Over the Years

"Over the Years" is a personal narrative by Christine Gordon. It is about Christine's and her daughter-in-law Diana's anxiety as they wait for Christine's son, Robert, to come home from the war in Iraq in 2005. Diana is so anxious that she cannot sleep the night before. Very early the next morning at the airport, Christine watches children play and anxious wives bite their nails as they wait for their soldiers to arrive. She realizes that these people around her all have the common goal of seeing their men and women, and for that reason, they are strangers no longer. She recognizes that today belongs to Diana, and so she gives up the first hug, the first picture, the first kiss for the couple. Christine's own reunion with her son also reveals the permanent love that a mother has for her son. Afterwards, she soaks up his every word and watches over his needs with bliss, relieved that his fighting days are over.

In All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul's mother sacrifices her health and dignity for her son's needs. She begs on the streets with loving purpose, completely intending on providing as well as the circumstances will allow. Christine, as a soldier's mother, sacrifices when she let her daughter-in-law have the first embrace.

I hope I will never know what war is like. It is incredible how a soldier's family could be brave enough to let a dear man or woman go. If my husband or son was a soldier, I would be anxious every day to have him back. There is a connection which only a united man and woman or a mother and child can share. A woman's empathy hurts, but it soothes the reciever in an indescribable way. Christine says it well, "Some women are Marines, carry a weapon, are trained to kill; other women survive the best they can and wait for their men to come home" (Carroll 330). Women with family soldiers have a duty to survive where it is safe for those who survive where it is not.