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I spent quite a few days in a stupor after I got the call. It was not the call that we all dread, but it was close. “Mom, it’s me, and I am calling to let you know that I am OK. I’ve been hit with shrapnel, but it’s not bad.”  It’s the kind of stupor that you see a boxer walk around in when he has been knocked a decent blow in a long fight. I was not ready to go down by a long shot, but my jaw took quite a punch. It was painful enough and reminded me that there are harder blows that could be dealt before this fight is over.

 Of course being punched like that can also cause a stir deep in your gut that causes you to dig your heels into the floor and stare your opponent down with a deadly glare. I wildly oscillated between two states of mind - do I shake my head in hopes of getting the marbles back in their respective place, or do I charge straight ahead? All of this was metaphorically speaking of course since I could do nothing to actually help my son at that moment.

Ah, and herein lies the rub for those of us on the home front!

The hardest part of hearing difficult news like a wound in battle (no matter how small) is the simple but profound fact that someone you love is in constant danger and you are not — not only are we home where we are safe, but we can not do anything immediate to aid our loved ones when they need comfort.

It is unnatural for a parent or a spouse to feel comfortable in this position. As parents, we are the ones who blaze the trails. We are the ones who take the sucker punches of life while our kids are growing up. Of course when they fly the nest they become the adults that have to take those same punches at times. When it’s normal life stuff like minor relationship problems, financial difficulties, job issues, etc. it’s a little easier to watch them struggle and grow. When it’s issues of the battlefield it is not easy to watch the struggle. As spouses we are comforters, and we feel displaced when we can not be the one there making sure that our soldier’s needs are met. We also must deal with the other battlefield that does appear on the home front.

When contemplating my son’s encounter on the battlefield, and his close encounter of the shrapnel kind, I was not nearly as concerned for the minor physical wound he sustained. Rather my concern was focused on the larger issues this war may bring for him later.

This is where and when the second battle is fought. The first battle is fought on the battlefield with an enemy that is tangible. The second battle is fought with an enemy of memories and sensory issues that allow the once tangible enemy to continue waging war on a soldier in an intangible battlefield.

It’s a war that is fought in the mind and the neurological system, and a war where the enemy seeks to rob the occupied mind of it’s peace and its ability to feel a sense of the ability to trust that the environment is not going to crash down on top of oneself with no warning.

Until it is time to evaluate to what degree that second war will need to be waged we will have to be here keeping a home for them to come home to. A home that allows them to let their guard down, take their boots off, and enjoy their surroundings so they can melt away some of the tension.

We all know that keeping our homes together, keeping the family affairs straight, keeping ourselves healthy and strong is a significant contribution to the efforts of our soldiers. Reintegration really starts now.

So, life goes on. A shrapnel wound to the arm is a hiccup in life these days, and we move forward. I will work here at home, my husband and son will be somewhere between training, preparing and the battlefield in the months to come.

It’s a weird life, isn’t it? “I’ll make cookies while you search for terrorists honey.” I wish there was another way, but we all know there simply is not.