The lost platoon

I was perambulating around my backyard today, looking to see if any of my springtime perennials were poking up, when I noticed a small flash of bluegreen resting flush amidst the grassy stubble and dead leaves. Knowing it had rained recently, I suspected it might be a small upheaval surfacing from twenty or thirty years past. This had happened before and it always saddened me when it did.

You might know that I haven't heard from any of my three boys in about 15 years, the divorce you know. I used to have on a shelf a half dozen weatherworn little green army men, a leggo piece and a small child's toy plastic grenade that had been buried or lost in the yard and surfaced after hard rains. My middle child's toy pieces from long ago, Johnny's, now 34; he loved to conduct army battles with toy figures in the yard digging little trenches and riverbeds for the opposing troops. I hadn't recovered a returning missing toy soldier for a couple of years now. There in the backyard was a missing warrior returning to base decades later. This breaks my heart each time.

I'll wash this little trooper off, missing a limb and with his rifle broken, allow him to dry and then put him in Johnny's Box in the basement where he can rejoin the rest of the lost platoon. I placed the rest of these found little toy pieces in that box a year or two back, all that's left of Johnny's presence in my house now, having taken them off their shelf of remembrance as I moved on in not having any children anymore. The three of them as good as died twenty years ago when their mother drove them away to her father's compound in Cleveland during spring break under false pretenses, so she could file divorce papers and achieve first, and ultimate, as it turned out, possession of our three children despite the full joint legal custody our divorce decree ordered after several years of litigation. Their immature minds had long since been turned against me by her by then.  It's called Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) and it's real and pernicious, ruining lives.

I hope Johnny, and Jimmy and Danny, are well.