The Price We Pay… Determines the Product We Get
So, I’m standing in my kitchen, making my heart sandwiches. You see, there’s a Princess Dress Up Party tomorrow at my house for 3 very special granddaughters - and ALL their friends are coming!
Hence, the heart shaped pb&j; and ham and cheese, sandwiches.
Hey, when Princesses are coming - and DRESSED-UP PRINCESSES at that - plain shaped sandwiches just won’t do.
And then it comes in. An email from a Christian friend - CVS is now removing religious liberties from their employees. A text message from another - a famous exorcist says that our days of freedom as Christians are numbered - does anyone have the link?
And on, and on, and on. The news, it seems, is dire.
And then John Denver comes on the radio. He is singing about ‘leaving on a jet plane’, and ‘oh babe, I hate to go’ - and a memory steps into my kitchen. It is my husband. He is standing there, with empty hands. He has tears in his eyes, as the children grab ahold of his legs. He lifts one up, the toddler, and kisses her to pieces. The older ones, who know this routine, just stand at the side, looking like someone has kicked them in the gut.
I feel that same kick to mine. But I fight back tears, slap a cheery smile on my face and say - “It’s only 6 months Daddy, and look! We have all the days marked on the calendar - you’ll be home in no time at all!”
The kids, taking my lead, jump up and down and yell, “Yeah!!! No time at all!” But Bob looks at me, and I look at him; and once again, our hearts are torn out of our bodies, twisted, and thrown on the ground.
What we don’t tell the kids is that, even without considering the years a Navy carrier pilot spends away from home - whenever he goes to sea - there is always the underlying terror that he will come home in a wooden box. It happens all the time - to strangers; to friends. He really is ‘leaving on a jet plane’; and I really do wish, ‘oh babe’, that he ‘didn’t have to go’.
And as he turns, another memory walks into my kitchen. It’s a memory of setting my face like flint; and facing yet another devastating death of a young pilot in our community - yet another sacrifice “for the Good of the Nation” Another father lost; another Navy wife about to embark on raising her small children alone.
And a final memory steps into my kitchen. It is one of the Navy wives around us who had to embark on that life of loneliness. She decided to travel home to her family for the holidays. Anything to fill the empty days with at least a small attempt at normalcy for her, now fatherless, children. Except the children began crying on the plane; the baby was fussy; and she just couldn’t quiet him. Suddenly a civilian - unused to things ‘messing up’ their life those days - turned and suggested that the next time she travel - she bring her husband with her so that her children don’t “bother everyone on the plane”.
She was so stunned, so grief-stricken, that she couldn’t answer. She couldn’t tell that selfish, self-absorbed person living ‘The American Dream’ of the 1980’s and 1990’s that she no longer HAD a husband. That he was dead. That he was dead defending THEIR selfish right to have peace and quiet in their perfect little American world. Their world of no separations, lots of Super Bowl Parties, and neighborhood get-togethers in peace on a Friday night.
And so I remember all these things as one frantic message after another comes in. It seems that the world is falling apart these days. It would seem that while my friends and I were saying goodbye to our husbands as they went out and gave their lives; and OUR lives, to keep our country safe - that there was perhaps not the same effort being made on the home front. Because the ‘home-front’ is now crumbling. Somebody, somewhere, perhaps - was just not doing their job.
As for me, I slap some more peanut butter, and then jelly, on a sandwich.
Princesses are coming for brunch tomorrow - and by gum, I plan to be there for them.