Nine Months

Long enough to create another person.

Will that person go on to take the place of The Boy?

He's headed to Iraq, as of November.

I feel very alone. I have friends who love me, and who know The Boy. But I don't know that anyone around me knows the way I felt, today, after learning that TB was going into Iraq. I went to the grocery store, Wal-Mart, (yes, yes, I know, all wrong, but I'm a poor graduate student, and there's not much more in this woe begotten town) and walked around in a daze, putting things into my cart, and taking them back out. The lights in the store were bright, then dim. I could hear it in my head, a voice, mine, I guess, saying, "My son is going to Iraq. Iraq. In 9 months. November." It was, for want of a better word, surreal.

Then I come home to hear the bullshit from Bush? About No Child Left Behind?

Oh Please.

I have been holding my tears in all day - as I walked to my car, I saw (of course) a magnetic ribbon on a car that said "Pray for Our Troops." I nearly doubled over in shock and pain. Is MY CHILD now one of THEIR TROOPS? Do people I don't know pray for my son? Is my son in the prayers of others? Others who don't know him? How do I thank them for that? How do I acknowledge that? How do I understand that?

How do I function like this? He loves his barracks, by the way, the ones that he will live in for a few months, before he goes to That Sandy Place.

Are you a mother? Can you imagine your child outside your reach? Yes, sure, when he/she is an adult. Okay. Now people are shooting at her. In another country. People are laying bombs in front of her path. People are looking at him in the sights of a gun.

There may be a man or woman right now planning to kill my child.

I can do nothing about this. Except perhaps put a yellow ribbon on my car.