News & Politics
Why I Won’t Tell My Kids About the Fort Hood Shooting
I don’t want them to think it was their dad’s base that was attacked.
Photograph of Lt. Gen. Robert Cone at a press conference at Fort Hood by Ben Sklar/Getty Images.
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With a husband on the ground in Iraq, I’m all too aware of the way the news media, over the six years since the U.S. military shocked and awed Iraq, transmits the idea that Americans on U.S. installations there are as safe as they would be at any base on the home front. But that formerly comforting thought feels sinister today, after an Army psychiatrist at Ft. Hood killed 13 and wounded more than 30 people in a deployment readiness center. (A day with a death toll that high would be considered an unusually tragic day in Iraq or Afghanistan.) I’m very familiar with these centers, though not the one at Ft. Hood; my husband Scott, a Navy pilot, has spent many hours in their lines, thick medical file in one hand and Kindle in the other, waiting for shots to be given, teeth to be examined, boxes to be checked.
This is usually one of the last stages before his actual deployment, and at home, we’re often caught in the eye of an emotional tornado. There’s a moment of calm for us in the midst of the panic over his leaving. On my part, I’ve passed through the phases of resisting, ranting, and sobbing—the advance grieving—and I’m exhausted, ready for him to depart so that we can start the countdown to his homecoming. At that point, I’m a butterfly pinned to a mat, unable to beat my wings anymore. Complete surrender. I watch him gather his medical records and walk out the door, knowing that he’s almost gone for good.
For 12 soldiers and one civilian at Ft. Hood’s readiness center Thursday afternoon, it really was the last time they would walk out the door. That’s what I thought when I saw the CNN breaking news reports as I hurried through an airport terminal. In more cynical moods, I’ll admit that no one is safe anywhere, but the truth is I’ve always felt safe on a military base. You can leave your purse on your chair as you run to get a packet of ketchup at the food court. You can ask another military mom to watch your kid. You can stand in line at the ATM, or the convenience store, or the deployment readiness center, and not get shot. Military bases are like friendly neighborhoods straight out of Leave It to Beaver, where strangers look you in the eye when they smile and say hello.
Yesterday’s shooting won’t change that. The military is an enormous and diverse organization, reflecting American society itself, and the murderous Maj. Hasan was exceptional in the most literal sense of the word. I don’t feel any less safe on bases, though I do feel tremendously sad for the families who have lost loved ones—lost them forever, rather than for the length of the deployment they surely dreaded.
My dread took another detour yesterday. From the airport, I called my parents, who were baby-sitting my 6-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter. “Don’t turn on the news,” I implored them. “I don’t want the kids to know what happened.” My fear was that they would think Ft. Hood was their father’s base, or the base near our former home, or that this would happen to us the next time we drove through the gates of another installation. My mother, well-versed in my worst fears, quickly agreed.
I’m not sure how much longer I can shield my children from knowledge of the dangers that exist around unlikely corners. I suspect that my son already believes that staying close to loved ones at all times is his only salvation. Last week, he wrote a letter to Scott’s boss in Baghdad. It reads, in its entirety, “Ples let my dad stay home.”
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Comments
Author's reaction to husband's deployment
By: sierraseven | Sun, 11/08/2009 - 02:41
I found the author's reflections on the feeling of safety on a military post, and the jarring sensation of questioning that safety in the light of the Ft. Hood shootings, very insightful.
I don't want the following comments to be taken as attacking the author, or criticizing her feelings (which she is fully entitled to have).
I just was somewhat taken aback by her description of her reaction to her husband's deployments. " ... panic over his leaving"; "resisting, ranting, and sobbing". I've been in uniform for 21 years, and have been deployed to Iraq. I feel I was lucky that my father, a USMC WWII veteran who lives with me, understood how much his reaction would affect me in my preparations to deploy. He was worried (how worried, I don't think I really knew until after I was home) but always understood that deployment is a Soldier's expected duty, and not a catastrophe that comes as a surprise.
A Navy pilot surely expects that he or she will be deployed. Most of the military spouses I know find their spouses' deployments very stressful, they have many fears, and of course they cry. But they don't "panic". Her description of deployment preparation as an "emotional tornado" makes me think that she might benefit from some help in acknowledging the inevitability of her husband's deployments. Family support groups and counseling are available. It's got to be an additional layer of stress for her husband to know that his wife is panicking. Again, not attacking or criticizing her - she's in a tough job as a military spouse. I just think she could learn better ways of handling it.
F.D.R., R.I.P.
By: PeteMauss | Sat, 11/07/2009 - 20:09
Possible Afghan Objectives:
1) "America First" - The US leaves the Middle East, takes its chances at home while denominating Islam a non-religion, the Koran a Terrorism Manual, and outlawing Islam here in the US of A, altogether, much as Lincoln having suspended Habeas Corpus during civil war.
2)Determine what exactly it is that Americans love so much about Islam, Afghanistan or Iraq, besides the pathological, terminal case of naive, phony-baloney positivism Obama and the rest of us have here (?)
3) Another objective, adapted from the Allies' 1945 Potsdam Declaration:
Terms for Afghanistan's Surrender
Herenow, November 7th, 2009 announcing the U.S., Allied terms for
Afghanistan's surrender, with the warning, "We will not deviate from
them. There are no alternatives. We shall brook no delay." For
Afghanistan, the terms of the declaration specify:
The elimination for all time of the authority and influence of those
who have deceived and misled the people of Afghanistan into embarking
on world conquest.
The occupation of points in Afghan territory to be designated by the
Allies.
Afghan sovereignty shall be limited, and to such minor points as we
determine.
The Afghan military forces shall be completely disarmed.
Stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those
who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners.
This declaration offers that:
We do not intend that the Afghans shall be enslaved as a race or
destroyed as a nation, ... The Afghan Government shall remove all
obstacles to the revival and strengthening of democratic tendencies
among the Afghan people. Freedom of speech, of religion, and of
thought, as well as respect for the fundamental human rights shall be
established.
Afghanistan shall be permitted to maintain such industries as will
sustain her economy and permit the exaction of just reparations in
kind, ... Afghan participation in world trade relations shall be
permitted.
The occupying forces of the Allies shall be withdrawn from Afghanistan
as soon as these objectives have been accomplished and there has been
established in accordance with the freely expressed will of the Afghan
people a peacefully inclined and responsible government.
We call upon the government of Afghanistan to proclaim now the
unconditional surrender of all Afghan armed forces, and to provide
proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The
alternative for Afghanistan is prompt and utter destruction.
-Pete Mauss,
"Man knows no master save creating Heaven, or those whom choice and common good ordain," (Thomas Paine).
There was so much in this
By: mia | Sat, 11/07/2009 - 01:13
There was so much in this column that resonated with me, mostly because my fiance deployed to Iraq several weeks ago with his Army brigade. First you point out that "a day with a death toll that high would be considered an unusually tragic day in Iraq or Afghanistan" - a few hours before I first heard about the shooting, I was sitting in my law school dorm room talking to my fiance online about a brief trip he was about to take to the main U.S. base in Baghdad. I had just read a news item about several soldiers being wounded in a mortar attack on that base and he was reassuring me that he would be fine, that he was safe, that the base was huge and I shouldn't be worried. (It's his first deployment and I'm not in an environment where I can talk to other people with a lot of military experience, so, I may wring my hands more than seasoned military wives and girlfriends would do - I honestly do not know.) In any case I definitely did not miss the irony of this earlier conversation when I did find out about the shootings.
Second, I almost cried when I read your description of your feelings before your husband left. It summarized so well the cycle of painful emotions I went through before he left, right down to how after I said goodbye, I felt emotionally exhausted and just ready to, as both my fiance and my mom (wife of a retired Navy officer) put it, get the deployment started so every day after that would put me closer to the day when I could see him again. One of the many horrifying things I have thought about since this shooting is how for some of the victims, that day of reunion with their loved ones that I dream about every single day was so close but never happened.
Finally, I have no children and I am sure that children make the ordeal of deployment a very different experience from what I am going through right now. I did however grow up a Navy brat (my father was a pilot too actually). This was mostly in the '90s, so my family did not have to go through most of the difficulties your family is enduring. Reading this column and your other columns, though, has made me appreciate more what my mom had to deal with in terms of talking to us about the nature of my dad's job and talking to us (or rather not talking to us) about when other pilots were killed in crashes. What's more I will always remember my fiance's commissioning as an officer when we graduated from college, when my then-6-year-old brother turned to me and said, "I hope he doesn't get killed in the war." I did not and still do not know how to respond to something like that coming from a child - I am actually kind of afraid of going back home over the holidays, in the event my still-very-young siblings say those kinds of things. Still, they clearly know and worry about him because of what they see on the front page of the newspaper and what is on the TV. These experiences incline me to think that with young children it is better (or at least makes sense) if they not be exposed to news of that kind unless absolutely necessary - especially given everything else they have to deal with since their dad has gone to war.
Anyways - apologies because this is all very long and personal but I just wanted to say that, while I am not a parent but just thinking about other life experiences brought to mind by your column, I think your decision is a sound one. I also appreciate your columns and wish the best of luck to you and your family right now.
I tried to keep 9/11 secret from my kids
By: AngloFiles | Fri, 11/06/2009 - 18:36
We live in DC and I tried to keep 9/11 secret from my kids -- for a while, at least. I'm that crazy. The day it happened, lying in a comfortable fetal curl on the floor of my husband's home office as he monitored new reports, all I wanted was for the kids to "shelter in place" (a term we never used back then) and rotate through the usual math, science, Weekly Reader, show and tell -- whatever the normal schedule called for in their 4th grade, 2nd grade and kindergarten classes.
Of course, I knew they were going to find out something bad had happened. I'm not abso-totally naive. For one thing, their school closed abruptly that day. While I thought they were rotating, a friend was scooping them up with her own daughter and rushing them home to us. The next morning, another friend and I took our broods apple-picking. All we wanted was to keep them away from freaked out neighbors, anxiety-inducing radio reports and, God forbid, the TV, with its relentless replaying of the planes hitting the towers and people screaming in the streets below. I took to getting my news fixes when they were asleep or outside.
Or, pretty soon after, back at school, where the kindergartener's class discussed what had happened at Circle Time and made pictures. So much for shielding them from bad news. They ended up piecing together at least a vague picture of the cataclysm. I answered their questions and tried to feed them only as much information as I thought they wanted -- kind of like sex ed.
But I really wondered if I'd done the right thing when, on a spring day in 2002 as lovely as September 11th had been, my eldest overheard a conversation and turned to me with a stricken look. "Mom," she asked, "were there PEOPLE on those planes?"
My heart goes out to Alison Buckholtz as she treads a similar -- indeed, far more personal -- minefield in the wake of the Ft. Hood attack. I hope her husband stays safe and wish her well in whatever secrets she manages to keep.