For most of my young life I remember one constant. My dad kept a bag in the hall closet.
It was dark blue and nylon, standard US Air Force issue, which meant it was long on practicality and durability and short on style. It looked like a garment bag, folded in the middle and had a handle in the center so it could be carried.
Inside were a few of his uniforms, underwear and socks. He also had a shaving kit complete with one of those double-sided tomahawks of a shaving razor he used, as well as some Barbasol shaving cream, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a pocket comb and Vitalis hair tonic. No cologne – if he was carrying that bag, he wouldn't need to smell nice.
Early on, it also had a carton of unfiltered Camel's in it, but he quit smoking and those disappeared.
It wasn't technically a "go bag," the backpack pilots carried that contained 72 hours worth of survival gear. But it was close enough and it served the same purpose: what he was most likely to need if something happened and he and the rest of his squadron had "go to work."
I saw him come through the front door, grab it and leave a few times, pausing long enough to kiss my mother and say the same thing: "I've got to go, I'll call you but I don't know when I'll be home." My brother and I never really knew what he was doing. But we did know we needed to be nicer to mom, who would become very quiet for a few days, and we were going to have to figure out how to get to baseball practice on our own for a while.
The first time my dad joined the military it was the Navy and the reason was pretty simple. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and even he and his "of-age" brothers and friends who weren't exactly enjoying the bounty available to others in the nation weren't going to let that slide.
The second time he joined we were at war again, in Korea. This time he signed up for a relatively new service, the Air Force, mostly because he had heard they would let you take your wife and children with you. Of course he spent the first year on unaccompanied duty in Greenland and Guam. Wouldn't be the last time the Air Force sort of over-promised.
My dad served for more than 30 years, much of it as a chief master sergeant. Not bad for a poor kid from Lawton, Okla., who only graduated high school because the school district granted credits to all returning World War II service men who were lacking them when they left for the war.
To me, he was just like everyone else's dad. He mowed the grass, watched football on TV, played catch with me and cooked out. Except he had that bag in the hall closet.
My youngest son is serving overseas, and he sent me a picture of him at work the other day. He and the rest of his battery are in a semi-circle around their commander, looking serious and blending in together in their bulky camo. Some of them look so young they ought to be playing solider. But they're not.
One unusual characteristic of the modern US military is that fewer and fewer of its members come from families where another member didn't serve. Increasingly we're becoming a nation where our Armed Forces are their own separate entity, comprised of the sons and daughters of those who have already worn the uniform.
It's Veteran's Day, a day we choose to honor those who have and do serve. We thank them for their service and offer them discounts at restaurants and remember those who have gone before. But we don't really know them anymore. We don't come in contact with them. We don't see them in our lives.
Some of us know them. They're our fathers or mothers, our husbands or wives, our sons and daughters. They're the young men and women who went to school with our children. For some of us, they are our children.
They have the same hopes and dreams and plans as the rest of us. But they have chosen, at least for some time, the profession of arms in defense of our nation.
They're just like the rest of us, except for one thing. In the hall closet of their lives, there is a bag.