Off to War (9 page)

Dad didn't want us to take him to the drop-off point. He didn't want us to be there when he left. It was his first deployment, his first time going. I hope it made it easier for him that we weren't there.

I hear from other kids who take their fathers to the goodbye place, and they say it can be really hard, with kids clinging to their parents and crying and not letting go and having to be pried away. That's not good for anybody.

Malia
— After Daddy left, we had to go to school.

Dahshan
— He had to do so much training before he left, too. He really didn't get much time to be home with us.

After he was gone, I noticed that without him, things just kind of seemed the same, routine, and nothing seemed important.

Like, usually, with Dad around, when I'd wake up, I'd want to get going, be dressed, look nice, do things, take on the day. And when he left, it's like, “I went to school yesterday, it's going to be the same thing today, and tomorrow's going to be the same thing after that.” It got to the point where I thought, “Why bother?” I kind of just stopped caring.

I got through it by finding other things to do. Instead of just going straight home after school, where Dad wouldn't be, I went to a friend's house, and he kind of helped me through it. His dad was deployed once before, and he was heading over to Iraq again. My friend kind of kept things even for me.
Without him it would have been very different. It wasn't even that he would talk about it constantly. He maybe mentioned the deployments once, and that was it. It was just the fact that we could hang out, that I knew that he got what was going on. It made my head feel clear again, not stale and down, and made me want to go to school again and do things.

We made a new routine when Dad left, and found new things to do. We couldn't just do the old things, because whenever we did, Dad wouldn't be there and we'd really feel that. It would have taken us down. I had new chores, and I did stuff with my sister, like walking her to school and picking her up from daycare. Some Sundays we would go to church. We just made a new routine, and we stuck with it, and we were able to get through it.

Malia
— We sent Daddy packages. If it was up to me, I'd send him a package every day. My mom set out a box, and every time I made something I wanted to give to my dad, I would put it in the box. When the box got full, we would send it to him. I sent him pictures and school work.

I also did a book with my class in first grade. It's all about our dads being in the army. There's a picture of all the kids in the class, and I remember their names. We wrote a whole book, with stories and pictures.

Dahshan
— I got really into music when Dad left. I started listening to all kinds, a lot of hip-hop and jazz. I started making my own music, too, rap songs.

Malia
— Dahshan draws, too. He draws really good, lots of different kinds of things. And he's teaching me to play the trumpet.

Dahshan
— Dad came home on leave just in time for Malia's birthday. Then he had to go back again. He hadn't wanted to come home because he knew how hard it would be for everybody when he left again. It was hard for him, too, because he got away from Iraq, then he had to go back there again.

He came home for good in January. It was really heaven at first. Then after a month or so, it came back to normal. Our old routine came back and our lives were good and normal again.

My dad's really good at bouncing back. I know it must have been really difficult for him over there, but he worked hard at being the same guy when he came back as he was when he left.

Malia
— He was very the same. He is a good role model and so is my mother and so is my brother.

Dahshan
— Dad wasn't going to war-war. He was in the war, but he was kind of just doing paperwork. He was treating prisoners at Camp Bucca. There were a lot of riots there, but it was more like a fire drill, not like the riots you see on TV with a bunch of people running around. It was more like a cultural protest than an actual riot. But still it must have been difficult. He made a huge effort not to allow the things he saw and did affect him at home. He was real conscious of that. He thought a lot beforehand on how to separate what he was doing from his life with the family.

Malia
— He's a really fun dad.

Dahshan
— He doesn't have to go back to Iraq, but they're sending him to Korea next. It won't be dangerous like Iraq. There's no war there. He's just going to live there for awhile. We're staying here in Fort Bragg.

Malia
— We're going to make a new routine. And I'm going to try to write the routine down, and write about our lives so Daddy will know what we're doing while he's away.

I'm not going to join the army when I get bigger. I'm going to be a movie director and a teacher. I'd enjoy both those things. There's too much work in the army.

Dahshan
— I'm not joining the army, either. Right now I'm at a really weird stage, because I'm really good at the music thing I'm doing, and I'm really good at art, too, so I don't know what I'm going to continue with. I could do both, but I'd like for me to have just one destiny, just for me to be stable, so I can direct my focus. I'm not really very organized.

I don't really know what's going on in Iraq. I don't want to get into it. I'll want to see the facts when it's all over, not while it's going on. People are saying a lot of different things now, but when it's all done, you're going to see the facts.

Malia
— On that, I'm going to have to agree with my brother.

A 2007 report by the Ontario Ombudsman focused on the effects of overseas deployment on the children at CFB Petawawa. Children talked about panicking when they were called to the principal's office because they thought they were going to be told their mother or father had been killed in Afghanistan. Others talked about hiding in their homes with the lights off so they couldn't be found if officers came by to give them bad news. The report revealed there were long waiting lists for professional counseling services for children, and it called for increased funding for the local mental health center.

It is now acknowledged that war trauma can affect both the soldier and the soldier's family. Sometimes military parents are afraid to give their children bad news. They don't want their kids to worry. They want their kids to have childhoods that are happy and free from cares about war. Sometimes their children find out anyway, and keep their knowledge a secret, so their parents don't worry.

Kaylee and Bailey are friends who live in Permanent Married Quarters (PMQ), family housing on CFB Petawawa. Both are
active in support groups run by the Military Family Resource Centre (MFRC), which provides support for military families.

Kaylee
— My dad is a corporal. His job is mat tech, and a welder. He's in Afghanistan now. He's been there for five months. He should be home at the end of August.

He's been in the military for seven years. I think he joined in order to help children in all different countries. Before that, he fixed houses.

I have a ten-year-old brother named Tyson. My mom does home daycare, a lot of times for parents who are overseas.

When Dad first told us he was going to Afghanistan, he said he was leaving in a month. Two weeks later, he said, “I'm leaving tomorrow.” So that was a really big change.

When Dad left, my mom put us in lots of programs, like the Deployment Program and the Buddies Program. I'm a Big Buddy and my brother's a Little Buddy. There are a lot of different activities we go to, like Bonaventure Caves and stuff like that, and the Diefenbunker. Different places. And we're in the Deployment Group at school, for kids whose parents are overseas.

The Diefenbunker is a huge old underground military base. It's really cold and dark down there. It was built a long time ago so the government would have a place to go in case there was an atomic war. It's called the Diefenbunker because the prime minister at the time was Diefenbaker.

As a Big Buddy, I'm assigned a Little Buddy for events like playtime at the recreation center, and we get free movie tickets, too. I'll go to the movies with my Little Buddy. Maybe I'll buy her a popcorn or something. There are a lot of other deals, too.

I always ask my Little Buddy how she's doing and when her dad called last, and how that went. Stuff like that. It gives her
someone to talk to. She'll tell me everything. Even stuff she doesn't tell her mom, she tells me, like when she feels sad, and when she misses her dad.

It's really cool to hear what other kids have to say about their parents being overseas, and it's even more cool to hear what a little kid has to say, because it's even harder for them to understand what's going on.

For Father's Day we sent my dad two boxes full of chocolates. They weren't just for him, they were for all the troops. We always send him Tim Horton's gift certificates, too. The money the soldiers have to use over there is called POGs. They're little cardboard disks, and when Dad has them in his pocket at the gym, they all disintegrate because of the sweat. So we send him gift certificates. He's got, like, $500 worth there so can buy coffee for all his friends.

Now that my dad is overseas we have more of a routine in the mornings. It used to be wake up and go with the flow. Now you know exactly what you're supposed to be doing at exactly what time.

When my dad came home for his HLTA everything was all screwed up because the routine was basically wrecked.

The first four days after my dad left, my mom was in a cleaning mode. She cleaned everything. When he left again after coming home for his break, she cleaned again for three weeks. That's how she copes. She cleans. And she puts us on a routine.

When Dad came home for HLTA, he slept a lot. He'd want to take us to school but he'd sleep in so late that Mom would have to call the school to tell them we were running behind.

He was a lot more thankful for everything when he came home. He wouldn't waste anything. He'd tell my brother and me, “Be thankful for what you have because the children there don't have anything.”

He'd seen a couple of children over there get shot when they were leaving their school. That changed him, too. He's a lot more protective.

Sometimes he'd go out into the marketplace. When he had to go out of the Sandbox, which is what they call the base, he would see children. He watched a Taliban shoot one of the kids. He hasn't told us a lot about it. He's not really allowed to talk to us much about things like that because of security.

He doesn't talk much about the Taliban and bad stuff that's happened because he doesn't want us to worry about it. He talks more about the good things.

When he first started going over there it was really funny, because he'd almost talk without thinking. We'd always put him on speaker phone, and he didn't always realize that, so he'd say things like, “A bomb went off and everybody ran for the bunkers but I could just crouch down by the wall,” and my mom's like, “Please don't tell me anything more.”

Dad works mostly with the Canadians, but he also helps the US. They gave him an award for helping them. There was a time when a man needed a pole thing to go in his leg, and the Americans asked my dad to make it, like, make a template. Dad's template of it was so good that they put it right into the guy's leg. He got an award from the Americans for that.

I don't think I'd want to join the army unless my dad got hurt or killed in Afghanistan. Then I'd join, so that whoever hurt him would get hurt, too. My dad is always saying, “I don't think you'd make it in the military.” He thinks I'm too much of a girly-girl. And I'd really rather be a teacher. But if something happened to my dad, I could do it because I'd want to prove to my dad that I could do it. I wouldn't be afraid of it.

My little brother wants to be in the military but he wants to either weld or fly a plane. He doesn't want to be a soldier on the ground.

My mom's holding up okay, but she doesn't really tell much to me and Tyson. Mostly she goes over to her best friend's house, and they talk. That helps her a lot.

I don't think I have anything in common with children in Afghanistan because they don't really do the things that I do. My dad says the only thing I might have in common with them is that they play a lot of soccer, and they're really good at it. Me and my brother both like soccer. My dad saw this one Afghan kid who was just wearing flip-flops and he was kicking the ball over his head and bouncing it off his head, and my dad was amazed.

This is the second base I've lived on. I also lived at CFB Borden. My dad wants to get posted back to Borden because he wants to become a teacher, and Borden is a training base.