Tanya

My son enlisted in August. He is nineteen. He is at Bragg.

I am not asking whether this was right. I am asking whether he is going somewhere cold. That is the only question I have and there is nobody to ask it.

He is not in Iceland. I got two words this morning. "Not there."

I have read those two words about four hundred times. I am not proud of how much of my week they carried.

Navy. It says Navy.

My son is Army. I read the word Navy and I felt relief and then I felt so ashamed of the relief that I had to sit down on the stairs.

Somebody's son is on that ship. I am so sorry. I am so sorry that my first feeling was about mine.

"I don't rule things out. That's the whole job."

Sir. My son is nineteen. He is at Bragg. XVIII Airborne Corps is in that plan and so is he.

Rule it out. That is also the job. That is the part of the job where you tell a mother in Indiana that her boy is not going to be in the first wave onto a beach in a country we were allied with at Christmas.

Rule it out.