The anxiety of most parents in seeing their sons and daughters enlist does not lie only in the fear of the physical dangers they may encounter.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Whether your mother is a novelist like mine or a third-generation military wife, the idea of a son or daughter being in mortal danger is terrifying.
I think it's very uncomfortable for people to talk to children about war, and so they don't because it's easier not to. But then you have young people at eighteen who are enlisting in the army, and they really don't have the slightest idea what they're getting into.
Being a parent is not for the faint of heart. I may joke about knowing fear, but the fact is, the first time I ever knew real fear was the day Charlotte, my first child, was born. Suddenly there is someone in the world you care about more than anything.
Military brats have this toughness: they're almost like orphans or foster children; they develop little mechanisms. It sets you up to look at things a little differently.
It's quite difficult for a parent to know that their daughter is in great danger.
If your parent is deployed and you are that young, you spend the whole time wondering where they are and waiting for them to come home. As time passes and the absence is longer and longer, you become more and more concerned - but you don't really have the words to express your concern. There's only this continued absence.
Grown-ups are afraid for children. It's not children who are afraid.
It's a universal truth that no parent wishes to acknowledge that the fear and phobias we are in thrall to in adulthood almost invariably connect back to childhood experiences.
My father was afraid of his father, I was afraid of my father, and I don't see why my children shouldn't be afraid of me.
When a parent shows up with an attitude of entitlement, understand that under it is a boatload of anxiety.
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