Thoughts on a Thursday...

I think at this point I can safely say, on Thursday it will pretty much be a given I will write about something that has to do with the show Parenthood. Yes it comes on Tuesday nights, but I never watch until Wednesday, thus Thursday I write about it.

As I have said on here a million times, it is GREAT show, if you aren't watching it- you are really missing out. Ray Ramono has a role on there now, and it is really different than anything he has done before. The show just has a way of connecting viewers with the characters. It is relevant and makes me cry every week.

This week there were two topics that really struck a cord with me, and they are actually things that caught me by surprise, as neither topics are things I have experienced personally. Zeke

the dad, Craig T. Nelson, somehow ended up at what I think was a VFW, or a similar type of lodge for veterans (see this is way out of my scope of knowledge...). He evidently was a Vietnam War vet. He was having a conversation with a guy who recently returned from the war. It really contrasted how different soilders are recieved today vs back then. I have a little bit of knowledge about this, because my stepdad James fought in the Vietnam war, but if you meet him I don't think that is something you would ever guess. I hardly ever hear him talk about it. What I have heard him say is the hatered he felt when he returned home. People did not have parades or celebrate their bravery. I think that is really sad. What he and the thousands of other men experienced was no less dangerous, was no less heroic, was no less patriotic, yet for him, and droves of others like him, it is just something that happened, something that they don't want to think about. I am POSITIVE that men that fought that in that war experienced what we today know as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and were never treated. These men had to come back to the US and just assimilate back into society as if they had never left, it is crazy to me. It just really made me appreciate what James, and others like him, experienced. As I said, most people would never have any idea what all he has been through, how he served his country- I think that deserves recognition.

I really got choked up when Jabar (a little boy who is half black and half white) asked his white father what the N-word was (he said the word, I will not). He heard it in a rap song and didn't know what it meant. His white dad tried to explain it was a bad word, but his mother who was black really explained it in a way that conveyed the power behind the word. The hurt it can bring. After Jabar went to bed the parents were discussing things and how one day he might be called that word, Crosby (the dad, was visably upset about it). Obviously Hadley will never be called that word, but it is true, people are mean and say things to cut people down. While there isn't a word that carries the same amount of magnitude, it is possible that one day someone will call my child a word that will hurt, and I can't do anything to stop it. We can do everything in our power to protect our kids, but really we can't protect them all the time. The world is hard, people are mean- I see it all the time. It just made me think about a sentence I read in a blog earlier that morning, parenting is loving a child so much it hurts. It still amazes me how much I am able to love my child, how I feel so strongly about wanting to keep anything that can hurt her away. It is my job to raise her in a way to be strong enough to survive in this sometimes cruel and unforgiving world.