March 26, 2006: Ruby's counting the days

Ruby-Kate Pellant sorts through her family's colorful collection of yarmulkes until she finds the one she's looking for -- a small black one.

"I want Baba's," she says quietly, plopping her father's Jewish skullcap atop her coppery-red hair.

It's family times such as these, ushering in the Sabbath at Friday night dinner, when 8-year-old Ruby especially misses her father.

Ron-Michael Pellant, 38, has already been gone for six months, training with his National Guard unit in Mississippi; he landed in Kuwait on March 19. He's among 2,600 Minnesota Guard members heading to Iraq this month as the war begins its fourth year. They'll be gone a year.

To Ruby, her father isn't a soldier and certainly not a targeting analyst for the Red Bull Brigade. He's just Baba, which means Papa in China. That's where her parents worked as schoolteachers until Beijing's smoggy air and Ruby's asthma prompted them to resettle in St. Paul three years ago.

R.M., as everyone calls him, joined the Guard in 1986, figuring he would sandbag during floods and get some help paying for college. Had he wanted to fight foreign wars, he said, he would have enlisted in the Marines. But like so many others, he's off to Iraq. He is scheduled to return home in April 2007.

Ruby hates that he'll miss her December birthday. She hates knowing that things will change -- she will change -- while he's gone.

"When he comes back, I'll probably have longer hair and I'll be much older," she said. "I'll be nine and a half."

The struggle to navigate the void left by her father both befuddles and angers her. It also can make her proud.

Like that warm day last summer, when R.M. took his oldest daughter to meet his newest. Lucy was born the day Hurricane Katrina hit in late August. Before they left for the hospital in Woodbury, Ruby suggested that her father wear his camouflage fatigues so that people would show him respect.

R.M. and his wife, Daisy Pellant, chuckled at their daughter's fashion statement. But as father and daughter crossed the street near the hospital, a pickup-truck driver pulled over to thank him for his sacrifice. Ruby glanced up at her dad with her turquoise eyes and nodded, as if to say, see, I told you so.

100 arms for mom

Like the feelings of any 8-year-old about the war, Ruby's reflect what she hears from the adults in her world. And her opinions tend to bounce around just like Ruby herself, a 50-pound bundle of energy who likes to remove her socks and climb, spider-like, up the oak door frames in her home.

One minute, her dad's military service makes her feel special. The next minute, it's "dumb."

When R.M., a warrant officer, visited her second-grade classroom at St. Paul Academy and Summit School during a two-week winter furlough, Ruby beamed as classmates counted 27 pockets in his uniform.

"It sort of feels like I'm original," she said. "It feels lucky sometimes."

Other times, Ruby feels angry that a war thousands of miles away has so changed her life. Sometimes that means taking on extra responsibility -- such as taking out the recycling, or tickling and cooing over 6-month-old Lucy when her mom's hands are full, which is always.

When Ruby's class celebrated the first 100 days of school last month, teachers asked kids to make wishes. Ruby wished for 100 arms for her mother.

Besides teaching wellness at St. Paul Academy, Daisy is working on a Ph.D. in development psychology and tending to Ruby, 6-year-old Max, 2-year-old Annika and 6-month-old Lucy.

Throw in Emma, the Pellants' massive Bernese mountain dog, and you've got a full house -- with an emptiness at its core.

Ruby doesn't like talking about the war, but sometimes in between ordinary stuff -- constructing Lego horses or preparing a science project on animal acupuncture -- her opinions slip out.

"I pretty much think it's super dumb and my dad's sort of dumb because he could have quit the army," she says. "George Bush probably started the war because his dad hated Saddam Hussein, or something like that.

"Now families are having a horrible time and it's hard to understand why you would have to fight about one teeny-weeny thing and make such a big deal."

In a recent letter to Bush, Ruby wasn't quite that direct, but she made her point, nonetheless:

Dear Mr. President,

I don't think you'll listen to an 8-year-old but I hope you will. Hi. I'm Ruby-Kate Pellant. I live in St. Paul, Minnesota.

My dad is being trained to go to Iraq. I just turned eight and he won't be back until I'm nine-and-a-half.

It's horrible and hard for my mom, me, and my brother, but my two little sisters don't know what's happening, technically. ...What I really want is -- will you please stop the war? I don't have any friends who have a parent out but I know there are a lot of kids who do.

Will you please let me know your decision about what I said?

She signs her name in pencil but says she doubts Bush will write back because, as president, "he's always busy."

A delayed reaction

Ruby often asks her mother two questions: Will Baba die? And will her parents get divorced?

At first, Ruby amazed her mom and teachers with how strong she was after R.M.'s activation in September.

After he returned to Camp Shelby in January following a holiday break, his absence hit Ruby harder. She would often head off to school with a smile, only to start sobbing in a friend's car or in class.

She wanted to be strong for her mom, but little things knocked her off kilter, like forgetting to put some school worksheets in her backpack.

"I've been having these things that become huge embarrassing deals for me that would not be a big deal to other people," she said. "I don't like to cry, and it's sort of embarrassing to cry in the middle of class."

Ruby doesn't know any other kids with a parent involved in the war. Oh, well, she said with a shrug.

"It would be nice to have someone to talk about things that are happening to each other," she said. "But it's pretty much nothing I can talk about anyway."

Now, with her dad in Iraq, the tension at home might intensify. As a targeting analyst, R.M. will be figuring out what kind of firepower is needed for missions. He might not be on the front lines, but 12 months in Iraq is sure to include plenty of danger.

Back home, as Baba's absence becomes more routine, Ruby appears to be adjusting. There are more baby sitters rotating through the Pellants' house in the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood. And fewer dinners at the table in the kitchen.

"We kept having dinner in the kitchen because there was this enormous gaping hole at the dining room table," Daisy said. "It took us a long time because the kids so looked forward to family dinners, but now we're getting back there."

During one recent Friday night dinner, Daisy asked her children to each take a deep breath and hold it, before exhaling out a fading week's worth of harried mornings, sudden sobs and overall chaos.

Ruby covered her eyes as her mother lit two candles, then joined her family in reciting prayers for bread, wine and the arriving Sabbath. One by one, before digging into grilled chicken, the family members made wishes.

"I wish Baba would come home," Ruby said. "And I wish that, for eternity, I could have whatever I wanted to eat and sugar foods weren't bad, but healthy for you."

Indeed, life goes on for an 8-year-old.

X marks the time

Along with the family's ancient Sabbath rituals, Ruby and her siblings are incorporating new traditions.

They plan to tie a yellow ribbon on a branch each month that Baba is in Iraq. When the tree out front sports a dozen ribbons, they'll know he's coming home.

Cakes are another way to indicate time. On the first of every month, Ruby helps her mom place candles in an X formation on a cake, like a mark on a calendar. The first cake had 19 candles, one for each month R.M. would be gone.

Each month, there is one less candle. On March 1, the cake had 14 candles. When they get down to a cake with just one candle, they'll know their family will soon be whole again.

Ruby has a picture of herself on Baba's lap, framed in the lid of a red box in her bedroom. She keeps her coin collection and her ruby necklace inside.

"I kind of wish they would only take guys with no wives or kids," she said. "The other day I drew a picture of myself in a space ship crying my head off, and the whole space ship was filling up with tears."

Curt Brown • 651-298-1542