January 5, 2005
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The other day, my two-year-old son Owen and I were standing on the driveway when he saw an airplane fly by. "Dad," he said and smiled.
A few days before that, he saw a farmer in a pair of green workalls. "Dad," he said and smiled.
But it wasn't until he saw a random concrete building and said, "Dad" that I began to worry.
"Owen, are you a little confused?" I asked. "Do you understand what the word 'Dad' means?"
He laughed and said, "Work."
"But Owen, your dad isn't a farmer or a brick building, although he does fly airplanes."
Just then I flashed back to my youth and visions of my own Navy dad, back to when every man in a green jumper that looked anything like Dad's flight suit was "going to work." And back to when every airplane (even a jumbo-jet) was "my Dad's" and any unremarkable concrete building with one or two windows in it was "the base."
For many military kids, one uniform fades into the next, and anything which can fly (except for Superman, of course) is part of the armed services. Often there is very little distinction between "Dad" and "work" and "military" and "the base." There can even be confusion between which Dad belongs to whom. They all start to look the same.
Further compounding this phenomenon is the fact that many military Dads are gone much of the time, so "Dad" and "uniform" and "base" and "work" and "ship" and "airplane" all become synonymous.
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I remember standing on the pier when I was little, waiting for Dad to walk off the ship with a few thousand other uniformed men and women, and Mom would say without hesitation, "there's Dad - wave to him." I'd look up at the exact same scene she was viewing and have absolutely no idea which man in white was my dad. But I'd wave anyway to make her happy. Usually I wasn't even certain about which person was my dad until he was sitting in the car with us and asking about my report cards.
I can only imagine I was just as easy for Dad to mistake. After all, a kid can do a lot of changing in six months. I was never quite the same daughter he had left, which caused him to spend my childhood playing catch-up and scanning family albums to figure out when it was I grew six inches and to confirm that I was in fact the same shrimp of a kid he remembered.
Honestly, this is an odd way to grow up, and it probably sounds unbelievable to some parents and children who aren't separated on a regular basis. But it is the way of the military, and everyone adapts.
Twenty-eight years later, I can now spot my dad out of a crowd; he's the one making goofy Superman poses for his grandkids. And when my boys see a tractor or a tool box or a man in faded tan corduroy pants, they often shout "Pop!" and look to see if he is near. You see, they know, without a doubt, what their "Pop" is all about, and it has nothing to do with the military. Now that Dad is retired, I'm not even sure my boys realize "Pop" was in the military. Suddenly Dad is the kind of person who has time to fill the birdfeeders with his grandchildren or to put together their complicated Matchbox car racetrack. He knows that Ford and Owen were once "Superman and Flash," but have now evolved into "Superman and Batman," and that Owen used to say "water" when he meant "milk," and vice versa.
It all makes me wonder if "work" takes up too much time for too many Dads - especially military dads. A lot of this is unavoidable, of course, because one does need to make a living, but I can't help think it's a shame that a lot of men don't have enough time to be "Dad who makes pancakes on Tuesday mornings" or "Dad who takes us to the zoo to feed the pigeons" until they become "Grandpa...who lives too far away."
Sarah Smiley can be reached via the Shore
Duty Website.
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© 2005 Sarah Smiley. All opinions expressed
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