Yesterday my daughter called me. Not Serena, who appears here frequently, but the daughter I don’t mention much here because:
a.) it’s difficult to keep up the self-created image of being much younger than I am when you can easily do the math after knowing I have a kid who’s 23. Not that you were fooled if you’ve seen my photos. Not that it should matter.
b.) we’re not exactly Lorelai and Rory. In other words, there’ve been some issues over the years. Like when she moved out abruptly over her prom weekend. And a bunch of stuff that happened before that. Or after.
Still, she’s my kid, and I love her.
So yesterday she calls me, doesn’t leave a message. This in itself isn’t unusual; she works a lot, she’s busy, doesn’t like messages, maybe. Still, I happen to know that she’s on a mini vacation in New Jersey (the vacation destination of dozens!), and besides, I already talked to her once this week, so what’s up?
She calls again. Then she tries my home phone instead of the cell. Something’s up.
“Hi Mom!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Yes there is, I can tell.”
She sighs. Lorelai and Rory we may not be, but I still know my kid. And she knows I know her. Some things you can’t erase with distance.
Then she tells me that the older brother of her best-friend-from-high-school was killed this week in Iraq. A nice kid, not even a kid anymore at, what, 25? Former high school football captain (these things generally are of little importance to me but for some reason they take on new significance now), lacrosse player, nice older-brother-guy at what was for a while my daughter’s second home, is dead.
And for no reason. Because he shouldn’t have been there.
His mother, a nice woman who kindly hosted my daughter’s bridal shower, will never think of Mother’s Day in the same way again.
I don’t know what to do about this, except maybe hug my kids more tightly. Or go bake a Peace Pie.
[tags]war, Iraq, war is stupid, pointless, Mother’s Day[/tags]
May 5th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
It becomes more immediate when you know someone. While my son was in Iraq, I refused to watch the news, though I kept track of what was happening via Internet blurbs. Every time a soldier death was mentioned, I scanned the article for some idea of where it happened. Too many deaths, when even the soldiers no longer believe we should be there.