With much of today’s media coverage of the military being graphic and somewhat scary for kids, Burleson believes providing positive opportunities to meet service members is important for establishing a healthy sense of national pride.

I am the child of my mom. I came here through her, and long ago she carried me, and she looked at me with hope. She held my neck so that it wouldn’t break, she fed me, and she sang to me.

I realized that I’m not me without them—all the women who have been and will be in my life. The women who’ve known me since childhood, for many years, or for just a few months. The women who’ve shared laughs, clothes, drinks, rants, insecurities, tears, hand sanitizer, and evites.

The following day, the eight-year-old, the most sensitive of our children, asked if we were getting divorced. I thought back to the awful things my kids had witnessed, the ugliness between the two people who love them most, and felt awful and guilty.

You’re a big boy now, people say. You don’t need to crawl into bed with Mama in the middle of the night anymore.

Stay the night in my ex’s house? At the invitation of his fiancé?

You always stole my thunder. You gave them everything they wanted. You never said no whenthey asked for anything. A second helping of dessert. Candy before dinner. A few more minutesin a bath. Money for the ice cream truck.

His 5’10” lanky frame pirouetted on the red carpet in front of me. He’s so much larger than he used to be when every step he took was a ‘look at me’ step, a twirl on the trail to where he is now.

This is the strongest time of your life. This moment you are working harder than you ever will again.

Often, when I think back, the first moments to resurface amid the flotsam and debris in my mind, are the hardest ones.