On the evening before my first day of middle school, my dad sat my sisters and me down to tell us that he had joined the Army Reserves. And that he was going to be sent to his training in three weeks. And that he would be gone for three months. While I should have had a WTF moment, where I contemplated the fate of my dad and my family, I merely shrugged it off. This was not the first time my dad had taken on a service role, and certainly would not be the last.

 

My dad began his adult life when he joined the Air Force at 18-years old. Freshly out of high school, he left his small town in Pennsylvania with the intention of digging himself out of some internal turmoil and changing his life for the better. As you can imagine, the military whipped him into shape. After various tours in Germany and the United States, he was sent to settle down in a small town in New York-- Westhampton Beach. This is the place where he met my mom, he retired from the Air Force, and he became a career firefighter. Basically, he just traded one civil service uniform for the next. 

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Trading into another uniform didn't seem too crazy to me. He had done it once, it wasn't surprising that he did it again. Looking back today, it is kind of funny to me that my 45-year old dad sat me down at the table and said he was joining the military. He was 45-years old. I guess that isn't completely considered old, yet something about the idea of anybody over 25-years old joining the military makes me giggle. Who really wants a balding 45-year old dad fighting for the wellbeing of the people of America. 

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Looking back, I think that my lack of concern, or repressed concern, at the beginning of the military family saga stemmed from the idea that he was "old" and he had done things like this before. Once a week he slept at the homeless shelter, he helped out old veterans, and he walked our sick neighbor's dog. This was just another one of his good deeds, another one of his projects. In my head, he was never going to actually get deployed. 

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But he did. 

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About a month after we learned about this new endeavor he left for three months. My life basically continued as normal, except my dad didn't pick me up from school. Or drop me off at band practice. Or make me dinner. Or do a lot of things I had never noticed he was doing. For my entire life, he had worked 24-hour shifts, so I had grown accustomed to his absence. The three months passed quickly, I had my first boyfriend and got grounded for the first time. He wasn't there for those things, and we never talked about them, but I'm certain my mom gave him the scoop without my knowledge. 

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Needless to say, when the three-month training ended he returned to Westhampton. At that point, it was almost weirder to have him around constantly than to not see him for periods at a time. I know that he felt the same, but we would never say that. Because who wants to admit being away from their family is more normal than being with them. 

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A few months past and life remained the same. I went to school. My dad joined the volunteer fire department in addition to working his career firefighting job. The idea of the Army Reserves had gone and past in my head-- taking up little space because who would deploy a now 47-year old man. 

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The United States Army Reserves deployed my 47-year old father as I entered my freshman year of high school. 

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Knowing what I know now, I had been keeping myself in the dark. Scared of the actual possibility my dad went off to war. He had been part of the civil affairs unit, so it wasn't like he was on the front line, so his deployment should not have come as such a shock to me. Really, I think it was just my naive, rude, angry pre-teen self refusing to acknowledge the reality of a dad in the military. 

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Everything that happened in my freshman year of high school is a blur. Maybe this is because I was overcome by fear that my dad was not coming back from Iraq. Or maybe this was because I was so desperate for everybody at school to like me. It could have even been the fact I buried myself in school work. I really don't know, and I guess I never will. 

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I have three distinct memories of my dad's first deployment. 

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First, I remember the going away party that my mom insisted on and my dad despised. It wasn't so much a going away party as a "Ralph-we-love-you-come-home-safe-we-think-you-are-amazing" party that made everybody close to my family feel that they got the chance to properly bid him farewell before his deployment. It isn't merely the party that I remember distinctly, it is the fact that my dad smiled and waved and put on a brave face just because he knew it would make my mom feel better about the situation. If he didn't seem scared, we couldn't be scared. So we sat, smiled, laughed, ate, and then he left for a year-long deployment. 

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The second memory I have of my dad being deployed in Iraq was the complete lack of communication. And the fact that he was going to be missing Christmas. I thought more about the idea he would not be there on Christmas than I thought about the fact he was gone a year. That one day, for whatever reason, was more important than every other day in the entire year. I could live through the other days without knowing where he was. I could not live through Christmas. 

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And I didn't have to. 

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This leads me to the third memory of my dad's deployment to Iraq. The heart-warming homecoming story that nobody expected. My sisters had a cheerleading competition one cold Saturday in December that I was forced to go to. Forced sounds aggressive, but teenage Emily was not into getting up before 10. I hesitantly joined my mom in the bleachers of a 7-hour long cheerleading competition to watch my sisters. While I was half asleep for a majority of the meet, around noon some man walked in the gym in a military uniform. And people began to stand and clap. And my mom began to shake. And then I saw my dad for the first time in 9-months. 

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Not to brag, but to this day I think we should have made it on some homecoming television show. The entire cheerleading competition stopped and watched my family reunite. People were crying. Not just my family, the random people watching my family hug. Which was weird. But I guess I get it. 

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While I could go on and on about how I felt, I truly mean it when I say the only thing that mattered to me at that time is that my dad had made it home 15 days before Christmas. 

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I think that what is often left out of the homecoming story is the physical coming home. We had been without my dad for 9-months at that time and had been expecting he would be gone for at least another three. It sounds shitty, and it feels even shittier, but our lives had gone on without him. And they were supposed to, but that didn't make it less difficult. I can't speak for him when I say this, but his homecoming was almost harder than his leaving. 

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As time passed everything went back to the old normal. The normal before he left for 9-months. The normal when my dad dropped my sisters and me off at school and he worked 24-hour shifts at the firehouse. There were still differences obviously. He didn't always joke at dinner anymore. He spent a little more time alone watching TV than he used to. But things were back to the normalcy that I needed. And that was enough. 

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Everything stayed roughly the same until my senior year of high school. My dad would go to and from training, but never for more than 2-months at a time. It was nothing compared to what we had already been through. Until my mom had a heart attack while my dad was at training. 

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I could sit here and blame the world for the fact my dad was gone for the most traumatic experience of my life. But there simply is no point. The only reason I am bringing it up is that it shows how life goes on in a military family as it would with any other. Bad things happen, and good things happen, and families deal with that the best that they can. My dad being away at that time was just another aspect of being part of a military family. If anything it made me more responsible. She is fine now, by the way, and soon after her heart attack my family slowly moved towards a pre-heart attack post-deployment normal. 

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And then it happened again. 

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After returning home from my first semester of college I found out my dad was going to be deployed again in the fall. This time it was to Kuwait. And this time my mom was going to be completely alone. I was in Michigan, my twin sisters were leaving home to go off to college, and my dad was going to Kuwait. 

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You would think that because he had already been deployed this time would be easier. I should have been used to it. But the thought of my mom being alone caused me to cry almost every day for two months. Again, none of this was anyone's fault it was just a new normal my family would be forced to face. 

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This deployment was longer. Or at least it felt it. While the first time my dad was gone we had a little communication, I am 95% sure I exchanged roughly 5 words with him the entire time he was away. He was gone for a year and a half. And this time he missed Christmas. 

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I missed his homecoming. His flight home from Africa landed at JFK moments after my flight to Croatia for the summer left LGA. I do not regret making the decision to live in Croatia, even though I knew it meant I would go another 3-months without seeing my dad, but there are times where I look back and wish I had just waited one more day. 

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This time my family was prepared for his arrival. My sisters and I had planted signs all over town welcoming him home. People painted banners and hung them in 7-11. The entire volunteer fire department stood with my mom and my sisters as they picked him up at the airport. My dad was home for good. 

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Following his return, my family received more attention than we had the first time. According to my sisters, as I wasn't there, there was not a moment somebody was not delivering dinner or texting to say how loved my family was and how heroic we all were. Not just my dad, but my entire family. Because we were all involved in some capacity. 

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Following his second deployment, my dad received a silver star. A token of honor. That he kept in his drawer, for nobody to see. To this day I don't even know what he did to deserve the award, but I know it must have been something worthy. He was also nominated hero of the town-- which he ultimately refused. 

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To my dad, all that time spent at war was his job. He had taken it upon himself to protect the people of the United States and contribute to the war effort. So no, he didn't want to be called a hero. He didn't want to be thanked, and he still cringes when people suggest he went above and beyond. 

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Because my dad would not take the role as the hero of the town, the mayor gave it to the lunch lady from my elementary school who won $3 million dollars on a scratch off.

 

My father had gotten deployed twice over a 5-year period. This woman had won a scratch off. 

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This is where my frustration truly stems-- where my confusion about the difference between doing what is right and being a hero lies. 

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I am no hero. I have not gone to war. I have not risked my life to do good. But I do know a hero. 

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Heroes come in all shapes and forms, professions differ, actions do as well, but one thing remains the same. The importance of the term. While I frame my thinking around military heroes, as that is what is closet to me, there are plenty of heroes in the world.

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Throwing the word around makes me uncomfortable. I think that heroes require special qualities and are being demeaned through the persistent, incorrect use of the word. Maybe that makes me a pessimist. Or maybe a realist. Either way, I'm fine with that.

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