Saturday Snapshot -- Homecoming

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post on Alyce's blog At Home With Books. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.

My nephew flew home from Afghanistan this week and we met him at the aiport, pulling the boys out of school.
That's him in the hat hugging his little sister, surrounded by my kids.

Wish he didn't have to go back.

Awkward Conversations

Talking to a grown up nephew is, well, awkward.
I see it on both sides of the family.
The nieces always seem to have a lot to say. I can ask them questions about studies and jobs and life choices. The guys generally answer in monosyllabic grunts of yes or no. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has this difficulty because I've seen my adult relatives feel the same awkwardness when trying to talk to my teenage boys. Sometimes I'll jump in the conversation with stories, illustrations. My boys rarely volunteer examples.
Tomorrow, my nephew Michael comes back from Afghanistan. Our family will meet him at the airport. The crowd of well wishers will probably prevent one-on-one conversation, but some time in the week that he's home, I hope to get some time to talk with him. And I need a plan so I can have a real conversation.
Michael was the first child of my siblings, a surprise baby the year my little brother graduated college. I had just finished grad school and taken a job in far away Florida but I immediately fell in love with those big brown eyes and the unruly brown hair of his. My brother and his wife would travel to Florida to stay with me for vacations and I loved spending time with Michael. I gave him his first haircut and cleaned up his puke from too many chocolate donuts.
He was an overactive little guy and found mischief wherever he went -- like the time he stuck the tweezers in the outlet of my makeup mirror blowing the circuit or when he stamped his foot during our visit to the llama herd. He got a sword at Disney World and broke it the next day before making up the saddest song ever about how "Michael breaks his toys..."
It's strange that after sharing an aunt/nephew life with so many good memories, we now have awkward silences.
Michael is 24 now and has been in the Navy for five years. He volunteered for duty in Afghanistan rather than going back on the nuclear sub he has served on in the past. I'm proud of all he's accomplished, but there's not much of a response to "I'm proud of you."
So, any suggestions on conversations with young men who, when they were little, climbed in my lap, and now have nothing much to say?

Dangerous Mission

My nephew Michael was the first grandchild on both sides of the family. He was feted and corrected by more grandparents and aunts and uncles than he could count. Now he's almost 24 and has been in the Navy for nearly 5 years.
He served on a nuclear sub, which sounds dangerous, but keeps him away from road bombs. This year he decided to accept land duty in Afghanistan. He's in Texas training for what he's calling Afghan Deployment 2011.
I long for the days when a mischievous Michael tried hard to stay out of trouble.
At our house in Florida when little Michael visited, the lights suddenly dimmed and went out. I found a pair of tweezers stuck into the outlet on my makeup mirror. That tripped the breaker. We examined Michael's hand to make sure he hadn't burned himself.

Here's the whole gang except for the two youngest, including Tucker. Michael is on the right with his eyes closed.

Every time he visited us in Florida, he seemed to get bronchitis. One day, while eating Entenmann's chocolate donuts, he started to cough and threw up all over my favorite sweatshirt. As we were cleaning him up, he asked, "Can I have the rest of my donut now?"
My favorite Michael story is from when we were visiting my parents' blueberry farm in Kentucky. Michael must have been two years old and he had a little plastic tennis racket. Earl, who I was dating at the time, was in charge of Michael as he leaned over a little waterfall, running the racket under it again and again, as two years old will.
In a fraction of a second, Michael fell head first into the cold creek.
Earl says he still remembers the quiet of the countryside that second that Michael was face down in the water. Then Earl lifted him out feet first and his wails filled the air.
When Michael was 19, he joined the Navy. He rarely makes it home as he figures out what his adult life will look like, but he got home this spring and luckily, his flight came through Columbus. The boys went with me to the airport to see Michael off. We won't see him again until after his tour in Afghanistan.
My boys have grown in size to catch Michael, but they have years to go before they're ready to make decisions similar to Michael's.
When your kids, or even nephews, are making life-changing decisions as grown ups, all you can do is watch and hope for the best.
Thanks for your service, Michael, and come home safely.

The Charming Smile of a Veteran

Today is Veteran's Day here in the U.S. Usually, that doesn't mean much to me, but today, I get the day off.
I haven't spent much of my life thinking about Veterans. Sure, my mother's four brothers fought in World War II or the Korean War, and my father's brother also fought in the Korean War, but my father didn't. My brothers didn't. Now I have a nephew who travels on a U.S. sub to places he can't disclose, and still I don't think much about veterans.
Lately though, they've been showing up in my classes. They add a lot to our discussions. They've seen things most of us never will -- if we're lucky. Most of the veterans in my classes seem to be Marines. I'm not sure why I don't see soldiers who were in the Army, Navy or Air Force, but almost all of the vets are Marines who have fought in Iraq or Afghanistan. Many of them have injuries, although they aren't obvious, like missing a limb.
This summer, Chad waltzed into my class. I try to picture him the way he was in July. He had and still has a beautiful smile. It's obvious that he's used to charming people. A flash of his smile and a knowing look from his big brown eyes.
He's intelligent and honest. He admitted he hadn't bought the books for the class and planned to get through without shelling out the money. Not reading the stories in our anthology doesn't deter him from joining the discussion. He's had a lot of life experiences for a 23-year-old. He's also excellent at BS.
This fall, Chad walked into my English class, the next in the series he has to complete.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, surprised but also delighted to see him.
"All the other classes were full," he winked.
This fall, Chad is still charming, but it has turned a bit. To the rest of the class, he seems full of himself and not serious about working. When I was pairing up students to work together, I told Logan she would work with Chad.
"No." The word burst from Logan.
Logan worked alone and I paired Heidi with him.
"He's good at this stuff, Heidi," I told the Dominican girl who seemed hesitant.
And Chad is good at writing essays. He gets an A most of the time.
Part of me wants to give the class a lecture on the way they have judged Chad. "He has seen his friends die and has been injured himself," I want to tell them. But I don't.
Chad seems to get angrier in class. He's mad at his classmates. He peppers his language with f-ing everything, language appropriate for marines perhaps, but language he didn't use before. He's mad about the essays we discuss. He turns in a rough draft that is full of "fill-in-the-blank" lines that he will do later.
I spend more time talking to Chad. I call him up after class.
"What's going on?"
He shakes his head. Trying to do too many hours. The medication.
"You seem really angry to me. Have you talked to somebody?"
"The f-ing counselor at the VA, every time I go there all they do is play chess. Nobody talks."
I picture the Doonesbury cartoon where the vets are playing chess with the counselor.
I give Chad the name of a good counselor. She isn't at the VA, but maybe she can help.
After the weekend, I ask if he got in contact with the counselor.
"You didn't give me a number," he says.
I look up the number online during class and give it to him.
"Are you living with your parents?" I ask.
I'm kind of nervous that I might be the only safety net Chad has. I vaguely remember that Chad's parents are professionals of some sort, doctors or attorneys. He talks about a little sister who goes to high school in Columbus.
"No, man, I haven't seen them for awhile," he says.
The most recent essay was about future careers. Chad wants to be a politician, and, the Chad from this summer will be a charming politician, winning votes with his smile. But I worry that Chad may be gone. He got an 80 percent on that paper.
So today, I'm thinking about veterans. Not the ones who march in parades and who served in long ago wars, but boys who come home from Iraq and Afghanistan and try to piece their lives back together. The ones who show up in my classroom and they are fine, until they aren't any more and there is no one there to catch them.