Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Kids ask to ‘Keep Mommy Safe’
Montgomery Village family will mark Mother’s Day with their woman of honor stationed in Iraq
by Patricia M. Murret | Staff Writer
Greg Swanberg helps his daughters Eirin, 7, (left) and Caitlin, 10, make Mother’s Day cards on Sunday for their mother, a neurologist with Walter Reed Army Medical Center, who is stationed in Iraq.
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‘‘Probably one of the most things I miss is her kisses and hugs,” said Caitlin Swanberg, 10, whose mother is stationed in Iraq. ‘‘But the other thing is: She does voices really well with our stuffed animals – she makes up stories, she’s really good with stories.”
Caitlin and her younger sister Eirin, 7, made Mother’s Day cards on pink construction paper and added glitter and felt in their Montgomery Village kitchen on Sunday. The sisters join a roughly estimated 220,000 U.S. children who now have a parent serving abroad in the U.S. military in support of the Global War of Terror, said Lt. Col. Les’ Melnyk, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Defense.
On Sunday, the week before Mother’s Day, Caitlin held a stuffed camel wind-up toy that plays Persian music. The gift came two weeks ago from Kuwait, where the girls’ mother Lt. Col. Margaret ‘‘Maggie” Swanberg stopped for several weeks on her way to a post in southern Iraq, where she will be stationed for at least six months. Swanberg, a neurologist with Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., departed on March 30.
The longest she has ever been away from her family is about a month, said her husband Greg Swanberg, the girls’ father. They hope she will be home by Thanksgiving, he said.
‘‘At the beginning it was hard, but like now, it’s like hearing some sad song on the radio – I’m used to it,” said Caitlin, a fifth-grader at Goshen Elementary School. ‘‘Some people don’t really get it,” she said of having a parent serving abroad. ‘‘My friends, it’s easy to explain to them, but some of the kids in my class don’t understand because they don’t personally know my mom.”
Like her sister, Eirin, a second-grader at Goshen Elementary, decorated her card with a yellow felt ribbon that said, ‘‘Keep Mommy Safe.”
Decals with the saying are placed around the house, from the front door to the refrigerator, as a reminder that Maggie Swanberg has her family’s support.
The Swanbergs have established Sunday morning video chats, where a camera attached to the family’s computer monitor films Greg and the girls. They send Internet instant messages to Maggie Swanberg as she sits at her laptop.
‘‘When I was in the service, we didn’t have e-mail,” said Greg Swanberg, who served in the Army in the Middle East following the Persian Gulf War. ‘‘I think the Web chat is pretty close, but nothing beats a phone call.”
Sunday morning the girls filled their mother in on recent events, which included Caitlin’s shut-out soccer game where she scored three goals and her team won 13-0 – and Eirin’s First Holy Communion at St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Montgomery Village.
Maggie Swanberg described getting caught in a sandstorm with blackout conditions – and a pleasure ride she took on a camel. During previous chats, she told her girls about eating ice cream on base and sharing her tent with 60 soldiers – and a little mouse named ‘‘Ammo.”
‘‘It was 98 degrees out and she called it a cold front,” Caitlin said.
Eirin, who misses her mother’s fictional characters, Blonde Brady and Red Brady, decorated her Mother’s Day card with a flower. Its petals spelled ‘‘I miss you a lot.”
Caitlin put two school projects in a package and decorated her card with glitter, stencils — and a stamp of a little mouse.
Her mother would get the joke, she said.
