"My daddy worked hard, and so have I.....paid our taxes and gave our lives to serve this great country....so what are they complaining about?? We love our families and love our kids...it's love that makes all so rich....that's where we are at."
Lynyrd Skynyrd - RED, WHITE AND BLUE
Today is Father's Day. It is the day when we honor our Dads and all they have done for us.
My Dad worked hard to make sure we had the things he did without as a child who grew up during the depression, the 1940's and World War 2. My Dad served in the Army during the Korean conflict in Alaska keeping the phone lines open between Korea and the US. No combat duty but two years in the cold and isolation of the frozen wilderness. Like the men of his era, he did what was required and did not complain about what he had to do, he just did what was needed. He earned the rewards of his hard work and was able to retire to a small town on Cape Cod, residing there today at the ripe age of 83 years young. His generation were likely the last ones who will get what all should expect after a life's work - security and the ability to enjoy retirement.
My Dad is the man I would some day hope to be - patient, understanding and above all, a good man who made sure he was always there for all of us. I have modeled my fatherhood skills after his and it is still something I strive to do each day - be more like my Dad. He is the "rock" that made all the rest of our lives possible.
Today, Dads face the same issues our Dads dealt with - trying to be the best Dad and providing what is needed. Moms face some of the same issues as our economy has made it necessary for both parents to become wage earners. Dads still bear the larger part of being the wage earners the same way as Moms still deal with the majority of the household chores. It is a bit of a stereotype, but this is the norm for most.
This will be the third Father's Day I have spent in Afghanistan. I have been working contract work over here since 2009 with a few short breaks. One way or the other, I have been here for the Spring and Summer months and that places me away from home on Father's Day. My wife sends along cards and small gifts via care packages and her gesture is deeply appreciated. She has also had to deal with me being away on Mother's Day, so she understands what we both recognize - life is truly different for Fathers and Mothers in this day and age. She works hard keeping the homefront going and I work hard here earning what is needed. It is a Faustian deal that we have been forced to take as the alternative ( failure or loss of our home) is untenable on all levels.
We are not working here to buy shiny new convertibles or to amass a big new home - our goals are much more simple as we look to take care of our humble house and make sure that we can live there for the remainder of our lives....a simple desire to do our best, take care of each other and do the work the good Lord has given us.
Our oldest child will turn 30 this year and we have 3 out of 4 kids out of the house living their own lives. The task of raising them into adults has been completed but as a Dad, my influence and mentoring continues throughout the rest of their lives. I hope that they each make good choices and that the life they choose will be a good one. I can only offer advice and make sure that I am there when they need me, even if it is sometimes via Skype and an email or two.
Today is a work day for me and like many other Dads, I will do what is needed to make sure the homefront gets what is needed. Dads all over the world will spend today enjoying time with their kids celebrating the day at home. Many others in uniform and those like me working here in Afghanistan will be away from home and the celebration of Father's Day. At the same time, what we do shows that we are focusing on what is truly important as Dads....we are forgoing the accolades and day off to ensure the homefront gets the much needed support our work provides. There will be Father's Days in the future where we will be able to spend the day relaxing on the back deck and/or BBQing some tasty food. The work we do today ensures that those future Dad's Days will be there and that we will be able to share that day with our family.
To Dad's everywhere - Happy Father's Day and many more to come !! I salute each of you for your efforts and the efforts of our Dads who gave us their best each and every day.
Been busy...time goes by when you're having FUN - and our FUN METER has been pegged here in AFGHN
Time to allow the words of another to fill the void - Good Gouge from Neptunuslex.com
This is the logical outcome of having Men & Women serving together in close quarters in isolated areas ...These notes are from a guy who knows the "lay of land" and what the real issues are...as a sailor with a heart of oak, hoary, stout and old, I have learned early on to avoid the issues that he details, if nothing but for self preservation sake.... Got the feeling that upon return to homeport, the deeds would be written on my face as sure as if it had been put there with a Black Sharpie Marker.
Harsher Measures to Follow
As the operations officer of the world’s finest warship, I had a number of fine young officers working for me. One of whom was an unusually fetching lass who – prior to completing her degree and intelligence officer school – had taken a rather non-traditional route to commission as an aromatherapeutic massage technician. Late one night at the end of a seemingly endless number of days at sea I was sitting alone in my office hoping to noodle through the immensity of all that we were trying to accomplish when I looked up to see her standing at the door, having something or other official to report. I took her report, asked in an off-hand way how she was bearing up in her first deployment and – duties official and formulaic completed – looked back to my desk at the egregious load of 3M documentation requiring my review and signature, and myself an FA-18 pilot for heaven’s sake.
A moment or two passed and I looked up again to see the young lady – she really was very pretty – still casually standing there, her head laying on an arm propped on the door frame in such a carefully calculated pose as made evident the graceful line of her neck as it joined her shoulder, as well as the non-naval curvatures of her frame. The moment stretched nearly as much as her protesting blue coveralls, and her penetratingly blue eyes looked into my own with a half-smile playing on her lips.I blinked twice while my mind raced quickly through various courses of action, most of which were swiftly rejected as much for mere survival as for any conscience thought of duty or even morality, before finally asking in my most neutrally official tone of voice, “Was there something else?” That challenging half smile was replaced by a frown, a different kind of light came into her eyes and she replied, “No, sir,” before spinning on her heel and striding out of the office, leaving me feeling both sadly older and wistfully wiser.
Now, all sailor men have hearts of oak, but while some of us are hoary, stout and old, others are yet saplings, liable to sway in a stiff breeze. And of saplings we had no few, to such an extent that a few months later, the ship’s senior intelligence officer had the sad duty to inform me that our graceful young lieutenant junior grade was with child. The actual fracking war being but a few weeks away, this news was both unwelcome and untimely, and it fell to me to inform the carrier’s commanding officer that unless certain provisions were made the ship would soon have its very own “son of a gun.” Or daughter, maybe. Depending on the breaks.
The Old Man was driving himself to the brink nearly of exhaustion ensuring that his old ship would complete her assigned duties with honor, and I did not relish adding to his burdens. “Skipper, I’ve got some bad news.” “What is it,” he asked tiredly.“LTJG ——– is pregnant.”With a shocked look, he asked further, “Are you the father?”“No, of course not!” I replied with as much heat and indignation as I could in good conscience muster. Which, truth be told, was no very great quantity.
Being as much conscious of relief as otherwise, and the awareness of having averted catastrophe by margins whose width or narrowness did not bear scrupulous contemplation. Which we had been at sea a very long time, and I wasn’t so old or wise as all that. Walking back down the many ladders to my office, I had a few thoughtful moments to consider the CO’s second question, wondering whether it reflected some hidden opinion on my character, before cutting us both a break: The loss of one lieutenant junior grade was certainly unfortunate, but really “bad news” would have been the loss of the ship’s operations officer right before the war kicked off. We went, did our duty and came home of course. But the army is still over there, and one senior officer has had quite enough of it all:
A US Army general in northern Iraq has defended his decision to add pregnancy to the list of reasons a soldier under his command could face court martial. It is current army policy to send pregnant soldiers home, but Maj Gen Anthony Cucolo told the BBC he was losing people with critical skills…It is the first time the US Army has made pregnancy a punishable offence…“I’ve got a mission to do, I’m given a finite number of soldiers with which to do it and I need every one of them.” “So I’m going to take every measure I can to keep them all strong, fit and with me for the twelve months we are in the combat zone,” he said.
A two star general officer is as much – if not more – above my retired pay grade as I was above that libidinous LTJG. But he reports to a four star, who reports to the president and Congress, and it will be interesting to see where this policy goes.
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Today is Father's Day. It is the day when we honor our Dads and all they have done for us.