Leavin' On A Jet Plane 
By Monica A. Dixon, Ph.D., R.D
This mom thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In fact, I want my money back. And with my luck, it’s one of those “30 Day” deals where I’m trapped if I hadn’t decided to return them moments after they’d left the hospital nursery. But this isn’t what I signed up for, it wasn’t in the contract, this letting go part, unless of course that, too, was in the fine print at the bottom of the contract page my husband swears he signed for me between my wails in the delivery room.
We put our son on a plane this morning. This was no ordinary trip, nor just any plane, but one that will take him 5,000 miles away from the friends and family who love him, a trip that will put him in harm’s way. Away to Japan where he’ll sail out to sea to load bombs on the bellies of our jet fighters. I should be grateful, for sure, that he isn’t going to join that war, that anguishing marathon in Iraq that his father has had to be a part of, yet they both like to remind me that working on the top deck of an aircraft carrier is the second most dangerous job on earth, right behind crabbing the Alaskan waters. All only worsens the angst in the pit of my stomach.
Unbelievable, this seems to me, that this same son could elicit this degree of mourning. This one single handedly turned my hair from a light brunette to a salt and pepper grey during his few short years of high school. This one took his defensive driving classes literally and totaled any vehicle that even considered driving in his lane. Of course he had to be sequestered on a ship in the middle of the Pacific; it was the only place on earth the insurance companies of America felt safe putting him. Even that little gecko guy wouldn’t touch this kid’s insurance with a ten-foot pole. Further, this was the same son who shot a bee-bee into his eyeball socket, pulverized every bone on the left side of his body in a motorcycle accident and called it a great weekend if he could scuba dive to the bottom of Puget Sound hunting the Giant Octopus.
Son, I was only kidding when I taught you to live your life to the fullest, to play the game and get off the bench. I never thought you’d take it seriously, never in my wildest dreams. I’ve changed my mind, but perhaps it’s too late now for that too. I want you to be safe at home, to never grow up, to never have to be in harm’s way. I want you to crawl up on our bed at night and beg for one more rendition of “Good Night Moon” before you fall fast asleep in the crook of my arm.
When you gave them to us Lord, you forgot to tell us how quickly this short time with them would pass. You failed to mention that while we were raising them the days would feel eternal yet the years fly by at mach speed. Sometime in that mere moment of time between their baptism and their driver’s license they grew from mice to men, not even enough time for us to begin to know them.
As I watched him turn his back on us and walk through security today, toward the life he’d chosen, I try to seek solace in the generations of mums who’ve come before me, who’ve given their sons to our country with pride and an immeasurable courage. Yet now I know their secret; behind their strong facades their hearts were aching, their lips trembling, their gut burning, as they prayed for nothing more in the world than their children’s safe return.