That Child
Free love, like heavy metal helter-skelter, rocked my tender years. I showed up naïve, tripping over myself up a stairway not bound for heaven.
Simone, Betty, and Gloria urged disciples to “take power” and “be more than just a housewife.” I fell for the pitch and into the sheets expecting, not motherhood, but liberation, equality, freedom.
Equal pay and adventure drew me to the Army. Didn’t consider the trade-off ⎯ that child I would never know.
In my prime, 125 lbs of twisted steel and sex appeal. Brash. Invincible. Free love meant no need to rely on a man. Girls, like boys, could have it all. I could have it all.
Set about proving my place in formation among GI joe cools, dogfaces, brainiacs, teflon dons, springbutts ⎯ some decent, others goofy, a few dirtbags… all so different from women.
I clawed and barked my way over tradition. Propped up knowing I could handle the freedom of baby blockers, pills, implants, even opting to let my baby live… or not.
Exploits for the taking. Long hours. Peace. Cold War and hot. Stand down. My boots hit the dirt and sand stateside and in Europe, Central America, East Asia, and the Middle East.
Navigating one gauntlet after another. Out front of soldiers, officers, civilians, contractors ⎯ mostly men. In time, eagles landed on my collar. Bits of colored ribbon. A combat patch.
Decades evaporated in deployments. Some pride but mostly the gravity of liberty followed. When I unlaced my brown combat boots for the last time, bone tired crawled over me.
My choices swelled irreversibly. I look at you, woman, thirty years younger, and I think of that child I never knew. You are about the same age my offspring might have been.
Would I have nurtured that child? Cheered her? Extended her grace? Forgave her? Would I have had strength to stand aside as she strived, tumbled, and soared until she caught on to life?
If that child wasn’t ready to settle, would I accept her choice of free love over my grandbabies? That’s how I treated my mother.
Yes, I say. Yes, I cry. Yet, what if that child in the present wants nothing to do with me as much as I wanted nothing to do with her thirty years ago?
Every now and then, that child I never knew pokes her mug into my awareness, grinning and mischievous. “Looky here,” she giggles. In a blink, she disappears.
I drop to my knees, calling out. God lifts me to heights I cannot scale alone, forging a bridge of faith that I’ll cross paths with that child in Heaven.
ISSUED 