD symptoms.  Some of them were also exposed to Agent Orange and tropical disease and have suffered long-term physical damage.  Not that the government cares.

When the Gulf War version 1.0 started (thanks, Bush Sr.!), my dad called me, crying.  He asked me not to blame the soldiers.  He asked me to remember that the soldiers signed up to defend our country and its people.  He asked me to support the troops, as it were, even as I was protesting the war and the government that made it happen.  It was a moment ripe with pathos.  I took it to heart.  At that time, I only knew two people, a cousin (also a Marine) and a boyfriend (in the Navy and fairly removed from the danger, such as it was) in the war.  Since then I have met some other vets of that war, notably one of my very best friends who learned Arabic and served as a translator for the Army if I'm not mistaken. 

And now I have a cousin in this war, too.  I don't actually hear from him much, as he is somewhat estranged from our family, having apparently had a falling out with his dad, my uncle.  He's a Marine, too.  It is possible that another cousin is there, but I'm not sure--I know he is in the military (Navy, maybe) overseas, but we can't find out where.  He disappeared a while ago--having been completely estranged from his mother, my aunt--and it was only after she died that we finally succeeded in tracking him down, via the Red Cross.  They passed on a message for us, but they would not tell us where he was.  We know he's alive (and we love you, Josh, and miss you terribly) and in the military, and that's it.  It's so weird.

Anyway, so, yeah, I know a lot of vets.  We have even more members, past and present, of the military among our ranks, but some of them have been clever enough to join the Coast Guard and some of them have just had the good fortune to never go to war. 

My husband was also in the Japanese Self-Defense Force (jieitai) such as it is.  He was basically only spared the fate of going to Iraq because I pressured him to get out of the military altogether. 

My father is now buried with thousands of other vets, with white headstones lined up in rows, in the Little Rock National Cemetery.  He had a military funeral.  I was told, by a young Marine who never knew my father, to be proud as my father had served his country honorably.  While I am dead certain that Marine had only the best intentions, it made me want to scream.  Yes, my father was a good soldier who served honorably--indeed, he was a consummate soldier and a well-respected Marine.  But I wanted to stand up and scream, because of course, had he not been such a good soldier, had he not done two tours of duty, maybe there would have been something left over for us, his family.  Maybe if he wasn't consumed by the memories and sadness he would have been able to know joy.  Maybe if he had had time to mourn his parents before you threw him back into the fucking jungle, he wouldn't have still been haunted by them.  Maybe if you hadn't shown him the evil and destruction people and the machinery of war can wreak on people (my father ended up being very sympathetic with the Vietnamese people), he wouldn't have hated himself and what he had done.  Maybe if he'd been able to be a father, uninterrupted, and a husband, then that would be enough and we would be proud of him for that--plenty proud.

I didn't--couldn't--say any of that then.  I just sat and sobbed and took from them the flag, in a neat little triangle.  They tucked three bullet casings inside of it, three pieces of metal that disturbed me out of proportion to their physical properties:  They remind me continually that the violence of war doesn't end with the war's end. 

Semper Fi, indeed.