Phone Calls from My Son

Because my son was raised right (taking FULL credit here), he calls his mother every Sunday. He’s active military now, and I have no experience at all with the military, aside from some research for books and what I've seen in movies. My dad was in the reserves, but I was tiny at the time.

Obviously, I think about Dearest Son all the time, doing those military things military people do. Crawling under barbed wire. Shooting things. Running while singing. Getting yelled at. Not the fullest picture, right? So when the phone rings on Sunday, I leap for it, and here’s how our conversations go.

Me: “Hi, honey!!!!!!!!” (All those exclamation points are clearly expressed in my voice.)

DS: “Hi, Mom!”

Me: “Hang on, I’ll get Dad!” I bellow for McIrish so Dearest won’t have to repeat himself.

Me: “Okay, Dad’s here now, and so is Huck, and so is Buttercup.”

The cat rubs his face against the phone when Dearest is speaking, and the dog’s tail immediately starts wagging when she hears her brother’s voice.

Me: “How are you, honey?”

DS: “Everything’s great. It was a pretty busy week. We…”

And then he starts speaking in the strange language of the military, which sounds something like We went to the DCE because the XR had the EEPs and they wanted us to take our (unintelligible but presumably a weapon) for the PLAs. I qualled for the Z112 and I might be going to the ADS for MKW training but we’ll see, because the CX said the MSS might have us do ELEs instead.

(None of those are real terms, by the way. Or maybe they are. At first, I tried googling his acronyms, but there are just too many.)

McIrish and me nevertheless: “Wow! That’s great.”

DS: “What’s new with you guys?”

Me: “I saw a Baltimore oriole yesterday!”

McIrish: “I dug up four trees and moved them!”

DS: “Sounds exciting.” But there is warmth in his voice, because he loves his childhood home.

I usually detail the funny things his nephew and niece say and do, because he adores them, so the next phase of the conversation goes something like this.

Me: “I built them a fort, and they were dragons named Claw and Screech, but then there was a rock slide, so I had to pelt them with pillows, and then they became fossils and 65 million passed, and I was a paleontologist out on a dig, found them, sprinkled them with water, and then they resurrected and became dinosaurs.”

DS: “Aw. So cute.”

Occasionally, we talk about a movie. Dearest saw Project Hail Mary, highly recommended it to us, and so we saw it, too. That conversation lasted much longer, because we all three love a good space movie. This caused me to send Dearest the book.

Me: “I sent you a book!”

DS: “Oh. Thanks.” (He really doesn’t read fiction.)

Me: “It’s Project Hail Mary!”

DS: “Thanks. I appreciate it.” (I know he won’t read it. He’s seen the movie. In his warped 20-something mind, there's no reason to read the book. Yet I hope, Readers. I hope. It will look good on his shelf, at any rate.)

Then we talk about the next time we’ll see each other, because the military has made Dearest appreciate his family and home so much more than ever before. After all, we have things like soft beds and couches and homemade cookies here.

Me: “When will you have a few days off?”

DS: “Well, we might have the 4^th, but the CVs could be ADL, so we might be taking the BBNs to the SXR.”

Me: “Ah, got it. Well. Keep us up to date, okay?”

DS: “Of course.”

Finally, we sign off.

Me: “Thanks for calling, honey. It’s so good to hear your voice. Take care of yourself. I love you.”

And in these phrases, I am picturing a brown-eyed baby smiling up at me, learning to walk, clinging to me in the waves of the Atlantic, stealing chocolate chips from the baking cupboard, playing with dinosaurs and trucks and dirt and dogs. I see him on Christmas morning with his sister, peeking to see if Santa came, and on his birthdays wearing a pointy hat, grinning. I remember how it felt to carry him, heavy with sleep, from the car, how he’d always ask for more “sleepytime chats” to put off bedtime.

I’m so glad I was there, you know? So glad I spent the time, so glad I knew those days would end and appreciated them in real time. Now I try to picture him in a place I’ve never seen and probably never will. I don’t know what he does all day. I don’t know what might  be in store for him or how that will affect him. I only know that I love him, and I’m so, so proud of the person he’s become.

I don’t know what he’s thinking at the end of our conversations, but I do know what he says.

“Love you, too, Mom.”