Chocolate Wars

It was hard growing up a military brat, we moved what seemed like a hundred times a year, but realistically it was more like once every two years. Bootcamp was hard for me and my dad. My mom wanted to be a United States Marine for as long as I could remember, her father was and she revered him. my mom was always pretty tough for a girl, and she was very competitive. My dad thought she was just being crazy, so they would get into fights about it all the time, I would listen to her try to convince him that she could do it and that it would be great for our financial future, but he always treated her like she was more fragile that she actually was and she hated being seen as weak. He also used me against her alot, giving the whole "How is Gavin going to grow up without a mother, only seeing you once a year"? speeches. Neither one of them were very good with expressing thier emotions to each other, so my father used me to tell her he would miss her without actually saying it. Her father raised her tough, so there was very little she couldn't do if she wanted to including fix anything with a motor, but that spilled over into not being able to really show her feelings. I knew my mother and father loved each other more than anyone could ever know, I didn't always see it between them, but once in a while they would get drunk and get all lovey dovey, which would cause me to make faces at them when they did. They would just laugh and walk to thier bedroom hand in hand, where they would remain for a few hours, and the noises that came from that room where unmentionable!

When I was seven, my mom decided one day to go ahead and enlist without telling my dad and oh boy! the roof just about came off the house when she came home and announced she was leaving for bootcamp in a week! He told her to go back and un-enlist, she said "NO! I have always supported you in whatever you wanted to do with your career, now it's your turn Jack"! all I heard was him yelling "Amanda wait! We really need to talk about this"! she was already in the car and driving away by the time he got out to the driveway, as he yelled "WHERE ARE YOU GOING, GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW! DAMMIT AMANDA"! He walked back into the house, looked at me with a depressed look, and just walked to the bedroom and shut the door. I stood there not knowing what to do, I didn't know if she was coming back or if they were going to get divorced over this situation. I started to feel very bad, my stomach was feeling very icky all of a sudden, and I ran into my bedroom, flopped on my bed and began to cry. I was lost and confused, had no idea what to do to make it better. I heard my dad's door open to his room, he entered my room, picked me up and said "heeyyyy buddy, come here" as he picked me up and layed me over his shoulder holding me tight while I cried, telling me not to worry, we would be fine, then he said "Mommy really needs to do this, so we are going to let her".

That friday we were taking her down to the recruiting office sending her away to bootcamp for what seemed like forever to a seven year old. We all said our goodbyes and that was the last time I ever saw her. She went thru bootcamp and was immediately sent to a foriegn country to fight a war that wasn't ours to fight she was there for two years and then they would move us to somewhere else for another two years, she came home for a month or two but then she would be off again to some foriegn place to fight for another year or two, this went on for what seemed like forever, until one day she didn't come home. Her troop was running patrols, she was in the lead vehicle when someone threw a grenade through the window and blew the hummer and all the people in it to smithereens. There were no survivors, and I thought my father was going to die, because he spent the first 3 months wandering around in a daze, barely acknowledging that I was even alive. He fed me, dropped me off and picked me up from school, made sure I had all the things I needed physically, but beyond that we barely spoke or communicated, and it would be this way for the next 2 years.

The day of my 13th birthday, my grandparents, whom had been the ones actually raising me, even though I lived with my dad, they showed me all the love he couldn't. They decided to throw me a birthday party. They invited the families from both sides to come but I really didn't know them because my dad stayed away from them because they were my mother's relatives and I guess it was to painful to see them. Grandma, my mother's mother, tried to engage my dad, but he would just make excuses and spend all night down at TJ's Bar getting drunk and stumble home to bed and get up every morning at 5 a.m. for work. On the rare occassion that I did get to sit and talk with him it was always about work or school, nothing to personal, sometimes we fought but not often, and once in a while he would say "God love ya, you got your mother's eyes, and my big mouth", and we would get a quick laugh in. I think it was just easier for him not to talk about her because it destroyed him when she didn't come home, and I don't think he realized that he wasn't the only one who lost her. I spent the first 6 months laying in bed every night crying after she died because I was too young to really understand it, and grandma was the only one who would talk about mom with me and let me express my feelings. It was really hard keep my cool sometimes, but I managed to somehow. But then came my 13th Birthday, for the first time since the tragic loss of my mother, I felt like celebrating! I felt like she would be proud of me for how I had handled myself over the last couple years. The last birthday I actually remember celebrating was my 10th birthday, she had just come home from her first deployment in Afghanastan, and had decided to make sure it was going to be something great. She ordered the biggest chocolate cake I think I have ever seen! It was three full layers of the chocolatiest chocolate cake ever! I was so excited to eat some I could hardly wait, but she wanted us to have bbq burgers and all the fixin's first. So I waited for 3 hours to get some of that crazy delicous looking cake, but when the time came to cut the cake, she took the knife in hand as my dad and I watched, put it down, then grabbed two handsful of cake...and flung it at both of us! Then she started laughing histerically at both of us, and we looked at each other, smiled and dad said "I think she just started a chocolate cake fight, LET'S GET HER"! We slung this huge cake all over each other for what seemed like an hour and had the most fun I can remember us all having at any given time. It is the memory I will remember the fondest for as long as I live. I did eventually get to eat some of what was left from the chocolate wars we had, what a great time!

The day of my 13th, I asked grandma to relive that day with me, and that I would love to make it a tradition simply because it was alot of fun, and it reminded me of the best day I ever had with my parents. She agreed that ever two years we could have chocolate wars, and that is how a tradition that I still pratice with my kids, got started. That day, my dad came home after working all day, he went and showered while the family arrived and started chatting around the picnic table in the back, grandpa and my mother's brother Chuck, who actually got along really well with dad, were manning the grills, and there it sat...the biggest cake grandma and I could find! We all ate and chatted, everyone was wishing me a happy birthday and giving me gifts like baseball gloves, shirts, socks and things like that. I got a compass from my dad because we would go hunting in the winter and he wanted to teach me how not to get lost. Then grandma Sheila called everyone to the cake table to serve cake. She picked up the knife to cut it, but put it down. I just smiled as I knew what was happening...she grabbed a handful and quickly flung it at my dad, hitting him in the chest...everyone stood there in shock, looking at her like she had just lost her mind! My dad looked at me and smiled, "why son, I believe grandma just started a chocolate war, don't you", I smiled and nodded, then I yelled "THE CHOCOLATE WARS ARE ON"! and the whole family spent a day flinging chocolate cake at each other and laughing, afterwards dad came to me and said "I know that you loved your mom and miss her alot, so do I, thank you for reminding me of the greatest day the three of us ever had together, and know that I always have and always will love you". That was the one and only time he ever allowed himself to say that outloud, and I always knew it, it was just nice to finally hear it from him.