This I Believe: Guest Blogger Carney Strange
September 17, 2009
Carney’s This I Believe essay can be found here:
http://thisibelieve.org/essay/22302/
I wrote my This I Believe essay in the dead of winter, January 2006, sitting in my office one day prior to the start of the winter term. Over the years I’ve learned that this is a time of year when the warmth of a good heater and some student-free quiet moments often evoke a mood of reflection and meaning-making. My opportunity came in the form of being a parent whose only son, at age 22, had just made a momentous decision on his own to become a U.S. Marine. Part of me wanted to stand up and cheer. At least for now, following a string of dead-end factory jobs, apparently he had found a direction. This was his life and he was going to live it. Another part of me though was gripped by a sense of dread for his choice. Where would this lead him? What other choices would he have to make? Would he regret any of them? Would he come back whole?
This was a helpless feeling for me, a person accustomed to being in control, almost as if something or someone else was in charge of what was happening and I could only watch. That’s how the image of Abraham came to mind. This Patriarch of Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament) was asked by Yaweh (God) to sacrifice his son, Jacob, as a sign of his faith. The scene described in Genesis 22 tells of Abraham, who built an altar on a prescribed mountaintop, and upon arranging wood for a fire, bound and laid his son to be a burnt offering. At the moment he reached for his knife to slay Jacob an angel cried out, “Abraham! Abraham! Do not lay a hand on the boy. Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” I can’t fathom the confusion and terror in Abraham at that moment when ultimate trust placed him in these horrendous circumstances. I sometimes wonder whether he would have carried through on his command had the angel not intervened. The story ended well though (at least for Jacob) with the discovery of a ram caught in a bush, which Abraham then sacrificed instead. Regardless, surely Abraham knew that life at such a moment was beyond his control.
In some ways, so it was in the dark hours of morning the day I hugged, back-slapped (as only men do), gripped, and watched my son, Martin, board the bus heading to the Detroit airport in search of his new life as a marine. Someone else was in control and there was little I could do about it. Driving back along Wooster Street to an office full of unanswered emails, classes to be planned, and meetings to be attended, there was no ram to be had. It was time to let him go and trust that things would turn out okay. That day was my lesson. All parents learn, eventually, that they don’t get to choose what their children do in life, but only whether they support them. For me this was a sure moment of values in conflict. Let me explain more.
I spent my years as a college student (1965-1969), like many then, witnessing the horrors of war and violence on nightly news, as well as, in my case, through letters from a brother who served as a marine medic in Vietnam during the TET offensive. While in the classroom I was surveying the great accomplishments of humankind, in the streets I was learning to stand public in my growing opposition to the choices being made by my government and the destruction left in its wake. It was during this time that I made a fundamental choice to resist war and violence in all its forms. Taking up arms against another was something I would not do, but dying for someone was exactly what I understood I must do. Following graduation and a stint at teaching junior high school, I completed two years of volunteer alternative service to our country as a C.O. (conscientious objector), working in community organizing with a low income family and senior housing program, pursuing goals much like those of Habitat for Humanity today. My position since then has remained the same, if not more resolute, to oppose the use of war and violence as a means to solve disputes in this world. My commitment and experience as a professor has been to up-build the human community rather than destroy it. A correlate of this choice has been my lifelong general resistance to the military and its machinery. So you can imagine the heartbeats skipped when my son nervously announced one night that he had “joined the marines.” Imagine too his anxiousness in sharing with me his decision, having grown-up with a father who had been quite vocal in his thoughts about such issues.
My son’s choice had not been one that I had considered up until then. But values and commitments in life, it seems, are like that; they hardly ever come in neat packages; they almost always involve conflicts of some sort. Trade-offs are inevitable. This is where I found myself when faced with a new dilemma – my commitment to non-violence or my commitment to my son. As complicated as it can be, paradoxically, parenthood has a way of simplifying things. To me there was no choice other than to support my son in the decision he had made. Ultimately, in this case, relationships trumped ideals. With all the fatherly love I could muster, “Go be the best marine you can be!” were my parting words that January day. This was not unlike the experience I had, some thirty-five years earlier, with my oldest sister (ten years my senior) who, as a staunch believer in our country’s Vietnam involvement then, nevertheless wrote a moving letter in support of my application for conscientious objector status. I remember the late night hours at times of heated exchanges we shared across the kitchen table, usually on opposing sides of the debate, where it became clear to me that she and I were in different places on the matter. But mostly, in the end, it was her sibling connection to me that motivated her choice of affirming who I had become and attesting to the sincerity I had expressed in doing so. The generous effect of her response was immeasurable. I have tried very hard to pass that same gift on to my son.
Since writing my This I Believe comments, I have had some second thoughts about its intent and effect. Maybe the tone was more about me than about my son. Maybe it was just a little bit too self-serving. Was I looking for empathy or sympathy? I’m not sure. Would I have written it differently today? Perhaps. It was nonetheless genuine as I recall the moment. Ironically, I have never shared this essay with my son and we have never formally debated our respective choices. I’ve learned to listen much more carefully, though, gleaning from his experiences and stories just where he might be with all this. I have also been unwavering in my support of him and the challenges he has surmounted, making certain that I was there to send him off and there to welcome him back from each of his deployments. My exposure to all this, through his eyes, has not changed my commitment to non-violence, but neither has it changed my relationship to him, except to recognize that perhaps it has grown stronger in the realization that we are both living what calls us, albeit in different directions, at least for the moment.
For the past four years, through my parental eyes, I have been most grateful for the experience he has gained as a marine. In spite of my worries accompanying his two trips to Iraq, it has been comforting to watch him mature in powerful ways (including a little gray hair!) and taste the feeling of being successful for the first time in his life. The immediacy, structure, and physicality of the marines have lined-up well with his preferences for learning, a synergy that totally eluded him through his years of secondary schooling. Rising to the rank of corporal, he is now in charge of training and leading other men whom, I suppose, have faced similar choices. What better experience is there for a dad than to see his son find his own path? In the end, it seems, that is what really counts. Be safe, Martin; I’m with you all the way.
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