This is a picture about a year ago of my very handsome youngest son Lucas, army airborne currently a cook with his unit in the stan. Here he is in the incredible beautiful town in Italy that he lucked out and got posted to. I figured since this is a blog about my life as an army mom, I should let people know about my soldier. Lucas dad was a nam vet I was married to for 14 yrs, until his ptsd caused drinking, smoking and refusing to work , as well as my oldest son Tom, who is autistic, brining home just say no pamphlets from school at 5 forced me to end our marriage. We split in Nov. but I let him stay with us till Feb the next year cause he really didnt have any place to go, despite his large families beating thier chests about how wonderfull they always were to him. Actually he , the youngest and only boy of five kids, took care of his ill mom and she lived with him till she died. As all the sisters married, had kids, and divorced my kids dad stayed a bachelor and took care of mom, and from what he told me frequently paid big sis bills too. At first when he came back from nam he coped enough to have a good job, and friends , girlfriends, and although he drank a bit it was under control. He was also a chain smoker. When we met he was 35 and I was 23 and we were friends for a year until suddenly something really serious happened to me, and we grew closer. We married in 1980 and after four misscarriages, and several yrs of nothing, when I was 31 I finaly had our wonderful brilliant boy Thomas. Almost three yrs later, we decided to give it a try again, after all you never know, and on the first try I was pregnant with my baby, Lucas. He was bory when I was 33. I then went to school to finish my RN. Which I did.
Both of my boys were incredible kids, of course there were ups and downs, but they were and are the center of my life.
I only ever asked one thing of my boys, please dont become firefighters, and please dont go into the military. Their dad was treated like shit when he got home, got no help from the army, and he only got disability for ptsd in 1994, because I did the 28 page form for him. Then when he went to the va in Albany NY he found he had serious organ damage due to exposure to agent orange, which he used to tell me about . Stories of going to sleep in the jungle, and waking up to a defoliated  forest like NY forests in the winter. Then yrs of denial of any harm to anyone. By the time he got any help it was too late. He died of the effets of alcoholisim, smoking and agent orange exposure in 2003. This, and not lack of  support for our troops was my great fear for them getting into it. But even though he really barely knew his youngest son, cuz when he left he left and didnt look around, of course that was when one of the sisses decided that since he was nearly terminal must be time they had to take him in. But all Lucs life he would say when he was about 4 "mommy i wanna be a solder, a solder mom." As he got older I didnt hear much about it, but my happy cheerful boy became a sullen and withdrawn teenager. Of course some was hormones. When he was 15 he asked to work out with the army recruiters to get into shape, along with the future soldiers program but not "in " it. ha. I may have been in a bit of denial but was no dummy. After about 3 months of depression that I had him see a counselor for, when he was 17 he looked at me one day, and said, mom I want to go in the army, its all I ever wanted. " Despite the chill down my spine I calmly told him of course I knew it all along, which I honestly did. I met his recruiters and followed things very closely during the 10months he was in the future soldiers program. I allowed him to early enlist at 17 because it was quite obvious he was set on it. He also earned 1000 a month durimg those last high school months payable after graduation from boot camp. I became a bit of a den mother at the recruiting station, and all lucs friends from hs who were going into the service used our house as a second home. I became very close to two of them , who helped us out a lot during a very difficult time . They actually went to school with Lucas for a month to get him over his anxiety in physics.He graduated and left for basic two weeks later.
Enough for tonite , gotta do some work on the family business. Tomorrow, the story of how I barely made it through the first year.
love to you all and support our troops, please
army mom