Inner Struggle

When I look back, I see that my sons had not only an inner struggle when joining the military, but a battle against conventional “wisdom” of friends, family and virtual strangers. It’s an enormous decision whether or not to give up four years of your young life – military service isn’t quite the same as living on a college campus! There is also the struggle to choose for yourself and swim against the stream.

The men and women signing up for service in the years since 9/11 feel the same burn of patriotism in their soul, they feel the same passion for their country and countrymen, they also know that it won’t be a bed of roses over there. In fact, it will be a living Hell. It takes something special to join the service when the war isn’t going well. To know that, and to still join, is extraordinary courage and patriotism.

When I learned that Tyler had declined his ROTC scholarship to enlist straight up, I was floored, scared and truly angry. I couldn’t imagine that he could care so little about his own future that he would give up what amounted to a better situation for himself. What I didn’t understand then is that in Tyler, the flame of patriotism was burning. There wasn’t a thing I could do to change it. Truthfully, I’d never want to extinguish that.

“Oh, you heard,” was all he said when I was yelling at him from the front steps of our home.

“Oh, I heard,” was my reply. I yelled, I screamed, I cried. I told him he wasn’t going straight to the Army. I actually ordered him to call and get that ROTC scholarship back. Crazy me. He maintained that he was enlisting. We were locked in a battle of wills.

At this point in his high school career, his hair was fairly long and wavy. With a couple weeks to go before graduation, I was wondering how he would feel with a much shorter military cut. He came in from PT with his recruiters on evening, sporting a shocking new hairstyle. I’d call it a Mohawk, but it had this long, tall stand of hair in the center of his head. Perhaps this is a fin?

I’m still not sure what you call it, but all of the hair on the rest of his head was gone, so short it was barely visible. This long, centered, and stiff hair (how does one get hair to stand up so stiff and straight?) was all that was left. My jaw dropped and my mouth hung open. I tried to make a quick recovery. Not too sure if I was successful.

“Hey, Mom.”

"Hey, Tyler.” He kissed my cheek as always.

“How was your day?” I asked.

“Fine, yours?” His reply. He kept a straight face and acted like he was sporting nothing more unusual than a comb over.

“Oh, the usual,” I said. “What’s new with you?”

“Not much.” Indeed. Again, the boy is blessed with the gift of understating the obvious.

That stand of hair on his head was symbolic of his personal stand. Life was changing; it had changed. As with a shockingly different hairstyle, you can’t go back. Truly, none of us could go back.