September of 2008 and February of 2009? Hells-bells lady, I can think of a few things I would want to do with you besides take the GMAT. Are you really willing to lose a day to just a test.

Hell, you got how many months before each of those events comes too pass and you are already planning the R&R out in detail? What happens if he gets wounded or is killed before either of those dates? You are going to have a lot of living down too do if you cross this bridge before you get to it and you may want his parents around then. Do not plan the time you do not have with him yet by making commitments that you may not be able to keep with him or his parents. Just pray a little bit each day that you get to have those days with him.

As far as dad, you may want him to see his son when your love is home from Iraq. The trauma of serving and constantly being in danger plays on a guy's mind. Dad may recognize the trauma a lot sooner than you may and be able to help him adjust. Give dad his due and let mom into the picture for a bit also. He was hers for 19-something years before you became his main interest. Without his parents getting together, you would not know him today. Maybe split the visits up to twice and a couple of days a piece? I am sure his mom will understand and rein dad in for you.

For the longest time after I left the service I was on edge. I warned my wife not to touch me after she got out of bed in the morning and to call me from a distance. You do not get over it by just coming home, even after being on base, and the slightest of noises or issues can set you off. Maybe your hubby is different; but, I'll bet he will need time. He is going to be a different man from the last time you saw him.

There are a lot of Vietnam Vets like myself who counted the days we were "short" until we made the big swoop across the pond to the woman we loved and family. And even then, we were often times reasigned and left the states again to some place else. I would like to think we are just nervous about the sons and daughters we send into harm's way because of some misguided directive. It shows up in our abrasiveness towards the topic of "our-own" going to war when we were already there. His dad is just as scared and worried as you are. Cut dad some slack.

Bravo, sir, and thank you for your service.

Very well said....great advice.

quietwife:

You really can not thank me for what I would have been drafted into doing if I had not enlisted, or avoided by going to a college I was not ready to attend, or got married, or left the country. I appreciate your thoughts; but, I did this myself and I really do shy away from the thank-yous. Thanking me for sticking my hand in a fire just makes me seem the dumber yet. Please do not take it personal and I am just relaying some of the things I remember, his dad probably does also, when things were very much different.

I just had my nephew up here who wants to enlist in the Marines, which I was in during the sixties. I am not sure if I had the impact in persuading him not to do it. He is a year older than when I enlisted and far less mature than I at his age. It got down to me giving him my two rows of ribbons if he would not enlist after watching "Lions to Lambs." Funerals are for old men and I am done burying the young ones. The next funeral I want to attend is my own.

Actually, I'm Canadian. but the ambivalence about the whole damn mess( we have our own messes) shouldn't make citizens any less appreciative.

quietwife:

I have many Canadian friends and you are quite welcome. It is a nice country and I enjoy my visits there.

Its just that some of us would really like to just fade away, not be noticed, and just forget. Have you ever wondered why, why you stand where we are today. I have my book from when my time started in boot camp. In it are the pictures and names of those I knew with handwritten dates and checkmarks. Dates of passings and happenings. Those I trained with and drank a beer. I have some of the tracings of names my children have collected for me.

Thank me? Thank me for being alive and here to accept it? Thank those that have given far more than I ever could and did give. They are more the heroes than I was in the fleeting moments of time. It is this that I can pass on to those who see the glory in all of this.

The ambivalence comes from a lack of participation. If the draft did anything in the sixties, it made us all at risk far more than anything else. Hence the outcry and the protests. "I ain’t no senator’s son." Fogerty. I support the soldiers and their coming home.

run75441:

I just had my nephew up here who wants to enlist in the Marines, which I was in during the sixties. I am not sure if I had the impact in persuading him not to do it.

My son had a job in the same shopping center as several recruiting offices. We'd go pick him up late at night, and he'd be walking back from getting a shake. Frequently, 1-2 recruiters would be approaching him. My ex-Marine, Vietnam vet husband would shout something like, "Get away from those Doggies, son!" The recruiters would rather sheepishly skulk away.

If this were a war we felt could not be avoided, we might feel differently. However, since Bush's own advisors told him Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, this was entirely avoidable. I don't want my kids to be cannon fodder for an inbecile's preening.