I have done a lot of heavy thinking for the past few weeks. So many things from my past have shaped how I feel about things and I did not realize how strongly they influenced me. My mom used to watch Mash when I was very little. I fell in love with Radar. I thought I would marry him...He was so adorable with his little teddy bear. When I got older I watched Mash by my choosing. I fell totally for Hawkeye...He was amazing. He was funny at the right times and serious at the right times. He was cool, collected and sure of himself. He was loyal and caring. He absolutely was passionate about his loved ones. One episode has played through my mind through out my life. Hawkeye was being "treated" by a psychiatrist, I think his name was Randy. He was a friend of Hawkeye's. Hawkeye was having a breakdown and Randy was trying to figure out why. The episode kept flashing to Hawkeye on a bus with a bunch of Korean civilians, while fighting was going on outside. The bus is broken down and a woman further up from him has a chicken that keeps making noise. Everyone on the bus gives her looks and I can't remember if they say anything but it is implied very strongly that she needs to make the chicken stop...Everytime I watched this episode, I would just feel sick inside, I remember when I was old enough to realize what was really going on. He was suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome. The woman was actually holding her baby and ended up smothering her baby to keep it quiet. I can only imagine the anguish a person goes through when they lose their child under any circumstances. To have a hand in your child's death would be devastating. I do not think it is something I could ever get over, no matter the circumstances. I remember watching this mother sobbing. Even though it is "just" a tv show, it really bothers me. I wonder how many mothers or even fathers have had to give up their children. I know a mother and possibly a father will have to give up their daughter so that I can have her. I hope to raise her with a sense of who they might have been and the choices that they were forced to make. I hope she will be proud of South Korea and I hope when she is older, I can take her back and let her discover the land of her birth. I hope she will understand that I will have the same passion for her life as I do for my other two children.
