One night my husband and I sat by the river next to a fire, grilling sausages and feeding one another, watching a circus of stars overhead, and listening to the night. It's a secluded area where we often go when the city and its heat start to melt our brains and fry our souls. One night we heard children some ways down the shore. They sounded young and excited, their voices squeaking through the brush and the trees. My husband walked up and found seven children, sisters, brothers, and cousins, there with a young uncle who had brought them out because they'd never been camping. John (my husband) made our traditional sacrifice to the gods with what we call a Viking fire. He made a wooden pallet from an old chair seat, piled it high with wood, set it afire, and sent it down the river. These kids, from 4 to 11 years, clapped and hollered and screamed, and then started yelling up the river at us. "What's your name?" "Do it again!" "How old are you?" The uncle asked if they could come meet us and we said we had plenty of blanket space for all, and they came laughing and tripping into our camp, a rag-bag bunch of smudged faces and dirty knees, worn out shoes, uncombed hair. One boy, about seven, had no hair at all and a moon face with swollen eyelids. I've been in the medical field for over 20 years and I knew this child wouldn't see another summer. His uncle told me quietly this was why he'd brought them out, to have a little fun together, because the next week his sister would be taking him and his siblings back to Tennessee to be near the bulk of the family as his time came due. It came to light that they only had a few cans of beans and Spaghetti-Ohs, so, being the overachiever that I am, I broke open our chest full of goodies and we fed them sausages and tomato wedges, artichoke hearts and three-bean salad. Not exactly foods to make a child salivate, but these children dug in, no complaints, and I had the pleasure of whispering to John, "See? I told you it wasn't too much."

After the last paper plate was thrown into the fire, the kids wanted stories. And more stories. And more stories. Until finally I turned the wheel and said it was time for them to tell us stories. My husband, who is estranged from his daughter, melted when the girls sat in a semi-circle in front of him and asked him everything about himself except what his social security number was. Me, I was aching from having a son overseas in the military, and my heart couldn't help but swell and fill and nearly burst in the company of this motley assortment of kids.

The youngest, a spindly limbed little girl of about 4, was skittish of the fire and jumped and ducked every time the flames cracked and tiny bits of red ash climbed into the air above us. I took her on my knees and told her not to be afraid, it was just the fire fairies coming out of the flames to get a good look at all the beautiful children.

We didn't come equipped to spend the night. John had to nearly force me to the truck. They followed us, standing in the dust, waving their arms, and I watched them until the night dropped a curtain between us. John patted my knee and said, "Don't feel sad. You gave them memories."

I sprung up early the next morning, woke John and said, "We're going back."

I boiled eggs, made tuna salad sandwiches, packed up the chips, bananas, and grapes, stopped by the store for cartons of juice boxes. They were just where we left them, sitting by a dead fire, quietly watching the water. We ate and swam and ran and played. John taught them how to jug fish with a line and hook and plastic water bottles for floats. We hiked upriver where the water tumbles over the rocks and we bumped down the tiny rapids on our bottoms.

I wanted to take them all home, even the uncle, and kiss their bruises and comb their hair and buy them flip-flops in every color of the rainbow. But they weren't mine to take and eventually we had to say good-bye. There were hugs and even a few tears and the uncle said he would be forever grateful. "On the contrary," I said, "I'm the grateful one."

We got home, took showers, ordered pizza, put in a movie. I muted Julia Roberts with a quick flick of the remote and said to John, "It wasn't us who gave them memories; it's them who gave the memories to us."

I have a friend who believes that computers are a way for the government to take bytes of information about us and squirrel it away for some future date when we might become members of the exclusive Homeland Security Club and be locked up behind virtual bars due to our nefarious deeds on the Internet. Personally, I don't have anything to hide so I'm not afraid of Big Brother looking into my cyberspace. I do, however, take offense at some of the ways techno tricks have replaced hands-on humanoid behaviors, i.e., email wedding invitations. If you enjoy me enough to ask me to witness the nuptials, for which I will have to buy myself a new outfit and you a gift of $50 or so, eat cake with fields of diet-busting frosting, and drink cheap champagne, you can at least send me the invite via the post office. I'm worth the postmark. And recently a friend of mine received an email from her boyfriend of 4 years stating that he no longer felt "comfortable" dating someone he had no long-term interest in...one of those "it's not you, it's me" breakup bullshit lines. Sort of like being cut, pasted, and copied right out of having someone to kiss on New Years and back into singlehood. Worst of all, the Monday after last Thanksgiving I was laid off via email from a job I'd enjoyed for 7 years. In less than a few sentences I'd been deleted from the working class and double-right-clicked into the black hole of the unemployed. And guess what? You want unemployment in this state (Arizona), you have to apply via Internet. I'm beginning to forget what a human face looks like.

Almost forgot what I got on to say. I didn't post while my son was eating sand in a country that never evolves. I guess my head was elsewhere. He's back now, bigger than life, in one piece. He got off the plane in San Diego not knowing I'd be there. He traveled with six others, all in their cammies, as required, and everyone in the airport clapped and cried. His buddy got down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend at the luggage rack. He's stationed in So Cal but comes home about one weekend a month, spends most of the time working in my yard or cleaning my house. The military has made him a neat freak. He hoisted a flag off the eaves of my front porch, the American and the Navy flags. He came back older and wiser and fitter, a big wall of muscle. He says Dorothy had it right when she said there's no place like home. Here's to ruby slippers for all our troops. May your Auntie Em be waiting for you with an apple pie when you finally make it home.

Where are all the girlfriends? The ones you tell your secrets to and they never use them against you later. The ones who don't count how many sugar packets you empty into your iced tea. The ones who don't care what time of the night you call and don't yawn and drift off when you make that call. The ones who will tell you the truth when that new blouse you thought looked great on the hanger makes you look 15 pounds over your weight limit, but tell you in a way that doesn't make you run in tears to Jenny Craig. The girls who may not understand why you stay in a relationship (marriage) that isn't perfect and isn't getting any better but remain your friends because they don't judge, just support. I have one such friend, but I used to have several. I don't know what happened, but all of the sudden I notice I talk to my dog more than my friends. I tell him my secrets and I rely on him not to look at me askance when I'm wearing white balloon pants made out of parachute material and a polyester polka dot peasant blouse that is more Halloween costume than style. He doesn't care how much Splenda I pour into my tea, as long as he gets a bite of cheese or a ball-throwing session in the backyard. And he has no suspicion that my marriage isn't perfect. As long as I fill his bowl twice a day and keep his water fresh and ruffle his ears when I pass by, he thinks I'm the greatest thing on earth. I don't aspire to be the greatest thing on earth, but it would be nice to at least be someone who makes a difference.

Today my son called from Fort Jackson, South Carolina...my last call before he boards a military flight and goes "boots on ground" in Iraq. I would have liked to have recorded that call because my gut tells me that in future calls his voice will be different, muted in a way that only the dust and blood and guts of a foreign country can affect a young person who has known little grief. But not only his voice will change. His body, too, will be affected, that last bit of baby fat dissolved in the heat, sand, and tears of a country where boy babies are considered wealth and baby girls are hardly considered at all save for their future ability to provide more sons. Will he come back with what the Army calls the "thousand mile stare", his gray-blue eyes aswim with ghosts, some of which may rise from the hot steel barrel of his own gun?

He joined the Navy before 9/11. Since then I've been waiting for this day, not actually anticipating it, but knowing it would come because he often said, "I feel like a dick sitting at my safe desk behind a computer all day." It wasn't enough that he kept the ships' communication lines in perfect order. It wasn't enough for him to keep track of the destroyers and carriers, making sure their computers stayed up and running and their supplies flown in on time. So when the Army made him the offer, he gave the nod and went off for special training to learn how to identify IEDs and potential enemies, and how to take a rifle apart and snap it back together before the enemy can take aim, and how to run for cover with 85 pounds of weight on his back, wearing body armor and a heavy helmet under the desert sun.

My friends tell me I should be proud, and I am. My family tells me it'll all be over soon, and I pray that it will. To serve one's country is a privilege and an honor. But I am a mother with no children to spare. When I gave birth I did not look down at his perfect pink face and say, "I hope someday you'll grow up and go to war." I did not count his fingers and toes and say, "I hope someday these fingers will be fast on a trigger." I did not kiss his smooth cheeks and say, "I hope someday you'll grow up and spill the blood of other mother's sons." I did not say those things then. I do not say those things now.