Marc Polymeropoulos served 26 years at CIA, retiring from the Senior Intelligence Service in 2019. He served overseas in the Middle East and South Asia, and now lives in Northern Virginia.
OPINION — We all have felt a range of emotions over the last several months, from the understandable fears of catching the COVID-19 virus to feelings of despair that our world has been turned upside down. This applies to our children as well.
My son, a high school baseball player, is missing out on his senior season, with a team ranked nationally and a group of best friends who have played together since Little League. This has been a brutal blow to what should have been a state championship title, graduation with his buddies, and beach week in the Outer Banks of North Carolina that they have talked about every day for a solid year. And my daughter, a sophomore in college and activist who has gone on freedom rides to the deep south and who is preparing for a career in law to save the world, now finds herself living at home with her parents again. One could say that my kids have had the prime months of their lives disrupted in a way that was almost unimaginable several months ago.
Yet at the two month mark, as we have all been in the house together nearly 24/7, I sit and reflect and realize that as long as our health stays intact (and this remains an ongoing concern as I recently tested negative for COVID-19 after feeling quite poorly for some time), we will persevere and be just fine. In fact, my kids are doing far better than I expected. I first worried that they would get depressed from missing out on the critical socialization that is the staple of growing up. I worried they would be scared that one of us would get sick, as they are smart and see the grim statistics and heart-breaking stories about those who are hospitalized. Sure, they are going through these emotions at some level. Yet what I failed to appreciate is that the life they previously led overseas while I served in the CIA has prepared our family for this moment, perhaps in droves.
My son and daughter have been evacuated from two overseas posts due to threats of potential terrorist attacks. They have flown on US Air Force C-17s, and seen mid-air refueling from the cockpit, as we bugged out of a country literally in the middle of the night, under armed guard. They endured my absences for nearly three years since 9/11-with Skype calls when my base in eastern Afghanistan was taking indirect fire. “Hi kids, have a nice day at school, don't worry about those explosions in the background, I’m fine, make sure you do your homework.” This was normal for us. On one occasion, they huddled together at their diplomatic school under lockdown and watched a nearby US government facility come under terrorist attack, knowing their parents were inside. Yet the next day, they went back to school. No big deal, Dad’s SUV is out of commission, it took 200 rounds of AK-47 fire, so Mom will drive you to school today. They have gone through water shortages, food shortages, electricity outages, and even riots on the streets where we really had to shelter in place. Not the current shelter in place, where you can walk the dog or go for a jog. No more calls from the US Marines on the communications net, interrupting our dinner, with the Gunnery Sergeant calling out “Shelter in Place, no do not go outside your residence for any reason” before seeing me wink at their Mom, kiss them goodbye and head out to work that night, when rioters were burning buildings on the streets of the capital we lived in. “There goes Dad again, hey Mom, can we get another pizza?” All normal courses of action, as they were steeled from a life living in the third world, and from a father with an unusual job.
I realize now that my kids are far more resilient than I have given them credit for. They were part of a tough CIA family, they grew up in the third world and the hardship that would cause disbelief when we told our relatives, was just part of our ordinary lives. We even had them memorize Freedom from Duress codes for years. That’s a system where they would utilize a special phrase, in the event that we called home and their lives were in danger and they had been taken prisoner or some other horrible circumstance that only we in the intelligence business can think about when living far away from the US. We would always have fun making up our Freedom from Duress codes, as perhaps this was a way to cope with the crazy life we had chosen. “Pineapple” was a memorable one, probably because my daughter actually hates pineapples! So sure, these times of the COVID-19 pandemic are scary. And let’s hope and pray that no one in our family or in our circle of close friends gets sick. But for the hardships we are facing right now, stuck in our home in northern Virginia with a nice backyard, a newly-built batting cage, a fire pit, and 300 channels of cable television, this pales in comparison to parts of our previous life. As I kissed my wife goodnight last night, we agreed, ‘Yeah, our kids will get through this’.
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