military – Page 2

The weekday morning routine begins with a cup of coffee and the news, that latter of which is turned off when the kids wake for school. They don’t like the news, they say. And I tell them I don’t like it much either. Those few minutes before our days begin and we are all on the sofa are usually spent watching something else.

But not this morning. This morning was different.

Perhaps I was just lost in the story, my eyes locked on the bold words in all caps at the bottom of the screen—BIN LADEN KILLED BY US FORCES. Or maybe it was the fact that my mind was divided between May of 2011 and September of 2001, leaving no room to ponder the blond-haired little girl who entered and sat beside me. Her eyes were puffed, sleepy. She yawned.

“Who’s bin Laden?” she asked me.

I remembered asking myself that very question almost ten years ago—Who is bin Laden and what has he done and why Jesus, why?—sitting on the edge of my bed in my bathrobe, just sitting there. Staring at burning buildings and soot-covered people who were bleeding and shaking and crying. I knew they were the lucky ones. The ones jumping from the upper floors of the Towers, choosing death by gravity over death by fire, they were the unlucky ones.

“He was a bad man,” I told her.

“Is the bad man dead?”

“Yes.”

“Who killed him?”

“Remember those men we see at the beach sometimes?” I asked her. “They killed him.”

She yawned again, a high-pitched, little-girl exhale that ended with, “What did he do that was so bad?”

I saw those soot-covered people again, the bodies falling. I remembered the panic that day, of fear and uncertainty so overcoming it could only be expressed in silence. The little girl beside me was in her mother’s womb then. Sitting on the table beside me were her first ultrasound pictures. I remembered looking at the screen and looking at the pictures and—God help me—wishing she would not be born into such a world. That she would be spared of such evil.

“He killed a lot of people.”

We sat in silence as the people talked on the television, relaying the events, the soldiers involved, the particulars of the raid. When they described the death, my daughter asked, “What’s a double-tap?”

“Nothing,” I said. She was too sleepy to notice my smile.

The picture on the television changed to scenes from the night before. Crowds outside the White House and in Times Square. People chanting and singing and laughing.

She asked, “Why are those people happy?”

“Because the bad man is dead.”

Another yawn, this one smaller. She put her head on my shoulder and I wished it could just stay like that forever, us there and the rest of my family close, the birds singing outside and the sun rising over the mountains.

“Is God happy, too?”

I didn’t know how to answer that. I told her so.

“Are you happy, Daddy?”

“Yes. If I could, I’d shake the hand of the man who killed him.”

She didn’t know how to take that, this little girl, who’s world is small and bright and populated by fairies who alight around her room nightly as she sleeps.

“Shouldn’t we be sad when even the bad man is killed?”

I wondered, my mind divided again between the present and the past, between feeling the little girl’s head on my shoulder and seeing her still-forming head in a grainy picture while the planes fell and the people cried and the whole world seemed to end. I wondered what has become of us since, of those who wish nothing but death on our enemies and those who would rather bow than fight. I wondered of those who believe it wrong that Gandhi should reside in hell, and I wondered if they believe it equally wrong that Osama bin Laden should reside in heaven.

“I don’t know, honey,” I told her.

And I still don’t.

But I know that my daughter will grow up. Her small and bright world of fairies will one day become a big and dark world full of monsters. Monsters like him.

She yawned once more, her hand now in mine. I thought of these words from George Orwell: “We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.”

I don’t know if God expects me to be sad, but I know I am not.

And I don’t know if He expects me to make peace with the monsters, but I believe He would rather we fight them.

One last beach story:

Despite all of its tourism, Virginia Beach has always been a military town. The naval base was just down the road and to the right of our hotel, and the Oceanic Naval Air Station was just a few miles beyond that.

All of which made every day resemble a Fourth of July parade.

There were plenty of these on the way into town:

And once at the hotel, we saw many more of these:

And I wasn’t alone outside yesterday morning to watch the rain. I had company in the form of Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children, otherwise known as the United States Marines:

Add to all of that the parade of destroyers and frigates passing over the horizon and the steady stream of F/A-18 Hornets flying over my head, and I had a three-day testosterone high. It all became quite the Pavlovian experience. Every engine, every thump of a rotor, and every bellow of a drill sergeant would illicit from me an immediate stare and an even more immediate, “Awesome.”

I guess it was all that testosterone that nearly got me into a lot of trouble Tuesday morning.

My wife and I decided to have an early breakfast at a nice little restaurant down from our hotel. One that didn’t promise the kind of food you could neither pronounce nor eat without proper instruction.

We decided to make our return trip via the sidewalk rather than the boardwalk, thereby avoiding the daily throng of joggers, walkers, and rollerbladers. After all, a good breakfast should always be followed by some good peace and quiet. And that’s exactly what we had for a while. Until I looked up and saw the four men jogging toward us.

“What are these guys doing?” I asked. “Don’t they know to run on the boardwalk with everyone else?”

“Don’t worry about it,” my wife told me.

But I did.

Maybe it was the fact that they weren’t following the rules. Maybe it was the identical blue T shirts with fancy emblems all four of them were wearing. I didn’t know. I did know, however, that there was no way four little jogging club nerds were going to make me move. Oh, no. They were going to get out of my way.

My wife began to veer off to the side, giving them ample room to maneuver past us. I stayed put. Our locked hands went from slack to taut, nearly pulling her off her feet.

“Let them move,” I said. “The sidewalk’s ours.”

She rolled her eyes. It was not the first time she had done so, and very likely not the last. Nonetheless, she surrendered to my macho idiocy.

The four runners crossed the road and onto our block. The two in the lead saw us in the way. Their brows wrinkled.

Uh-huh, I said to myself, I know you see me. I ain’t movin’, either.

The six of us met in front of the Atlantic Sands Oceanfront Hotel.

“Excuse us, sir,” one of the lead men said.

I didn’t move.

“You guys are supposed to be on the boardwalk with the rest of the beautiful people,” I said. “Sidewalk’s ours.”

My wife poked me in the ribs with an elbow. I ignored her.

“Our apologies, sir,” the other lead man said.

Our apologies? I thought. Oh yeah, these guys are SO intimidated by me.

Another poke by my wife. Harder.

“Sheesh,” I said, “I know city folk don’t care about manners and all, but you guys take the cake. You think you–

(poke poke POKE)

–can waltz around anywhere you want!”

(POKE POKE POKE POKE)

“What?” I whispered to my wife. “I have some manly mojo going on here.”

She ignored me. Her eyes were instead fixed on the T shirts of the men in front of us. The blue ones. With the fancy emblems.

I then realized two things. One was that there was another, very unique military base not too far from where we were standing called Naval Amphibious Base, Little Creek. The other was that the fancy emblems on the shirts of those four men said “U.S. Naval Special Warfare.”

I was picking a fight with four Navy SEALs.

My manly mojo drained along with the color from my face.

“Beg your pardon, sir,” the first man said again. “We just like to run out here because there aren’t many folks out this time of morning. We like to keep a quick pace, and that isn’t always easy with all the people on the boardwalk.”

I tried speaking, but all that came out was “Whhh…” I cleared my very dry throat and tried again. “Oh…well, um…good. That’s just…real good.”

“We appreciate that, sir,” he said, then shook my hand. When he did, I noticed the tattoo on his forearm. Written in old script beneath a sword was written, “Isaiah 6:8.”

“Hooyah,” I said.

“Hooyah,” he smile and answered. And off they went.

I didn’t say much on the way back to the hotel, and my wife was kind enough not to say much, either.

I wasn’t thinking about the nasty taste left over from having my foot in my mouth. I was thinking about the scripture tattooed on that Frogman’s arm. Isaiah 6:8. There are other verses in the Bible that carry more meaning for me, but that verse has always been my favorite.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

For four days I relaxed in the sun and the sand, staying up late and sleeping in with little worries and few cares. Yet around me all week were people who dedicated themselves to nothing more than ensuring I could do just that. Rest. Without worry or care. Because they manned the walls and filled the breaches. Men and women who flew the Blackhawks and the fighters, who rose before the sun to run the beaches, who stood watch on the ships so we could sleep in peace.

They endure and train and fight. They are separated from families and loved ones. They live under the constant threat of mortal danger.

Not because they must. Because they choose.

Because each of them said, “Don’t send him. Don’t send her. Send me.”

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