My Soldier Owen
Well, as you can see from the last post I've come a long way from being the mother that wouldn't let her children play with guns.... Children sure can change your mind about a LOT of things, huh?
Owen takes his duties very seriously. He has a flag taped to the door of his room and a handwritten sign about all the American soldiers that have fought for us. Sometimes I weary of the toy guns but Owen straightens me out. We were walking back to the house in Maine one afternoon....it was gray and foggy and had started raining so we were heading back to some warmth and dryness. He paused to shoot at a boat out on the water. I sort of crossly asked why he was shooting it. He said, "well, it's a Chinese boat and didn't they fight us in the Civil War or World War I?" Before I could think of an appropriate response he went on, "did they surrender to us or did we surrender to them?" As we were walking uphill and I was cold I just said, "oh, I think we just all decided to get along." Owen nodded seriously and said, "what I just don't get about war is....well, why don't they just get some TEA...some TEA and CRACKERS? Then they could just sit down and TALK about things. If they decided not to be friends that would be o.k. but they wouldn't have to kill each other." He stared up at me and I told him I thought that was brilliant and that's exactly what his Grandpa thought. He nodded again and just kept muttering about tea and crackers all the way back to the house.
Towards the end of the visit I decided to climb down to the rocks. It's a steep little path and I'd gone up and down it fine the whole week. This time I decided to try some different shoes that I thought might be better on the rocks. Dumb idea. I immediately started to slide. It was so steep that I would have thought I would have fallen backwards but nope....I tumbled forward and rolled down the little embankment flattening numerous plants. Luckily I stopped before I hit the rocks but I did bang myself up a bit. Owen had been ahead of me and when he turned at the sound of my yell he shrieked with horror, "NO MOM NO!" and raced over flinging himself on me. As I had him help me to sit up he clung to me saying, "oh Mom, I don't EVER want to see you hurt....any time you are hurt I will be there....even if I'm in school I'll just tell Ms. Varvel that my mom is hurt and I have to go. I will always take care of you Mom....I don't ever want you to be hurt. I love you so much Mom." I assured him I was o.k. and he carefully escorted me over to a rock to sit down.
Later Leo came down and we told him about my fall. He didn't say much of course but when it was time to climb back up he shadowed me saying, "uh, Mom, I think you walk over here----that looks kind of steep. I know you think it might be o.k. but why don't you come over here" and Owen told me he thought he should carry my camera and my book. My sweet boys.
A few days later we went for a hike at the state park next to us (utterly amazingly shockingly gorgeous---pictures to follow) and Owen wore his army backpack and filled it with bandaids, cookies, water and a sleeping bag (?). He kept checking with us all to see if we needed a cookie yet.
All those things made me think and it made me see that for Owen...part of his fascination with being a soldier is that it fits in with the way he wants to care for people and protect people and good lord...I mean....he wants everybody to sit down with TEA and CRACKERS! So I guess I need to lighten up a little on his gunplay and just tell him what a wonderful protector he really is.....
I am so blessed with those boys.
Tea and crackers.