For My Daughter

When all the other cures for a wounded soul have failed, then action may be the only cure left.

I will begin with the war, for that is what took me from you.

If you hadn't been ten, and if I'd understood war's aftermath better, I might have been able to reveal more of this back then. But no ten-year old should be burdened with this darkness, or witness it; and even describing this to you as a mature and thoughtful 21-year-old worries me.

Like most reluctant veterans of combat, I have spoken little of the experience or the aftermath; I finally unburdened myself to your mother after my recuperation-or more accurately, as one of the final steps of my recuperation-but I have said nothing to you, my daughter, for fear that you would find such a distance between my experience and your own that you might look upon me as a stranger.

But now I realize that it isn't the honest recounting of my war experiences which will separate us, but your ignorance of those experiences. For if you don't ever see the war and its aftermath through my eyes, then what can there be between us but unbridgeable distance?

Author: Charles Hugh Smith
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 08/10/2008
Pages: 234
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.49d
ISBN: 9781438259628

About the Author
Charles Hugh Smith is the author of seven novels and five non-fiction books. Visit him at www.oftwominds.com.

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