Santa Meets a Soldier

"'TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS,
HE LIVED ALL ALONE,
IN A ONE BEDROOM HOUSE MADE OF
PLASTER AND STONE.

I HAD COME DOWN THE CHIMNEY
WITH PRESENTS TO GIVE,
AND TO SEE JUST WHO
IN THIS HOME DID LIVE.

LOOKED ALL ABOUT,
A STRANGE SIGHT I DID SEE,
NO TINSEL, NO PRESENTS,
NOT EVEN A TREE.

NO STOCKING BY MANTLE,
JUST BOOTS FILLED WITH SAND,
ON THE WALL HUNG PICTURES
OF FAR DISTANT LANDS.

WITH MEDALS AND BADGES,
AWARDS OF ALL KINDS,
A SOBER THOUGHT
CAME THROUGH MY MIND.

FOR THIS HOUSE WAS DIFFERENT,
IT WAS DARK AND DREARY,
I FOUND THE HOME OF A SOLDIER,
ONCE I COULD SEE CLEARLY.

THE SOLDIER LAY SLEEPING,
SILENT, ALONE,
CURLED UP ON THE FLOOR
IN THIS ONE BEDROOM HOME.

THE FACE WAS SO GENTLE,
THE ROOM IN SUCH DISORDER,
NOT HOW I PICTURED
A UNITED STATES SOLDIER.

WAS THIS THE HERO
OF WHOM I'D JUST READ?
CURLED UP ON A PONCHO,
THE FLOOR FOR A BED?

I REALIZED THE FAMILIES
THAT I SAW THIS NIGHT,
OWED THEIR LIVES TO THESE SOLDIERS
WHO WERE WILLING TO FIGHT.

SOON ROUND THE WORLD,
THE CHILDREN WOULD PLAY,
AND GROWNUPS WOULD CELEBRATE
A BRIGHT CHRISTMAS DAY.

THEY ALL ENJOYED FREEDOM
EACH MONTH OF THE YEAR,
BECAUSE OF THE SOLDIERS,
LIKE THE ONE LYING HERE.

I COULDN'T HELP WONDER
HOW MANY LAY ALONE,
ON A COLD CHRISTMAS EVE
IN A LAND FAR FROM HOME.

THE VERY THOUGHT
BROUGHT A TEAR TO MY EYE,
I DROPPED TO MY KNEES
AND STARTED TO CRY.

THE SOLDIER AWAKENED
AND I HEARD A ROUGH VOICE,
"SANTA DON'T CRY,
THIS LIFE IS MY CHOICE;

I FIGHT FOR FREEDOM,
I DON'T ASK FOR MORE,
MY LIFE IS MY GOD,
MY COUNTRY, MY CORPS."

THE SOLDIER ROLLED OVER
AND DRIFTED TO SLEEP,
I COULDN'T CONTROL IT,
I CONTINUED TO WEEP.

I KEPT WATCH FOR HOURS,
SO SILENT AND STILL
AND WE BOTH SHIVERED
FROM THE COLD NIGHT'S CHILL.

I DIDN'T WANT TO LEAVE
ON THAT COLD, DARK, NIGHT,
THIS GUARDIAN OF HONOR
SO WILLING TO FIGHT.

THEN THE SOLDIER ROLLED OVER,
WITH A VOICE SOFT AND PURE,
WHISPERED, "CARRY ON SANTA,
IT'S CHRISTMAS DAY, ALL IS SECURE."

ONE LOOK AT MY WATCH,
AND I KNEW HE WAS RIGHT.
"MERRY CHRISTMAS MY FRIEND,
AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT."

Lt Col. Bruce Lovely, USAF
Dec. 1993

If You Are a Mother: This is Wonderful!

I'm sitting in a cozy blue room appointed with trains and toy mice in tutus. I'm on a too-small bed, but I do have this bit of quilt cover, so I'm, ouch, good.

The rest of the bed is taken up by my daughter, a three-year-old with the heaviest, hottest head imaginable. Her head, with a 102-degree fever, is on my belly, somewhere by my spleen, I'd guess. I don't really know where my spleen is, but at 4AM you think about these things.

Anna is going to wake up any moment. She'll lift her head and say "Where are you, Mommy?" I'll stroke her cheek and say, "I'm here, sweetie. Me and my spleen are right here." And she'll drop her head, thunk, on my belly, and sleep.

Ordinarily I don't sleep in Anna's room. But when a kid is sick, there are no rules. I remember milk shakes when I was sick, and my mom wheeling the TV into my room. Mostly I remember her hand on my cheek. Her worried hand. The hand that said, "Oh, no! You're sick!" It's all about the hand on the cheek.

I had Anna's virus a few days ago. My fever shot to 103, and I called my mother. She did what she could. She said, "Oh no!, You're sick!" My husband tried to help. But a husband is handicapped at a time like this: He is not your mother. He needs instructions. "Here, like this," I said, placing his hand on my forehead. "Just come by and do this every hour and I think I may survive." I was too weak to tell him about the milk shakes, the TV.

A sick child and a mother, there's an electricity. The sick child needs what the mother has, what the mother is. The child needs worry and sorrow and tender loving care. And the sick child makes the mother whole.

All night long Anna had been calling. So, eventually I climbed into her bed. The truth is, I'm about as comfortable as an old lady flying coach on a transatlantic flight. And yet I'm so comfortable I could cry. Anna lifts her head. "Where are you, Mommy?" she says. "I'm right here, sweetie," I say, placing my hand on her cheek. "Me and my spleen are right here."

Thunk. Ugh. What strange joy.


Written by Jeanne Marie Laskas
Ms Laskas is an advise columnist and published author.

Thursday Ramblings

I am not a student of Middle Eastern culture, nor do I pretend that I am anything other than what I am, a parent, an American, an outside observer.

But the situation in Iraq and most of the Middle East troubles me.

I say that I am a parent first, because it is the most prevalent reason for my need to peek at a part of the world, and a culture I have no part of, and will never visit. It is my children’s world that will be affected throughout their lifetime by what happens the next few years in this ancient region.

Second, I am an American. With a gullible pride and wide eyed optimism that is so ingrained in our culture. I simply cannot comprehend a way of life that is lethal to itself and its own people. Golda Meir once wrote “Peace will come to the Middle East when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us..” As a mother, I simply do not understand familial pride in knowing that my child will go blow himself, and others, up for a “cause”.

I have, during the past two to three years; glimpsed into a world so foreign to me at times it is difficult for me to comprehend. I have read blogs from Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia in a search for understanding. I feel I have still come up empty handed. I encourage my daughter to correspond with children of these countries. Maybe there is something that I am missing, that they, through her, can teach me. I haven’t had much luck.

You will see on my favorite blogs list, Sunshine’s Days of My Life blog. Let me tell you about my contact with her.

Sunshine is a 15 year old that lives in Mosul, Iraq. Mosul is (more so since the peacefulness that has spread in Baghdad) a very violent city. Sunshine has seen the windows in her house blown out many times, dead men in the streets and her town ravaged by this war. She has watched helplessly while her mother, a well educated woman, suffered crippling depression. Through all of this, Sunshine has steadfastly maintained her excellent grades and a grace that is so rarely seen in young women today. I encouraged my eldest daughter to correspond with her and watched in dread as the first e-mail went out. Ashley had filled the posting with slang and typical teenage-speak. Thinking that I couldn’t decipher much of what she was saying, I swiftly dispatched my own e-mail to Sunshine apologizing for my daughter and promised to explain to her that when speaking to kids in other countries, it is best to use basic, simple English.

Within hours, I was castigated by a very indignant Sunshine. She haughtily told me that she understood every word that Ashley had written her and that she was not different from my daughter. She explained that she wore modern clothes and spoke with many kids in the “outside” world. HA! Needless to say, I firmly tucked my tail between my legs and left the two of them to their own devices, vowing never to butt my nose into the inner workings of two teenagers chatting again.

I digress.

I found a statement in Faud Ajami’s book “The Foreigners Gift” that rocked me to my core.

“It would have been heady and right had Iraqis brought about their own liberty, had they demolished the prisons and the statues on their own. And it would have been easier and more comforting had America not redeemed their liberty with such heartbreaking American losses. There might have been greater American support for the war had the Iraqis not been too proud to admit that they needed the stranger’s gift and had the United States come to a decent relationship with them.”

Do not get me wrong, Mr Ajami doesn’t condemn the US, or the Iraqis, he is merely explaining the mindsets, that this is the thinking that is predominant today: “What would have, could have, should have, been?” . Mr. Ajami states that the “disaster” in Iraq came when the Muslim imams, Arab leadership and even Western thinking intellectuals refused the gift that we Americans were offering.

Isn’t it funny, that we view personal freedoms and liberty from tyranny a “gift” that is ours to give? It must be our silly, gullible pride and wide eyed optimism.

'Operation Joy to the Troops'

Operation America Rising will be collecting Holiday Cards for our Troops stationed overseas. We welcome you to be a part of this noble cause. Get your local schools, churches, businesses, and civic organizations involved. All you have to do is collect holiday messages of Joy for the Troops and mail them to:

Operation Joy to the Troops
P.O. Box 2345
Franklin, NC 28744.

This will be a nationwide tour starting November 26th and ending on December 16th. The goal is to collect 100,000 holiday cards. OAR will deliver the messages of Joy on Wednesday December 12, 2007. It is time to send holiday joy and praise to the men and women that defend our freedom.

If you would like more detailed information email me at robert@operationamericarisingnc.com.

Thanks and God Bless our Troops!

Robert Nelson,
Operation America Rising
http://www.OperationAmericaRising.com
www.AmericaRising.org