thedrifter
12-22-05, 06:33 AM
Article published December 22, 2005
Film yields tears for her soldier/son
The Toledo Blade
We were the last people to leave the theater. Well, Cathy had those tears to wipe away, and I've always been one to hang back for the credits.
This was early Sunday evening, after a showing of Jarhead, based on Anthony Swofford's book about his tour in Iraq as a Marine during the first gulf war. Same place, but a different war than the one under way right this moment.
Cathy DePew knows this, but still she couldn't help herself. As she stared up at the big screen, she scoured it for what she both hoped and feared was a peek into the world of her son, a Marine on foot patrol in Fallujah. Well, that's where he was last time she heard, anyway.
Cathy and I met in the summer, when I chronicled her family as they sent Kenton Dial, her 21-year-old, off to Iraq. Kenton took the Swofford book with him; he loves it, believes it to be one of the "truest" books to depict Marine Corps life.
Raw, gritty, unblinkingly profane, it is not the kind of book (let alone mind-set) with which Cathy, a devout conservative Christian, has much experience. But she slogged her way through it, because when you love someone, you seek out their perspective.
And so off we went to the movies, she and I, in much the same spirit. For months, we'd vowed to do this, but life's funny that way, too hectic sometimes for working women to find two hours when both are free. Cathy watched Jarhead with an eye toward spotting something, anything, that might give her a hint of what to expect when her son returns home.
"I've thought about this all along, what he's going to be like when he comes home. Because I've never thought he wouldn't be changed by all this. I know it will change him."
Well, yes. War. Even in the usually brief six or seven phone calls they've managed, Kenton sounds different to his mother. She can't quite put her finger on it, but something about him doesn't sound like the person she waved good-bye to just a few months ago at the airport.
She already knows Kenton has been fired at, horrible knowledge to a mother. When 10 Marines were killed earlier this month, she ended up in the bathroom at work in tears. In her closet, his olive-green Marine dress suit hangs.
"I touch it. Sometimes, I just run my hand down the sleeve. Is that stupid?"
Not so long ago, Kenton lived by her curfew. Now, the military says Cathy doesn't need to know exactly where or what her son is doing, a strange way of thinking to a mother.
It's hard to let a war borrow your son, even when it's a war you support. But Cathy reports that it's "not as bad as I thought. I mean, I'm not in bed with the covers over my head. You can't live like that, so you adjust."
By the end of Jarhead, the movie's every-other-word schedule of profanity didn't even register with Cathy: "I kind of forgot about it. Toward the end, I didn't really hear it. I know that's just their way. You know what? I used to threaten him with a big bar of soap!"
She went home to see President Bush on TV, urging us to stay the course, and then she surrendered to sleep. At 4 a.m., as she woke up, the words "fear not" rose to her consciousness.
Then Cathy got ready for work. Another day had dawned.
Ellie
Film yields tears for her soldier/son
The Toledo Blade
We were the last people to leave the theater. Well, Cathy had those tears to wipe away, and I've always been one to hang back for the credits.
This was early Sunday evening, after a showing of Jarhead, based on Anthony Swofford's book about his tour in Iraq as a Marine during the first gulf war. Same place, but a different war than the one under way right this moment.
Cathy DePew knows this, but still she couldn't help herself. As she stared up at the big screen, she scoured it for what she both hoped and feared was a peek into the world of her son, a Marine on foot patrol in Fallujah. Well, that's where he was last time she heard, anyway.
Cathy and I met in the summer, when I chronicled her family as they sent Kenton Dial, her 21-year-old, off to Iraq. Kenton took the Swofford book with him; he loves it, believes it to be one of the "truest" books to depict Marine Corps life.
Raw, gritty, unblinkingly profane, it is not the kind of book (let alone mind-set) with which Cathy, a devout conservative Christian, has much experience. But she slogged her way through it, because when you love someone, you seek out their perspective.
And so off we went to the movies, she and I, in much the same spirit. For months, we'd vowed to do this, but life's funny that way, too hectic sometimes for working women to find two hours when both are free. Cathy watched Jarhead with an eye toward spotting something, anything, that might give her a hint of what to expect when her son returns home.
"I've thought about this all along, what he's going to be like when he comes home. Because I've never thought he wouldn't be changed by all this. I know it will change him."
Well, yes. War. Even in the usually brief six or seven phone calls they've managed, Kenton sounds different to his mother. She can't quite put her finger on it, but something about him doesn't sound like the person she waved good-bye to just a few months ago at the airport.
She already knows Kenton has been fired at, horrible knowledge to a mother. When 10 Marines were killed earlier this month, she ended up in the bathroom at work in tears. In her closet, his olive-green Marine dress suit hangs.
"I touch it. Sometimes, I just run my hand down the sleeve. Is that stupid?"
Not so long ago, Kenton lived by her curfew. Now, the military says Cathy doesn't need to know exactly where or what her son is doing, a strange way of thinking to a mother.
It's hard to let a war borrow your son, even when it's a war you support. But Cathy reports that it's "not as bad as I thought. I mean, I'm not in bed with the covers over my head. You can't live like that, so you adjust."
By the end of Jarhead, the movie's every-other-word schedule of profanity didn't even register with Cathy: "I kind of forgot about it. Toward the end, I didn't really hear it. I know that's just their way. You know what? I used to threaten him with a big bar of soap!"
She went home to see President Bush on TV, urging us to stay the course, and then she surrendered to sleep. At 4 a.m., as she woke up, the words "fear not" rose to her consciousness.
Then Cathy got ready for work. Another day had dawned.
Ellie