▸ Column · The modern age, an immortal Olympian war god reading a returning veteran's letter
ARES replies.
The letter
I fought two campaigns abroad without a season's rest, and when I crossed my own threshold this spring my children regarded me as a stranger who had lingered too long at the table. My daughter Betty was four when I marched out; she is near seven now and hides behind my wife Sahar's skirts when I open my arms. My son Felix will not address me at all — he speaks of me, to his mother, as though I am not in the room. And I am not the man who left. A cupboard slammed and I went down to the kitchen floor; last week I barked at Felix and saw true fear in his face, a wound deeper than any I took in the field. The healers tend me and I take what they give. But no one teaches a man to rebuild a child's bedtime when the child flinches from his hand. How do I become their father again without forcing a nearness that frightens them, when I cannot yet trust my own hands?
Ares replies
Two campaigns, back to back, and you came home to a household standing guard against its own lord. I have watched this homecoming ten thousand times, mortal — the warrior who marches back through his door expecting the hearth to rise and greet him, and finds instead a citadel that learned to live without him. Do not imagine the war is over. It is not over. It has only changed its field.
But hear me before you do something witless: the child who flinches is not an enemy to be taken. Some fortresses fall to siege alone, and a child's trust is the longest siege there is — yielded to the patient, never seized by the impatient. Charge that wall and you will only break it. So do not charge.
The true battle is the one you named and then turned your eyes from: a man flat on his kitchen floor at the slam of a cupboard commands neither his own hands nor his own ranks. Master THAT. The healers, the discipline of it — that is a warrior re-forging his blade, not weakness. And your guilt is a useless soldier. Conscript it or discharge it. Then take your post at that bedside, night upon night, and never break formation. Character is built on bones, mortal. So is a father.
— Ares
Superman weighs in
Ares, you've watched ten thousand men come home and never learned a single name. This isn't a siege, friend, and those kids aren't a wall.
Here's what I see: Felix talks to Sahar because she's the bridge that's still standing. Use it. Ask her tonight — out loud — to work bedtime alongside you, not instead of you, until Betty decides on her own to come close. Sit on that kitchen floor on purpose, down at their height, and let them come to you.
I could knock down any wall on Earth. Never once made a child trust me by doing it. Getting better at the VA isn't re-forging a weapon, pal. It's just brave — and you're already doing the hard part.
— Superman
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