life

When my son was a boy growing up he had a fascination with weapons. He had a BB pistol, BB rifle, bow and arrow, knife, blow gun, nunchucks, stars, and I don’t remember what all. They cluttered his closet and hung on his walls. He built a model of a catapult for a school project. When he was 16 and took his trip to Israel one of the ‘activities’ was a choice of different lives in Isreal...kibbutz, arts, army, I forget, half a dozen or so choices...for a week, he chose the army. He got to fire a real gun. In high school, he and his friends would go camping, dress up in padded clothing and play war in the woods, with BB guns. This would be after they tried it in the park at the end of the street and got brought home by the cops. He’s got a BB in his leg to this day. This boy of mine is also unaggressive, doesn’t like real violence it hurts!, is sweet and sensitive.

Huh?

What can I say, he’s a Gemini.

So why was I surprised when he came home one day and told us he had joined the Army Reserve?

Are you nuts?!

“Are you nuts?!” I asked him. “What happens if we go to war? Are you going to be OK with shooting, perhaps, killing someone?”

“Oh Mom”, he says to me, “We’re not going to go to war.”

When Bush invaded Iraq, my son was sitting in the desert in Kuwait waiting for his unit to be ordered across the border to lay pipe and build pump stations.

Turns out, he scored so high on the tests that they encouraged him to go to officer school and he also turned out to be a natural crack shot. Instead he selected engineering as his specialty, which loosely translated meant carpenter. He was over there about six months, never seeing anyone but his unit and in the distance Bedouins crossing the desert.

The day after Bush was re-elected, he was called back up for a year’s tour and given 5 days to get his affairs in order and report. This was at the height of the body count and he would be on bases in the middle of it. He came over that morning to tell me, had already told his father on the phone. He made me sit down.

I cried.

I cried. I had not cried the first time. I had been stoic. I couldn’t do it again.

“It’s OK Mom. Look, see,” he said to me and showed me his shoulder, “I had Truth written on. I’ll be OK.” He had had the Hebrew word for ‘truth’ tattooed on. In the Jewish tale of the Golem, the Golem was brought to life by writing this word on it's forehead. It could not be destroyed as long as that word remained.

Oh, yes, please, to all the spirits that be, life for my son.

The tat did it’s job, my son came home to us and thus ended the worst year of my life. He had it embellished later with a compass rose.


*this story is not about my son's service though I appreciate all the supportive remarks, but rather how he came to have his tattoo.