“Daddy, did you ever go to war?”
An innocent question asked by a naive 5-year-old-little boy to his civilian, dentist dad.
“No, buddy, I’ve never gone to war. Well, not unless you count the war on cavities.”
In the mind of a kindergartner who has lived in our military town his entire life, this was a perfectly reasonable ask. While neither myself nor my husband have ever served in the military, our two children have grown up several miles from the most populated military base in the world and live their daily lives in conjunction with men and women in uniform and their families.
They can distinguish between thunder and Fort Bragg, try to remember the names of the various military aircraft that fly over our backyard on a daily basis, are unfazed by Humvee convoys rolling by in morning traffic, and know to say “thank you for your service” when the opportunity arises.
Active duty and retired service members have been their coaches, teachers, parents’ co-workers, and parents of their teammates, classmates and friends. It has been a common occurrence over the years for multiple schoolmates to have loved ones absent at “Donuts for Dad,” “Muffins for Mom,” spring musicals or awards assemblies due to deployments.
I will never forget my daughter coming home from preschool one afternoon to recount the story of a little friend who brought in an “extra special” item for his turn for show-and-tell that day, a teddy bear with a picture of that little boy’s father printed on the bear’s tummy.
As my daughter told it, “Whenever he misses his daddy or feels sad that he’s gone, he can run to his room to find his special bear and give it a hug. Because his daddy had to go to war.”
While my family is quite familiar with life in a military community, we have no first-hand experience with life in a military household. Although I can’t pretend to know what that’s like, I am oftentimes reminded of the sacrifices that these men and women and their families make, and how the everyday trials that we civilians encounter oftentimes pale in comparison to what our military community members face.
On nights when dinner is getting cold because my husband is running late at his office, or on Saturdays when he’s away at a weekend conference, leaving me to wonder how I’m going to juggle my two children’s conflicting soccer games, I am humbled when I think about my close friend. She is a mother of twice as many children as I, who has handled her husband’s multiple year-long deployments with steadfast patience and grace, many times being the first to offer to lend a helping hand to a friend in need, in spite of her own never-ending personal obligations.
When I find myself feeling frustrated over what seems in the moment like an insurmountable glitch in our plans, or swamped in the midst of a particularly busy season, I remind myself of particular friends who are able to rally, re-group and forge ahead with family life for months on end after their spouses get short-notice orders for duty overseas. Moms and dads who, while their loved one is away serving our country, continue to show up at their own jobs and come home to continue the hard work of keeping life as normal as possible for their children, all while, I can only imagine, constantly worrying over the well-being of their soldier far away.
On a recent afternoon, as I rummaged through our storage closet searching for something, I came across an old Rubbermaid trunk that contained mementos from my childhood bedroom. When I opened the lid, the first thing I saw resting on top of a stack of prom dresses, athletic trophies and framed photos was something I hadn’t thought about in years. A neatly folded American flag tucked into a protective plastic sleeve, along with a certificate of appreciation for my support of our troops during Operation Iraqi Freedom. A flag that had been given to me by the father of a fellow cheerleader upon his return to Fort Bragg from deployment.
I took the flag out of the trunk and thought back to my senior year of high school when I first received it. I remembered being incredibly honored but also completely baffled as to why a grown man and distinguished member of our United States Armed Forces, fresh from a warzone, would bestow such an honor on a 17-year-old high schooler who had done nothing more than offer to give his daughter, two years my junior, rides home from cheerleading practice and games.
Twenty-two years later, and now a wife and mother of young children, I have greater insight as to why this was such a big deal to my teammate’s father. When he deployed to the Middle East, he left behind his wife, who worked as a nurse, a teenage daughter (not old enough to transport herself to and from extracurricular activities), and two sons: a toddler and an infant.
I imagine that my willingness to drive a couple of extra miles to take my teammate home might have allowed her little brothers to get their afternoon naps, or saved her mom the trouble of loading two sleeping babies into their carseats to retrieve their sister from school after a late-night return from an out-of-town basketball game. While this was nothing to me, it apparently made a profound enough impact on their family that a true American hero thanked me.
I showed my children the flag and explained to them that the lessons we can learn from our military neighbors are humbling and important. While those of us who have never served or lived with someone who has will never be able to fully grasp all that their world entails, we can and should always look for our own ways to support them on the homefront. Anything to show our men and women in uniform and their families how humbly thankful we truly are for their service to this great nation that we all call home.
Read CityView Magazine’s “The Military Issue” July 2025 e-edition here.