Have you ever been to a homecoming, a coming-home-from-Iraq homecoming? I have. Two. Sort of. I can’t remember in what airports, as I’ve been on the road more than my dog wants me to be. But I was there.

At one, wife and new baby, and little toddler girl wait just outside the security gate, along with numerous relatives waving small flags and holding hand colored signs of welcome and thanks. Dad arrives in civilian clothes, only his haircut military issue. The first kiss is for his wife, the second for the newborn – and I wonder if it’s the first time they have met – and then he turns to his daughter, looking about somewhere between two- and three-years old.

“Doy you remember me?” he asks his oldest child, arms outstretched in waiting hug.

His daughter moves slowly towards him, very slowly, anxiously sucking on her forefinger. She gets to Dad after what seems like eternal seconds, never pulling her finger from her mouth, never giving the hug back to her father, just kind of sidling up to him. She’s smiling, but it’s not beaming. It’s shy and nervous.

I watch from the sidelines.

The other homecoming, in a different airport. This soldier returns to a wife, no children. There are older relatives, presumably parents. At this homecoming, there are about ten uniformed servicemen waving flags, presumably National Guard comrades.

I watch from the sidelines.

I want to do the same thing both times. I want to shake his hand. I want to say thanks. I don’t. It’s not my place to intrude. We’ve all intruded too much into their lives already.

And what am I thanking him for? For being brave enough to do what I know, at his age, I would not have been brave enough to do? For doing what I would never want my two sons or one daughter to do? I don’t know. Because I don’t know if, when he was over there, he thinks he did anything to be thanked for. I don’t know if he cares about anything more than getting him and his friends home safe. And should he?

I might understand what this war might mean. I might not. But I do understand what it means when my friend’s brother comes home for two weeks to see his baby born, and then goes back to Iraq. It means goodbye too young to know what was there.

I understand what it means when my nephew takes off for Iraq. I still see him as the six-year-old boy I first met up in the hills of my wife’s home in the Carribean. Now I picture him, that same age, in an army uniform with a real gun.

But I do understand that every time I see a homecoming, I want to shake the soldier’s hand. But I don’t. Because I worry I’m intruding if I stop him, and say thanks.

So thanks.

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