Part One: The Real

I am full of gratitude for all of the people who face the harsh and unbearable realities of war for the sake of others. I am also full of yearning for a world in which their sacrifice is unnecessary.

Twice this Memorial Day weekend I found myself tagging along with Roger and Jack to target practice. Both times we drove to the mountains--once to the east and once to the west--and found spots where they could shoot and I could enjoy a beautiful view while I read a book. Both times I brought the copy of Emma Lou Thayne's memoir I bought last weekend.

Both times, with the sound of gun shots and bullets hitting the hillside in the background, I happened to be reading sections of the book in which she wrote about her work for world peace--standing against nuclear proliferation in the face of swelling fear during the cold war at great risk to her reputation in a conservative community, traveling to the Soviet Union as a poet emissary, gaining insight from a friend who had recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq to meet his five-month-old son for the first time.

"I must find ways still to nibble away at whatever anger there is in the world," she wrote, now well into her eighties, beautifully articulating something I have also felt driven to do.

Is it ironic, then, that I'm glad Jack is learning how to handle a gun safely and well?

One morning when he was two, engrossed in his breakfast and an episode of Sesame Street, I was engrossed in the unfolding coverage of 9/11. Every once in a while I'd glance at him, wishing with all of my heart that he could stay in that innocent moment. But the reality is that Jack has never been conscious of a time his country has not been at war.

Through the years, I have watched him battle friends with light sabers and nerf dart guns. I have gradually let him into the world of strategic video games. I have read books to him like Ender's Game, The City of Ember, and The Hunger Game trilogy, using them as springboards to talk about things like power and fear and morality in conflict.

And through the years, I've had the niggling thought in the back of my mind that Jack needs these things, the play and the fiction. If I shelter him too much--the big-hearted boy who organized a Save the Penguins campaign at school and who made me stop reading Roald Dahl's Danny Champion of the World because it glorified poaching--I risk sending him out unprepared.

Yesterday, Jack told me about his friend's older brother registering for the selective service. He is aware. The real world is becoming more real.