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I’m worried about Dr. Laura. That must be a new sensation for her. She isn’t the kind of woman who usually evokes worry. But recently the radio talk show host changed her tagline. Instead of referring to herself as ‘my kid’s mom,’ she now announces that she is “my enlisted kid’s mom.”
Her only child, Deryk Schlessinger, dropped by her studio a few months ago to tell her that he was joining the Army and that he planned to try for Special Forces.
What mother welcomes that news with joy? I’m not saying that joining the Army isn’t a smart thing to do or a worthy thing to do. I’m not saying that moms don’t feel extreme pride in children who join the military. They should.
What I am saying is that getting in the Army or Marine Corps these days is a hazardous thing to do. Service members go to Iraq and people shoot at them. Planes operated by well-trained professionals sometimes collide in the sky. Bombs go off every day. Enlisting in the military is, by it’s very nature, a dangerous thing to do.
We moms don’t do danger. In fact, our entire goal is to shelter and nurture and protect our young. Even Dr. Laura would agree with that. We moms are the ones who insist on bike helmets when the kid is on a scooter in the family room. We strap 10-year olds into the grocery cart. We keep the safety rails up on the bunk bed until the kid leaves for college. Or joins the Army.
Even though I am an Air Force child, a Navy wife, I suspect that if (please let me say ‘if” and not ‘when’) my teen announced she was entering the Army, I would not greet the news well. The fuzzy images of the 1500 service members who have been killed in Iraq would have burned in my brain until the images developed on my skin. I’m sure all the wrong words would jet across the table at hurricane speed.
But Dr. Laura isn’t me. She is used to thinking fast. When her son announced his plans, Dr. Laura instantly replied, "That is a brilliant choice."
She meant it. "I brought my son up to be a warrior," Dr. Laura said in an interview with the LA Daily News. "I think what he's doing is so important, and so noble, that I'm willing to face what I need to face. I'm so proud to have produced someone with such character -- willing to put his life on the line.”
On her show, Dr. Laura is always exhorting people to do the right thing. And I think she is doing the right thing here. "Don't cry. Be proud," Dr. Laura advised military moms. "You produced a man -- every mother's got to be proud of that. I am." And that is why I’m worried about Dr. Laura. Because Deryk is not only putting his life on the line. He is also putting his father’s life on the line. He is putting his mother’s life on the same line. It makes me think about that old essay that says that being a parent means letting your heart walk around outside your body for the rest life. Being the parent of a military person means letting your heart traipse all over Iraq and Kuwait and Afghanistan.
That isn’t an easy thing for any mother. We’re the ones who remember how tender the flesh is, how easily bruised.
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© 2005 Jacey Eckhart. All opinions expressed
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