Dad, did you ever feel guilty about going to war—before you went, not after you came home wounded and disillusioned?

As we prepare to return to the Falklands together after 30 years, I think about my own guilt over leaving my son for 10 days.

We’ve arranged a patchwork of caregivers: my mom, and my husband, who’ll be juggling his work too. But is it enough?

My son is sensitive, deeply dependent on me, and I fret about leaving him despite all the arrangements.

Is it just parents of special-needs kids who feel this guilt? Maybe it’s universal, but I wonder if you felt it differently when you went off to war in 1982, Dad?

I didn’t fully grasp what was happening, even if it was all over TV and all the grown-ups were talking.

Mom tried to explain, though her story was always contorted, sugar-coated. I knew there was danger, but the thought of losing you seemed impossible.

Now, here I am, packing while Michael sits quietly on the bed, absorbed in his own world on the iPhone.

That’s both the bane and blessing of having an autistic child: they struggle to make friends but can entertain themselves for hours.

Michael, seven and mostly non-verbal, won’t easily express missing me, but I know he’ll notice I’m gone.

I keep telling myself he’ll be fine, distracted enough by those he trusts, but maybe I’m the one who can’t focus on anything but him.

I’m supposed to be concentrating on you, Dad—on this trip, on helping you meet the Argentinian soldier who shot you, who is feeling just as rotten all these years and just as needy to … get closure.

You don’t speak Spanish, which is why I agreed to come along, yet my mind keeps drifting back to my little Michael. 

“Michael?” I say, half-whisper. “You remember, Mommy will be away for 10 days. I made the calendar for you so you can count each day. You like counting, right?”

Michael grins. He is playing with my Duo-Lingo app.

“Oh, you are … is that Spanish?”

Michael can’t tell me where it hurts when he is ill, or what he did at school today except in one-word sentences. How did he know I was going to a place where I have to speak Spanish? He must have parsed it somehow from all the talks I had with his dad … 

Dads … oh, pliskie, you are lucky to have Jon as your father. I’m lucky to have him.

I check my things for the umpteenth time. Yup, the deodorant is still in the same place in my handbag. One hour to go before the drive to the airport.

And all I can think about is till my son, and I know it won’t go away, even if I should do everything I can to focus on this trip. It’s going to be difficult enough as it is.

My dad is not a push-over but he is an ex-alcoholic who limps, speaks English with a fat accent and still has difficulty accepting that he got shot by a teenager before he could do anything. 34 years ago … 

I wonder, Dad, how eager you were to go to war back then–to prove yourself?

It was there, Mom told me, but it can’t have been so much that you did not think just a little bit about what would happen to your little girl if you did not come home? 

Even if I was a ‘normal girl’. 

Maybe I will ask you on the plane down there. I’ll meet you in Atlanta for the flight to Buenos Aires, together. Lots of time to get to talk, more than we have done for years.

Or maybe I won’t ask you just yet … because I’m afraid of the answer.

I am doing this to help my father, sure. I’ll get home again, in all likelihood. Sure.

But am I really any better to you, little Michael? 

You only care that when you wake up tonight, there is one vital element missing in your carefully built low-arousal routine world, one element that won’t be there to keep your anxiety in check: 

Me.

I guess sometimes we don’t have a choice. We have to hurt even our children, because some things are more important.

But is that understanding enough for me to forgive Dad, finally? 

I mean, he came home but then I had to pick him up from a ditch with his bottles, every fucking Friday night, even sometimes more. Starting when I was seven. Like my son is now. 

Before that, it was my Mom who picked you up, Dad, but she had stopped caring by then.

Children and grown-ups …  It’s not possible to fight any kind of war without one or the other getting hurt?

I don’t think so. But I am not the same as my Dad. I keep telling myself that now and I will keep telling myself after I get home.

To you, Michael. My favorite special boy.

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CARRIE & MICHAEL, August 2016

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End of the story-in-stories “Pieces of Peace” – part III

NEXT UP: EMMA

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Cover Photo by Vitolda Klein on Unsplash

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74B-280824

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Song: Toto – “Only the Children”

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