A Veteran's Day At The Mall
Can Benihana teach my children to be kind and gentle creatures?
Now that I’m no longer a teenage girl, eager to spend a day off from school at the mall, housing Sbarro’s slices the size of my face then wondering why no sk8er bois want to talk to me, I experience Veteran’s Day as little more than a minor inconvenience. Schools are closed, daycares are closed, work is still due. I read somewhere that fewer Americans know someone enlisted in the military today than at any other moment in our nation’s history. Is that why I barely clock Veteran’s Day? After all, I basically didn’t know what Labor Day was until I joined a union. (Something about not wearing white? Good riddance! If you can keep a white shirt clean for an entire day, you are not living, my friend.) But when it comes to Veteran’s Day, I really shouldn’t be so disconnected. My dad fought in Vietnam, and I have the USAA credit card to prove it. My grandfather was a fighter pilot in WWII. According to my mom, his name is in the Smithsonian. I never talked with him about the war. I didn’t learn until after he died that little boys all over the country used to send him letters full of questions about wing configuration and fuselage. It’s mind-boggling how lost the male species can get in the technical minutia of things with engines, without ever broaching the subject of what those things with engines are used for.
Growing up, my dad didn’t really talk about Vietnam. I don’t think it’s because of some unspeakable trauma, mostly because I’ve asked him, “Do you not talk about Vietnam because of some unspeakable trauma?” and he’s responded, “No.” Also, he was in the JAG Corps, which doesn’t mean he didn’t encounter some fucked up shit, just that most of the fucked up shit was probably encountered via paperwork. I do remember that after 9/11, he would watch George Stephanopoulos on Sundays, pointing out the ages of the troops killed that week, which were always listed on screen right before the last commercial break. (Am I mixing all this up in my head? Was it a different Sunday morning show? Was it pre-9/11? Was it Sam Donaldson? Cokie Roberts?) All I know is that my dad drew my attention to fact that many soldiers dying were basically children, which hadn’t resonated with me before. The loss of life when it’s barely even begun struck me as even more tragic than the vague abstraction of “soldier killed at war.” It still does. But now I also wonder, do soldiers have to be young? And not just because of their pre-dad-bod bods? Is war just a way to impose structure on adolescent male aggression? To channel that wild, violent rage into something still violent, but more orderly, while also teaching boys to make their beds? I’m not trying to be glib. It just seems like war can’t possibly be about whatever we say it’s about. How much more land does Russia need? On a map, it looks pretty fucking big.
Relatedly, I avoid taking my 2-year-old and 5-year-old boys out in public, because they are wild animals I cannot control. As a mindful member of society, I make the choice to let them carve their path of destruction through me and my house alone. I’m pretty sure society tacitly endorses my approach, based on the looks of disdain, shock, and even pity I get when I have no option but to drag them into public spaces (see: airport, grocery store, a purportedly kid-friendly dinner and dance at an Italian social club, etc.). Talk about hurt feelings! But recently, I’ve been wondering, is our cloister really serving the greater good? Am I just reinforcing their untamedness? Am I encouraging other women to hide their children and themselves? Is this mixture of deprivation and aggression why little boys grow into men who want to take over everyone else’s space? My complicity has been weighing on me. So, in an effort to break down these binary gender barriers on which I’ve become so fixated, I decided to invite the men in my life into my feminine Veteran’s Day tradition. I took my kids to the mall.
My heart was pounding as we pulled into the behemoth parking structure. I was already yelling at my children — something about a tablet forgotten, a Lego shooter truck destroyed. But after buckling them out of their car seats and taking a deep breath, we set forth to meet some friends at Benihana. I had never been to Benihana! The spectacle! The garlic butter! The carafe of white wine I downed at noon! Our waiter was a lovely gentleman named Zach, who moonlights as a drummer for belly-dancers at an Orange County Ren Faire. In fact, did you know that many Benihana server/waiter/cooks are also drummers? Because what is juggling spatulas while cooking fried rice, if not culinary drumming? It’s definitely performance art. According to one of my dining companions who frequents the Benihana circuit, Zach was exceptional at his job. I believe it. And while I wasn’t able to wrangle my children into using utensils, they had chicken tenders on the menu, so I didn’t have to.
Next, we headed to the bowling alley, which miraculously had bowling shoes small enough for a 2-year-old. Granted, this 2-year-old is ROBUST, but still, he’s only two! The lanes had retractable bumpers so the kids could use them, while the adults applied actual skill and athleticism to the game. They even had a ball ramp, which kept my 5-year-old from hurling 8 lbs of bowling ball through the floor every time he took a turn. Sure, my kids spent a fair amount of time squirming around on the well-waxed ground, sometimes drifting into the lane next to us and nearly taking out several teenagers who were not there to fuck around. But we somehow spent four hours at the mall without major incident. There was no knot in the pit of my stomach. I was having joyful, giddy, belly-laughing fun with my children instead of yelling at them. It was a really nice Veteran’s Day.
The tricky part of Veteran’s Day — besides the lack of child care — is that it forces basic-ass liberals like myself to walk a thin line between condemning the military industrial complex while also trying to honor and respect the people who are cogs in its machine. Or maybe that’s just me. I don’t agree with state-sanctioned murder, and I think people who say it’s a necessary evil lack imagination. But Veteran’s Day is also about a mutual belief in the beautiful dream of freedom, a word that gets wedged into shallow platitudes and political jargon so often, a person can forget it means anything at all. But it does to me. I know the incandescent, ecstatic experience of feeling free, which is as fleeting as a bowling frame and as unexpected as a Benihana shrimp soaring through the air. I think the kindest thing I can do is to expose my little boys to the feeling of freedom once in while. And teach them they don’t have to kick someone’s ass to feel it.