Freedom

Claudia and I were waiting for our flight at the Asheville airport with my parents. Claudia is a German exchange student who has lived with us for the last year and we are on our way to New York for the weekend.  Claudia lives in a town in what used to be East Germany where the highest building is the church.  She has always wanted to see New York, so we are taking her there for the weekend to enjoy the “big apple”.  We are going to be staying on the 45^th floor of the hotel.  I guess that church will seem really small after this trip.                                                                  

The plane is late.  I am passing the time listening to Martina McBride’s Independence Day on my IPOD thinking “it’s such a hassle to fly these days”.  We had to be up extra early just to go through security, the TSA striped me half naked to make sure there were no tweezers in my makeup bag, and now the airline just announced that we are going to be delayed at least another hour (traffic in New York).  Could it get any worse?                                                                                   

  That’s when I noticed him.   He is standing right in front of me as I rock back and forth in the chair.  He is tall, blonde, and really cute.  He can’t be much older than me.  Can he?  He has to be.  He’s in the Army.  His name tag says O’Donnell.  He has on desert colored BDU’s and sand colored boots.  O’Donnell is with his parents and his sister.  The sister is young.  She seems bored.  Too much attention for her brother?  Mom is sad.  She is trying hard not to cry but is losing it.  Dad is proud, but worried.  O’Donnell is on a different airplane than me.  His flight is on time.  The agent calls for pre-boards.  O’Donnell gives his sister a hug.  “Now boarding zones 1 thru 3”.  Mom breaks down and begins to openly cry.  She kisses her son and hugs him like it might be the last time.  “Now boarding all rows”.  O’Donnell’s father, not knowing how to openly show affection, awkwardly reaches out for his son but comes up short.  He settles for a pat on the back and tells him to “keep his head down”.   As O’Donnell walks past, he smiles at me.  I smile back and then he is gone.  I notice he has written AB + on the back of his boots.  I ask my dad what that means.  He says, “That is O’Donnell’s blood type.  They do that in case they step on a mine.  The boots will still probably be attached and others will know what type of blood to give him.”  Now I start to cry.                                                                                           

 It’s easy to take the freedom we enjoy here in the United States for granted when you are young.  Claudia tells me I am spoiled.  She says that I have everything she could ever want.   At home, Claudia has no car.  She rides her bike and then the train.  I am encouraged to speak my mind, and I often do to the chagrin of my parents.  In Afghanistan, young girls are not allowed to go to school and told cover up their faces or they will be beaten.  I can pray to the God of my choice and not have to fear retaliation from the government.  I have a future that is only limited by my desire to accomplish it.  Much of the world still looks at women as second class citizens and they are treated accordingly.                                                                                                            

 I sometimes take my freedom for granted but I know that these freedoms came at a high price.  My dad spent over 24 years in the military.  I can’t tell you how many birthdays, anniversaries, and Christmas days we spent without him.  Some of my elementary school classmates will never see their fathers again.  They were shot down and killed in Iraq.                                    

 So when asked how I express my freedom, I say that I do it everyday to the envy of all the Claudia’s throughout the world on the shoulders of men and women like O’Donnell.  I have the freedom to vote.  I have a voice in which freedoms are worth defending and which are not.  The choice is never easy but our freedom comes with great cost and responsibility.                         

John Stuart Mill said: “War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”