Congratulations! Your son is a Marine.
Ummmm......there must be some mistake. Why would The Red Cross send me a congratulations letter? My son isn't a Marine!
My first born baby, who is really not a baby, he is now 19, and he had completed his first year at college when I received this Red Cross mail, had been talking about joining the Marines. Honestly, he has wanted to go into the Marines since he was about 3 years old. He was star struck by the Marines who lent him a quarter one day, when he was 4 years old and didn't have enough money to pay for something at the store. He had always thought the Marines were very cool even with a Dad in the Air Force and a step dad in the Army, he loved the Marines. Their fierceness. Their courage. Their heroic acts of selfless service to our country....oh, and...he would get to kill the bad guys. As if Marine wasn't scary enough for any mother, he loved Marine Recon....you know, the guys that run around barefoot in the jungle and eat live bugs to survive and evade enemies who are trying to kill or maim them. Yup, that's my son. He wants to be in special forces....and even more than that, elite forces. Crazy!
So, I decide to call him and ask him why I had received this Red Cross letter congratulating me on my son becoming a Marine. As you can imagine.....he didn't say a word. Then I heard a soft, whispered, "ohhhhh." UGH! REALLY, DeAndre'?!! You signed up for the Marines and didn't tell me?! He told me that he had wanted it to be a surprise and that he was gonna tell all of us soon! HA! Ya right.....he was scared to tell me.
This is how our Marine journey has begun. In my heart, even when my son went to college and lived fairly close to home, I knew college wasn't going to last long for him and that he would end up in the Marines. I was seriously proud of him for making a decision and going for it! This was his dream and he chose to follow it. He is making it happen. As a mom, I love that. I pray for him constantly. His career choice scares me, but I am so proud of him for living out loud! Isn't this what we try to teach our kiddos? Live loudly! Do what you love!
The day he left for bootcamp I was an absolute mess. I was trying to prepare myself for this but I am telling you that nothing can prepare you for dropping your son off and knowing that he will never live at home again. He will never come home as a boy, my baby. He will now, forevermore,come visit when he can and he will be a man. Ya ya....blah blah.....that's why we raise them. I get that, I do. It still hurts. It's still hard. My heart still feels ripped out of my chest. I walked into K-Mart this one day, right before I was really dropping him off, because he needed a $20 bill. He had a ten, a five and five ones....nope, his recruiters told him he needed a $20 bill. Ok. I will go get one at K-Mart, which happened to be next door. Picture an absolute blubbering mess of a crazy lady complete with snots running down her nose and asking a cashier, in between sobs and cry hiccups, for a $20 bill. Oh.My.Gosh. I can laugh now. I'm sure everybody in K-Mart was scared of me. Whatever. I said good bye. Called my sister. Prayed. What else can I do at this point?
I happen to be a Life Coach. I love Psychology and Counseling and Therapy and Self Help books. I love knowing WHY and processing and figuring stuff out. I love "fixing" people or at least coming up with a reason as to why they can't be "fixed." Of course, I was life coaching myself through this whole, "I'm a blubbering fool because my baby just left for Marine Corps Bootcamp," crisis. I was processing.
This is what I came up with: Being a mom is the absolute most important thing in the world to me. I strived to know the most about parenting that I could possibly know when my kiddos were little and I still strive today. I want, more than anything, to be a good mom. I love being a mom. I am so in love with my kids. We have been through some heavy stuff. Deployments, deaths, adultery, divorce, single parenting, poor, working, single mom, moves, remarriage, blending a new family, etc. We've always done a lot of hard, recreational stuff together, as a family, too. Spartan Beast Races, two of my kiddos have done the Baton Death March, DeAndre' did this twice, hikes, etc. We've been through it all together. Bad hard stuff and good hard stuff. Even if I didn't do some stuff with them I was, at least, there at the end to celebrate with them. So, here is DeAndre',my firstborn baby, heading off to the hardest thing he was ever done, in my opinion, and I can't do it with him. I can't be there to talk about it at the end of the day. I can't hug him when he accomplishes something big or tell him how proud of him I am. I can't help him with encouraging words when he needs them. I can't be his MOM! I have to just sit at home and wait, knowing that tomorrow he is going into the gas chamber. That next week he is doing the drown- proofing. I hate this. I want to be doing it right next to him and supporting him and pushing him. I have to sit here and trust that he is supporting himself. He is motivating himself. He is praying for himself. He is encouraging himself. He is succeeding all by himself...he is succeeding all by himself.....he is succeeding all by himself. Deep breath. He is succeeding all by himself.
He doesn't need me to be next to him all the time anymore. He doesn't need to be mothered, as a child needs mothering, anymore. He needs me to be his mom, of course, but he is becoming a man. He needs me to be his friend and only give advice when he asks....which is wicked hard for me, and especially hard if you're my child. He needs me to trust him and trust how I've raised him. He needs me to pray for him and trust that God is really with him, just like I've taught him all of these years. I've never done this before, DeAndre'. I've never been a mom to an adult child. Bear with me, son, as I figure this out. Bear with me as I miss you. I am now the mom of a man. I am so proud of you. Here is one, last, hard thing we can do together as mom and baby boy...I can learn to let go and let you become a man. Can you please help me with that?
