Sitting with a Soldier
AN AIRPORT ENCOUNTER LEADS TO A MOMENT OF UNDERSTANDING ABOUT WHAT WE ALL NEED
​Published by the Boston Globe Magazine | Reprinted in Reader's Digest
Between flights, I sat in the Denver airport near my gate. The sounds of travel echoed through the concourse. Booming voices, squeaking strollers, garbled announcements, and the beep-beep of carts conveying travelers through the crowds blurred into white noise as I waited in my own cushioned-chair world.
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I glanced up to find a man in front of me. A young man, maybe half my 46 years, he tilted his head toward the chair next to mine, then toward my suitcase blocking the chair. There were many open seats. Why this one? I thought, mildly annoyed, but I moved the suitcase. He sat and dropped his duffel bag at my feet. I noticed the markings on the bag, the faded camouflage uniform. I asked. He nodded. I bowed my head slightly in honor of all I could never know how to thank him for. He asked where I was headed.
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"Home."
Braced in the chair, hands on his knees, he told me he had just come from Afghanistan. He was going home for a few days of leave. He planned to surprise his mother in Florida. I asked how long since he'd seen her (five years). I asked what he was looking forward to at home (a shower). He grinned when I asked if his mother would cook his favorite meal. I imagined chicken and mashed potatoes, but he did not elaborate.
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He said it was almost harder to leave the war than stay, leaving others behind, knowing he had to go back. But this might be his last chance, he said without saying, to see his mom.
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Absent invention, I can't recreate how each word passed back and forth. But I remember what he said. I remember how he scanned the room warily as he talked. How when he looked at me, his eyes kept no distance. He seemed to want something from me. I could not tell what.
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I was a mother, he a son. Even though he was muscled and desert-hardened, he looked too small, too gentle, to hold a gun, to carry a war.​
He said it was hard to stop scanning for danger. Yesterday he was in the desert. Fellow soldiers, men under his command, had blown into pieces around him. Today he was in an airport trying to fathom anger over flight delays, the rush for coffee. He didn't know how to be, here in this place.
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I thought maybe I understood. Only weeks before, my friend's teenage son had died suddenly. One evening, after spending still hours with a broken mother, I went to my daughter's theater performance. In the crowded lobby before the show, mothers complained about their seats. I stood mutely to the side. When one mother bemoaned some slight to me, I stared, unable to grasp emotions that, on another day, could have been mine. Only compassion made sense. I felt disoriented, distant. As if I spoke a language no one there knew. I told the soldier beside me about this. He breathed deeply, showed a small smile. I had given him a sliver of connection.​
The Boston Globe Magazine, September 2014
He'd seen the raw and unbearable. He knew what was real and mattered. He knew it was not the time of a flight, or a latte. But he did not know how to tell us. This was what he needed from me, I realized. What we all need. He needed to feel safe and understood for a brief while between here and there.
I did not know his name, how his surprise would turn out, how long his tour of duty would last. I hoped his mother had a strong heart. We sat together until our flights were called, and then said goodbye, two strangers heading home.​​​​