by Kristie Ponce

Created on: February 25, 2009

Brightly colored smoke wafts up, thick, cloying, beautiful in an ominous way.

They break through, bent low but moving fast in a shifting pattern that renders it impossible to determine their number. More than ten, less than one hundred. Gilly suits and dark paint obscure their faces, their silhouettes, and my creative mind reacts, startled, easily convinced that these scrambling figures are malevolent, and beyond human....

Rolling, kneeling, firing, dodging, twisting, the motion continues, figures obscured by smoke, and, like magician's hands, impossible to keep track of. Abruptly the smoke clears, and there they are, in a perfect line, each on one knee, eyes intent, guns level, pointing straight ahead, right at us, we who have come to celebrate....

Later, they stand at attention in full dress uniform. Identical faces: lean, haggard, hard. Matching haircuts. Same bearing: shoulders back, heads up, eyes immobile. And their expression: determined, confident, proud.

It takes a long time to find my brother in the crowd. He looks exactly like every other soldier there. The same: a soldier, strong, fierce, dependable, resilient....finding strength in numbers and confidence in obedience. Like a true hero, he stands, anonymous among his fellow soldiers, humble in his confidence and strength.

He has never been more sure of himself, or more ready to die in defense of his country or fellow man. It pierces my heart.

We have come to celebrate his graduation from basic training. To us that means food and family. We go back to my sister's house, and the soldier is all but lost under a pile of excited nieces and nephews, happy to be reunited with the beloved uncle that they haven't been able to wrestle with in months.

Eventually the children are worn out, and most of the adults, soporific themselves, retire with them for the evening. My sister and I stay awake, mixing drinks for ourselves and our baby brother, bribing him to keep him telling us stories about what he's gone through.

"Man, those movies about basic, they are nothin' like what really goes on."

Oh, no? We ask. Not even Full Metal Jacket?

"Oh, hell no. Lemme tell ya what it's really like. We've got this drill sergeant, ya know? And he's like, super strict, but funny about it. So one day we spend the entire day running, like, twenty-five miles or something. So, the next day, we're all exhausted, and sore. It's pouring rain. He comes in, just like he does every morning, wakes us up, and tells us to be outside in five minutes.

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