Afghanistan: Tour of Duty

Home On American Soil

2010-02-10T12:28:00.000-08:00

Those four words. So simple. So beautiful. So deep in meaning to the citizens of the United States of America.

Home is where you were raised. Home is the sounds of your house. It is the wind coming across the wheatfield or the symphony of the city streets.

Home is the way sunset looks across a Mongolian plain, or the sound of the water lapping against a Newfoundland riverbank.

Home is the way people dress where you were raised. Home is the music of the instruments they play, the sounds of your language on the radio, the foods of your holidays.

Home is home all over the world, in whatever country you live.

What is it like to be Italian, and come to your country and hear the rhythms of your language, when you have been long away? A friend from Australia told me once that when she got on the plane to home and heard Australian accents, it was like warm water washing over her, with peace.

Home is your country, your country’s cities, your ways of educating your children, your transportation methods. Home is your culture. And at its root, home is the soil of your country, for the soil determines the food that is native to your land, the shapes of its fields and hills, and the look of it: the trees and flowers and animals that live upon it.

Let us be human, and appreciate the importance of home to every single person on our planet.

We, in this country that is America, love our home land as you love yours. We are just human beings, and we love our country as simply and earnestly as the citizens of every country love their home, and we love returning to it.

When we come home, we leave the plane and put our bags down for a moment to rest. We will pick up our bags and continue on our journey, from the airport to a connecting flight or to the highway, from the highways to our county, to our township, to our street, to our front door. We will carry the bags a long way before we are fully home and can unpack them.

But there is one bag Americans never unpack. One bag that we carry with us always when we travel, and always as we live in our homes in this country. That package is our national awareness.

Our national awareness is complex and can be difficult to shoulder. Perhaps more than the citizens of most countries, we carry with us always the good and challenging parts of our heritage and our culture. Do we, upon meeting individual Chinese people, hold them subconsciously accountable for the sins of China upon human rights? No, I don’t believe we do that on an individual basis. On meeting a person from a repressive regime, do we assume they are an automatic extension of their country’s politics, its strengths and weaknesses? I don’t think so.

But it is a given that Americans are held accountable for America.

We are reviled, sometimes justifiably. Personally innocent or not, as Americans, we bear in the eyes of the world the sins of our brothers and sisters who have parochial attitudes and ignorant arrogance.
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We are envied for our riches. Wealthy or not, we are seen as wealthy. Even when poor, we are seen as having limitless opportunity.

We are desired for our freedoms, and we are hated for them. Parts of the world wish they shared our government, our economic opportunities, our courts – and part of the world fears them, and tries to destroy them.

Our country bears the stress of feeling responsible for caring for the world. We know that when there is a big problem, all eyes look to us to see what we will do. If we do well, it is expected. But if our government as a whole or our citizens as individuals do less than well, or differently than we would have chosen, we are often damned as a whole in the eyes of the world. We – politically contentious, religiously fractious Americans - are seen as one cohesive group, and we are held jointly responsible.

We know this. It is our challenging gift, our burden to carry, in exchange for the right to be citizens of the United States. I wonder if other citizens of the world understand the weight of that individual little piece of the American Ideal that weighs always on our shoulders and in our hearts.

And when we do leave, wherever we go in the world, we carry that invisible burden. We carry the praise and fault the world finds with the US as its citizens. We shoulder it like one of our traveling bags. It is sometimes heavy, requiring work - but there is never the thought of not wanting the burden. We never unpack it, and we never put it down. Except once: the first moment back after long and weary travels.

As travelers worldwide feel upon reaching their own country again, we are deeply happy to be home.
As American travelers, we can put momentarily put down that other package.

We have carried it as travelers, and we will carry it as citizens living at home - but for one brief moment, as we cross back into our own country, as a kind of salute crossing back in, we can put it down in a moment of grateful welcome home.

We love our country with a passion that is part normal love of home…and part appreciation, bordering on reverence, for being a human piece of what the United States is to the world. Heroes come from every country in the world - but the United States is expected to step up regularly. We love our country for giving us, over and over, the opportunity to be heroic, to be expected-of…and to live larger by doing so.

Our soldiers? We send our children, our sons and daughters, our husbands and wives and boyfriends and girlfriends and nieces and nephews and friends out as our military, carrying the supersized version of The American Ideal. Our soldiers do humanitarian work all over the globe, and they do the work required of them by acts of Congress and their squadron leaders. Our soldiers, more than any other American citizen, carry that invisible burden of world expectations, reverence and revilement.

Beyond the pledge of allegiance, they have literally sworn to lay down life and limb to care for our country and our citizens. They have seen death take people who wanted to come home as badly as they did. They have had to put their trust in leadership with whom they may or may not agree, and just do the work they’re told. They have worked really hard and have done without for months, far from those they love. Their chunk of The American Ideal is bigger and heavier than the ones we each have to carry.

If they are lucky, their whole squadron returns safe and sound. And on one fine day like today, a day of blizzards and record snows, the telephone rings unexpectedly early in the morning and we hear a beloved voice saying the sweetest, sweetest words: “I’m home.”

I don’t know what the future holds for our warring, willful species. I only knew in that moment one wonderful, wonderful thing: my son is home on American soil and he will be not be shot at any more.

All the air went out of me. I’ve cried off and on all day. And now, I can put down an invisible burden too, one I’ve carried for the last several months.

But I never have to pick this one up again.

Thanks for checking in,
Katie

Nothing but joy...

2010-02-08T12:03:00.000-08:00

..joy, joy joy and happiness.

We don't know where he is, but we know he's on the way.
smiling, laughing, happy tears, so happy!

Thanks for checking in,
Katie

Kind Of Mad At Myself, Part II

2010-02-02T18:49:00.000-08:00

So little time to squeeze in so much stuff to still say….

I’m kind of mad at myself still, but in little ways.
I’m disappointed in myself. With all these months to focus on it, I thought I would be a better person in some way, but I am no different in any way that I can see. Except a little fatter and a little more out of shape…instead of the other way around, as I intended.

Zach is different, and I am sure his squadron mates are. They have done so much, worked so hard, stood so much, and so of course they have grown as human beings and adults, even though they may not know it yet. They may have some emotional stuff to clear out, over time. I hope they will come home to good relationships and that it’s all good moving forward.

Most of them will likely look back on this time as one of the most important in their lives. What they hated about it will diminish fast with time, and, like all experiences that teach us a lot, the good will grow in their minds and their memories.

But me and my family: how have we used the time to grow? As much as we wanted?
The lesson here is that good intentions need focus or the time can slip by!

But also, I believe that having good intentions in and of itself is pretty important. I’ve thought about being fair to the Afghan people, and about being understanding of the pressures faced by our family members in the service. So that’s maybe not a growth, but I hope I stuck by my beliefs.

Part I was about how I was kind of mad at myself for being afraid so much; Part II was going to be about being a little mad at myself for not growing or deliberately improving in some way during the same time.

Now, this post towards the end of this experience is going to either go way south or way deep, and I’m not sure which it will be. But I will be honest. A few days after I wrote the Part I post, I woke up at 1:30 in the morning, having what I think was the last opportunity for fear to ambush me. A kind of last-flight last-hurrah for the fear. How many times have I fought it off, but here it was again, in full attack mode.

And I’ve written, either here or other places, about the process of coming to see fear as a thing to be loved and forgiven, so that it has less power over us. It doesn’t change the fact that it harasses me constantly. But it was a kind of another-epiphany along that line of thought.

This is a little out there. So buckle up and I hope it makes sense!

Fear is stupidness. Fear is dumbness. Fear is not-knowing, not-understanding. Fear is the emptiness of knowledge; it is the opposite of fullness. It is the sucking-out of the marrow, the destruction of the Good. It comes to us in loneliness, unalterable, unable to change itself or be other than it is: wistful, ugly, and hoping we will understand, even while it scorns us if we do.

Fear does not want us to yield to it; even fear hopes that we will be stronger than it is, and secretly hopes that we will triumph over it...but it must do its job. The harder we resist it, the more insidious it becomes. The stronger we grow, the more it must try and topple us. It is required of the universe; it is the gravity we must have to push against so we can prove to ourselves that we can fly. Poor fear cannot be a friend even to itself, for it must attack anything good.

Fear hates itself for being as much as we do. It must try to poison the well even while it hopes that it will be an abject failure, and that we will not drink.

So we must / should be patient with fear, and compassionate to it. We will never change fear. We will never improve upon it's condition; that is impossible. But we will deepen ourselves. In the effort to do good to it, we will increase our capacity. We will fly.

It is in our willingness in offering food and drink and shelter and welcome to the self-loathing wretch at our gate that we define our goodness.

The feral cat can not be tamed; but what does fear do with the knowledge that it could not destroy us?
Nothing; it is incapable of understanding. It can only assault.

We can never destroy it. But we must not ever let it destroy us.
Love, instead.

So when fear comes to call, speak kindly to it. Doing so will not improve fear's condition. It can not and will not take on any of your nature. We may need to be strong. We may need to take action.

But with kindness as your shield and interface, you are protected: you will not take on any if its nature, either.

Kindness towards fear renders us more impervious to its assaults.

I wrote that from 1:30 a.m. to 3 a.m. If it makes sense to you, that’s good. If it doesn’t, blame the hour.
I’ve said I was Over The Fear so many times before that it seems ridiculous to say so again. But something changed.

And shortly after that, Zach laughed at me and said carelessly, “You worry way too much. You should stop that.”

And I did.

Well, damn. We should have had that conversation a lot earlier…!

So, a little work left. And a next phase in life, for good intentions, for onward and upward, and for the dance.

For making time to smile.

Thanks so much for checking in. Be well,
Katie

Kind Of Mad At Myself, Part I

2010-01-20T11:23:00.000-08:00

I'm mad at myself. I promised myself in this experience that I would not, would not give in to the fear which so often has run me in the past, and what did I do? Totally every day give in to it. Every day, let it come in and boss me around and mess up what in retrospect was a perfectly good day.

It is only as they round the last turn in this period that I am finally able to think for real with pleasure about what Zach’s day might be like today, and be happy, for him, and just happy in life, carefree. That’s so stupid. I’ve wasted all this time being worried, like so many other times, and I promised myself I wouldn’t, but I did. Any comments of reassurance aside that we’re all human, I genuinely wish I had done better.

I don’t have a handle on how my particular variety of fear works. I intend to think about it and study it from my own perspective until I understand more about it operates for me, so I can help other people who get in the grip of it like I do.

I imagine as the folks on deployment go through their day, this is the priority list of how their awareness is focused:

1. Lots of doing their work, whatever it is. Thinking about and paying attention to the job at hand

2. Social interactions, both while working and on the bus and during meetings, while eating, showering, sleeping, relaxing. Lots of laughing and joking, plenty of regular conversation mixed with work conversation, some annoyance and bitching

3. The deprivations of camp life, which they probably got used to in the first couple of months and don’t think about so much unless the weather is seriously crappy

4. Thoughts of home and wanting to be home

5. Fear and worry

For people who have a loved one on deployment, depending on the nature of the work that person is doing, I’d recommend that we have the same basic sequence of awareness. If who you have there is stationed on a base, just relax. Although you miss them being there, they are really very safe. Maybe treat the separation as a time of discipline for us at home too, to get stronger and more effective. Calm discipline can be such a great thing!

For people who have a loved one on deployment who is not regularly on a base and may be exposed to danger, I’d still recommend the same thing. It gets you through faster and helps to keep item number 5 at bay. And statistically, as I said in the very beginning of this blog, they’re really pretty darned safe, so don’t spend the time making yourself sick over something that’s not likely to happen.

Great advice. I wish I’d taken it.

Instead, my awareness sequence is kind of in reverse. I worried so damn much. Too many scary thoughts. I fought off the scary imaginings by deliberately picturing him laughing, talking, joking, working on work. And when I wasn’t fighting fear, when I was enjoying my hot bath or my air conditioning or the refrigerator right there when I was hungry or having the bathroom a quick dry walk from my bed when I woke up in the middle of the night…when I was enjoying those luxuries, I kind of anquished about the deprivations, about what they didn’t have.

That was stupid. They didn’t worry about that stuff even a fraction as much. And nothing will faze them now. They survived basic training, and they’ll be so much tougher from taking this in stride.

We knew our fears and tears and worries can make them focus on that stuff more. They shouldn’t have to shoulder any more burdens than they already are, so we bucked up and didn’t discuss it, but boy, I have discussed it here ad nauseam, I’m sure. I apologize.

I’ve learned this: fear loses some of its grip on us when the end is in sight. Is it that hope gets stronger, and that encourages faith that all will be well? Or is it that the diminishing of days left to worry, we get a little brassier, a little more confident, and we win more rounds just because we fight fear harder?

I don’t know.

In the meantime, happily, all is well. Kudos to them once again for the work they are doing.

Thanks for checking in,
Katie

Letter From Riley To Zach

2010-01-18T08:07:00.000-08:00

Dear Zachary,

I hate Mom. She says I have to hand in my man card and apparently that is pretty funny to her.

I also hate The Little Cat. It is all The Little Cat’s fault.

Which, did I mention, The Little Cat has claws? Really sharp claws, which I do not?

And that it stalks me?

Ben and Gabe got home from going to the mountains and they unloaded all the food and the cooler and Ben put The Little Cat in the cooler because you know that sick little skulker likes to get in any new box or bag or anything new and it was in the cooler and I did not know this important fact and I smelled into the cooler poking my nose into a little crack of the lid which was open from which really awesomely good smells of food and stuff were coming and while I had my nose stuck deep into it…The Little Cat put her paw out of the cooler and swiped me.

I wasn’t sure it was The Little Cat at first and thought I might have just bumped my nose on something and the cooler did smell so wonderfully of food that I went back to the crack and as I was putting my nose towards it The Little Cat pounced out - she POUNCED ME, I tell you - and startled me.

I walked quickly away from the cooler because on second thought I decided it was kind of stinky and I did not like the smell of it any more. Mom was laughing at me because she said I was afraid of The Little Cat but I was not, truthfully, the cooler on second thought just did not smell that good. It smelled like Little Cat Pounce Tricks and the last time I intersected with a cat’s claws, you will remember, was the time I got blood, well, all over the house.

(Literally, Dad says is the word I should use here. He said it louder: “Blood Literally Everywhere.”)

So I walked away kind of quickly (Mom is still laughing and she says I bolted but I did not) and kind of coughed (Mom says I yelped in squeaky terror but I most definitely did not do that either) to show The Little Cat that I thought its pounce tricks are stupid and now I am behind the couch and The Little Cat is looking for me and Mom is laughing and laughing and says I have to hand in my Man Card.

Whatever that is.

So if you have an extra one will you please send it to me because I have a feeling it is something important I need to show The Little Cat that it is not the boss of me.

On second thought it might be a good idea to send two in case I lose the first one. I mean, in case I drop it somewhere, not in case I have to give it up, which I would never do. Unless The Little Cat keeps looking at me like that in that taunting way. Do you think The Little Cat looks a little like a clown? Tell it to stop looking at me and looking at its claws!

Or send an extra one in case I need to give it to Mom so she can stop laughing and breathe again. Because I’m a Big Tough Dog but I’m just nice that way.

I miss you and can’t wait to see you.
Love,
Your dog,
Riley

Spread Healing, What Little Bits You Have To Share

2010-01-16T11:22:00.000-08:00

It’s hard to feel like these words matter very much in the face of what’s going on in so many places around our globe, especially in Haiti. But I believe human pain, even on a massive scale such as they are facing there, comes down to little equations of one and one. One person may feel for many people, but it’s done on a one-by-one basis.

So maybe one-by-one words, even in such a little remote corner of the world that this blog is, matter. This blog is about one mother loving her son and his co-workers, and loving utter strangers in the world where they are working, both enemies and friends, in the hopes that it will encourage goodness and safety for all.

One person grieves for, misses, loves, hopes for one other person one at a time, no matter how many there are. One person celebrates and loves others, one at a time, no matter how many there are.

We empathize with the people of Haiti now because we grasp what it is like to worry about a missing brother, or father, or sweetheart. The part we cannot comprehend is feeling that way about so many at once. 9/11 was the closest we’ve come recently to understanding that. All of the Haitians in the world and Haitians in their country ares bearing those heavy burdens; hoping, loving, worrying.

Did you see the news footage of the people there singing? I don’t know what started it, but there they were, hundreds or thousands of people, walking two or three or four wide, singing.

Whatever that stuff is deep in us humans that causes us to love life, to find happiness in the midst of the worst, wow. And when we share it, it grows and grows and grows.

I wish them recovery.

In the middle of my quiet winter month, I noticed again this January that it is right around Twelfth Night that I feel the grip of winter loosen. It’s not even close to spring, but the days are suddenly a heartbeat longer. Something wild and circadian in me picks up on it.

In the middle of this quiet winter day, I have just finished an article on maple syrup. How the sap starts up in the tree long before there is any real evidence of spring.

In the middle of this quiet winter hour, I want to share a little personal happiness. I would be almost afraid to say it, except for I said No More Fear.

Zach is coming home soon! Soon we will see him, strong, safe, smiling. Healthy and happy.

You know how good that is going to feel.

I wish the world well. May happiness spread out from one little pocket and another and another to patch together and help heal the rough and raw places.

Thanks for checking in,
Katie

Choices

2010-01-12T06:36:00.000-08:00

There is a sobering website I go to frequently: http://icasualties.org/oef/.

The nightly news is often full of one of our nation’s wars: members of congress refusing to work as partisans, instead fully engaged in proving that the advancement of their political party is far more important than the good of the country. It seems from watching some congressmen that destruction of the other party - even if it means destruction of our country - is the most important goal.

The news of the other war, the one where people get killed, is sporadic. I give the news agencies credit: they try to feature it. But if you don’t have a loved one over there, people lose interest.

So when we haven’t heard from Zach recently - which means something has happened to a soldier - I go to the icasualties.org, Operation Enduring Freedom (read: Afghanistan), which offers dates, names, hometowns, marine bases, and where they were stationed.

The silence from our son is because of these young men:

The Department of Defense announced today the death of Marines supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.

Lance Cpl. Jacob A. Meinert, 20, of Fort Atkinson, Wis., died Jan. 10 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.

Lance Cpl. Mark A Juarez, 22, of Bakersfield, Calif, died Jan 9 while supporting combat operations in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.

Sgt. 1st Class Jason O. B. Hickman, 35, of Kingsport, Tenn., died Jan. 7 at Forward Operating Base Salerno, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered earlier that day at Combat Outpost Bowri Tana, when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device and small arms fire. He was assigned to Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 4th Airborne Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, Fort Richardson, Alaska.

And a young Danish man, Constable Simon Sejer Hoffman. You can see his face and honor him by reading this page, which Google will translate roughly for your (click Translate, upper right corner): http://forsvaret.dk/HOK/Nyt%20og%20Presse/ISAF/Pages/simonhoffmann.aspx

Today, the soldiers of their units will need to grieve - but they will also need to work and they will need to laugh. They will need to eat and take care of their bodies and reassure those at home and be fully alert in their jobs. They will need to work with partners and leaders who may be great friends or irritate them. They may need to put their very lives in the trust of soldiers who have radically different political and religious beliefs than they hold.

They may need to face and work with and talk to Afghan people who may know who placed the bombs that killed their friends, or who may be innocent and hate the violence, and they will not know on which side those people stand.

And they will do their jobs. Having received Marine training, they will do so with more respect, more restraint, more responsibility, and far less interest in self than some of our most outspoken members of congress.

We choose daily in life who we will emulate, what we will be, what we will build. Our words, our thoughts, our many small actions daily are the bricks with which we create our life.

None of us is perfect. But daily, let us do our very best to choose wisely the legacy of our lives to our children and our communities.

Thanks for checking in,
Katie

The Problem With Not Writing...

2010-01-06T05:53:00.000-08:00

…is that nothing gets written.

Do you ever have that feeling, when you’ve been working on something really hard, and you know, suddenly, when you have reached the point when you know it’s going to happen?

I arm wrestled a young relative recently. I thought for sure he would win, the first few seconds of the challenge. But I held on, and managed to get us back to an even, straight-up position. We locked into it, and I just made up my mind to hold on. I didn’t think I could win, but I was pretty sure at that point I could just stay steady. So we kept going, the laughter set aside for the moment as we gripped each other's hand intensely.

And then, somehow, I suddenly knew I was going to win. And I did – to, I will add, astonishment and laughter and a certain respect from the other guys in the room. It was all in good fun, but what an experience!

This experience of having my son doing stuff in the course of his job which, while not always dangerous, certainly has its moments, has been hard. I have struggled with fear on a daily basis. Often my first thought on waking has been of him, and the last one before sleeping. All this despite me knowing that statistically he is very safe.

So every day, I said my prayers that he would make good* decisions when needed and that other people, including the folks shooting at them, would make good decisions, so that in creating an environment where good was encouraged, it had a better chance of happening.

*Note: my personal definition of a “good” decision while engaging in conflict with another group, be it a tiny conflict or a national one:

1. that you follow the orders and procedures you have promised to follow, except where doing so would more deeply endanger the lives and safety of those you have pledged to protect

2. that you take good care of yourself as well

3. that we keep an open mind, and, when no one is in direct danger, and where no orders are being contradicted, when a decision is made, the path which offers the most good for all involved, including one’s adversaries, is chosen, whether the good be immediate or future.

4. that, wherever possible, compassion and kindness are weighed as heavily as personal gain in making the decision

I just figured that the worry would never leave me. That’s okay. I was prepared to stay locked in with it.

But two things happened: I finally got one of the newsletters sent from Louise Yeager, the Family Readiness Officer whose job is help keep up morale of families back home. Her primary service is to young husbands and wives and children of those on deployment, but moms can benefit too! The pictures of young soldiers fooling around doing Halloween stuff – dressing in costume, decorating the area with Halloween icons, etc -was hugely healing.

I always had the sense that they worked, ate, slept and got up to work again. It was so great to see them…playing.

And in talking about those pictures with Zach, just before Christmas, he gave me a huge present. He said, “Oh yeah. There’s still time for shenanigans.”

The word shenanigans has a great connotation in our family. Understanding what it means exactly is complicated, but it was a blazing lighthouse signal to me that he was really okay. That despite the physical hardship and boredom and fatigue and all that, he’s still finding ways to laugh and have fun.

That little comment broke the months-long logjam of fear in my mind - and that was that. Just like in the arm-wrestling match, a little bit later, I suddenly knew I had won the battle with fear for this deployment. I felt it deep in my body, a sense of release, of not carrying that weight any more.

I’m at peace.

I trust that Zach and his squadron will be fine and come home fine, happy, and safe in body, mind and spirit.

Fear is not nipping at my core or eroding little happy moments, any longer.

What happiness!

In the busy days of holidays and blizzards and work and deciding to paint during blizzards and the house being a mess and trying to sum up these feelings, I have procrastinated writing in this journal.

It’s been bothering me. The problem with not writing is that nothing gets written. And the longer I don’t write, the harder it is to start again.

There is so much backstory still. Stuff I can’t put into the blog that caused a lot of the fear. Close calls, danger faced, that kind of stuff. But with the fear gone, all that stuff becomes stories to hear when Zach gets home. Serious stuff...and shenanigans.

Thanks for checking in,
Katie

Ps. there is no doubt in my mind that my dear young relative is going to come back and crush me in arm wrestling next year - ! In the same way, fear of something may attack me again, and I may struggle again. But both of these contests, the small one arm-wrestling and this big one of fear-wrestling have taught me an invaluable, bone-deep experience: Just Hang On, and in so doing, you may achieve something you never thought possible.

Pps. if you too want to understand the lighthearted silliness that the word shenanigans can convey, rent a movie called Supertroopers. It’s absolute pure nonsense…but sometimes truly deep, truly giddy silliness really is a powerful antidote to the evils of boredom, meanness, and fear.

Christmas Eve

2009-12-24T04:51:00.000-08:00

Dear Zach,
Hi, love. So it's Christmas Eve for you. I imagine you coming to work and thinking about it. Slogging through cold rain to the Portapots and the showers and to the buses. Feeling far away from home.

With all of you there, I also imagine you will find a way to have fun there. Someone will do something funny or nice, and it will spread (good and bad emotions spread so quickly from person to person!) and the next thing you all will be laughing about something and it will become a Christmas funny memory you'll tell us about.

I love you! We all LOVE you!

It's just dawn here. We are all going different directions all day. Dad is getting ready to shower to go to Owings Mills to work. Gabe has an Rx checkup and a therapy appointment today. Maybe in between he'll resume dry-walling the laundry room shelves....hmm. Maybe! I have about fifteen stops to make today, as I am astonished to find that it is Christmas Eve and I am actually getting presents for your brothers (not all from Sears lol), and due to late planning I will no doubt be on the road most of the day. Ben will be working hard at catching up on his much needed sleep (seriously, he’s training to go pro), and then he has claimed Dad to go to the gym with him tonight. So just a mostly normal day. If you were here, of course, the fun-insanity would be greatly increased!

I will, among those stops, be picking up toffee apples from my friend Lisa Anne (www.theapplelady.com). Never fear, yours will be here when you get home (we can buy it then!) And my last stop will be to send you a box with vitamins and your Little Debbie Christmas Trees if they still have them in the store today.

The last plan of the day will be to go to evening services at Immanuel. From years past, we have a 50/50 shot of going or of everyone planning to go and then getting tired and about 9 pm deciding to watch Bad Santa instead.

If you feel far away tonight, feel a hug instead from all of us. Tell everybody to watch out for Santa while flying. Steer clear of Seriously Stupid Shenanigans but engage in lighthearted ones.

And no matter what, no matter where you are, the party is made by whoever is there. Have a merry, happy Christmas, Zachary.

All our love! All our love! See you soon!!!!!
big ol' hug,
Mom

Riley, On Being A Gentleman. Or GentleDawg, As It Were.

2009-12-15T12:54:00.000-08:00

Dear Zach,

You know, your mom is kind of persnickety. All Miss Manners and Emily Post and such.

I heard her making Gabe take his elbow off the table the other day and she is always making people say “me” instead of “myself” and you know she doesn’t let anybody talk about Mr. Hanky or Poop stuff or the "F" word. She says it's vulgar. (Ha Ha she can’t hear me, I said it. Fart.)

Well I think you should talk to her and tell her some stuff is just Guy Stuff and not to get her knickers in a bunch.

I mean, if a guy wants to be a guy, well he should be.

Here’s the thing: I have been practicing being a Guy. So I can hang out with you and the other guys when you get home. It is very difficult being down here on the floor on all four legs when you are all way taller than me. So I am practicing standing up.

I practice standing up all the time now! I put my paws on the kitchen counter and stretch and then I am almost as tall as Dad. I put my paws on the back of the kitchen barstools and I can get ever taller! I put my paws on the dining room chairs and I can see over Mom’s head.

Isn’t that great?!!! Aren’t you proud of me? I’m sure I’ll be walking around and doing high fives soon.

There is only one small problem with this that I have not figured out how to fix yet. Maybe you can give me some advice.

When I brace my front paws on something and stand up really tall on my back legs, there is an unfortunate little sound.. I mean, a little, um, Toot.

Okay, maybe it’s not so little. The other day I stood up and Ben got a very surprised face and said, “Did you HEAR THAT?”

And then, “Was that RILEY???!!!!!”

So what I need you to do is to tell them to just cover their ears (earmuffs) when I am getting ready to stand up and don’t act like they just heard a thunderclap or something. I mean, listen to Dad’s sneezes! Nobody says anything about them and he sounds as if he’s exploding.

Right? Right?

So please tell Mom to stop being all Miss Manners and to loosen up a little. I mean, what’s a little gas expulsion among us guys?

Love,
Your dog,
Riley

P.s. Why does Ben keep asking somebody to hold a lit match to my butt to see the jet stream? What does that mean, exactly?

Just To Remind Myself

2009-12-10T05:42:00.000-08:00

I have a literally impossible work schedule this week. A project for my church which HAS to be completed on time with no wiggle room, an editorial plan that was supposed to be turned in yesterday, a semi-favor that is expected this week, and a shop to decorate for a candlelight tour in hopes that sales will be good this weekend. And a Chanukah celebration which I am looking forward to very much because Leora’s potato latkes are just fabulous.

The teensiest bit of Whine snuck in on me while I was working at home late last night. Delightfully, Zach called us – YAY!!!! – and in just a minute, I remembered: this is The Year Of No Complaining.

He’s working the same long days I am this week…every day. It’s raining, and cold, and the portable toilets are a walk from their tents. They get shot at frequently. Schedule changes. Other stuff.

Despite that, they find time to laugh and be happy. He’s in pretty great shape, physically and emotionally.

I just got my first newsletter with pictures of the crew (problems getting them, so I missed all the first ones if there were pictures. They are decorating for the holidays, putting up strings of lights in their tents.

It helped me remember how very lucky I am to have all this work to do. Second, that I am healthy enough to do it. Third, and most importantly, that the folks I love are healthy and well so that the foundation to do all this work is in place.

So to Zach, this time, I’d like to say: thanks for checking in.
Love,
Mom

Still Here. Just Quiet.

2009-11-30T18:25:00.001-08:00

It’s been fifteen days since I wrote last.

I feel badly, in a way, for Zach, that I have to deal with so much fear over and over.

He’s pretty good. He had a tough time after the – gosh, it’s still so hard to type certain words. After what happened. For a while, flying was hard for him.

But he got better. Last week he emailed me that he was enjoying flying again. That was great to know.

Sometimes I wish I was tougher. But I’m not. I’m not tough at all. I’m a big wuss.

I’m sorry. But I promised to keep this honest.

So anyway. Cripes, I’m never at a loss for words.

The truth is, this is just hard someyimes. And that’s that.

It’s time for Courtney to text me that she got a phone call or an email. That’s a great thing I look for each day ;-)

Okay, better stuff now!

Zach sent us pictures for Thanksgiving. He and Scott took a stuffed turkey to the airfield and took silly pictures of it flying, facing down the tail gun. Chillin’ with them in the plane. I loved the photos!

He spent Thanksgiving day flying the Commandant of the Marine Corps around the country (pretty cool!). They got back long after dinner time so his Thanksgiving dinner consisted of frozen pie. Not funny, but I know he doesn’t really care about that. We’re betting the general got some turkey though!

The best news of all is that home time is on the horizon. Clock’s ticking. I think it’ll go faster and faster as we get closer.

Time to remind myself that I planned to use this experience to do good. I’ve been writing about fear a lot. Although I feel it every day, and fight it back when it comes, I feel it lifting. So there are some posts I’ve been meaning to write since the beginning. I’ll get to them soon.

To my friend WarPony who reads: thank you for the Thanksgiving hug! Wow, I appreciate that! And KathyB, your encouragement is so much appreciated. No, Zach doesn't read the blog. Sometimes I send him posts via email, but not all of them; and not the tough ones. When he gets back he can read it, I figure. To my family, to Betsy of HVFC: thank you too. Again and again and again.

Thanks for checking in,
Katie

Panic Attack

2009-11-15T00:34:00.000-08:00

This writing thing, I am just beginning to understand. It wakes me up in the middle of a perfectly good night and demands that I put down the words running through my brain and body. Literally, demands it.

So it is three in the morning. I have been awake since 2:30. It’s time to write.

I’m going to describe for you a full-fledged panic attack.

I woke from a nightmare, a ridiculous dream.

My thoughts segued to Zach. What if this dream had something to do with him? What if his plane was down? What if he’d been captured?

My heart started racing. All the awful imaginings began, the what-ifs, and it began to feel like something real.

The heart beats faster and faster and harder. Awareness of it fills your whole perception, and you breathe trying to keep up with it, knowing it is not good for you. It was overwhelming.

I did not know what to do. So I did the only thing I could do, my prayer thing: I sent pure love to him.

You can survive anything, dear heart.
Calm yourself if this is your fear I feel, my son. Take whatever you need from me. Calm strength and deep strong humor can get you through so much. Through what seems almost impossible. I know how deep you run.

My heart was beating so hard, so fast. I knew I was talking to myself as well: calm yourself, Katie. Calm strength and deep strong humor can get you through so much. Through what seems almost impossible. You can survive anything, dear heart.

This stress can kill a person. My son could be fine, and the fear of something happening to him could kill me.

This stress could kill a person if someone they loved actually was in danger. The loved one could be coping, surviving; but the ones waiting could be in mortal danger as well, from the stress of fear.

So what would you do if someone you loved actually was a prisoner of war?

You have to live your life believing that they will be okay.

I was telling myself this, and it calmed me some. I could feel my heart rate going down, but it was still racing, fighting the fear. I was putting everything I had into the contest, but at best was just holding even.

And then some being reached into my heart, and held it. Grasped it firmly.

He’s going to be okay, she told me.

I was told this several months ago. I believed it then, and I believe her now.

He is going to be okay. That belief will get you through.

And my heart suddenly calmed. I could feel her holding it firmly.

What do I do now? I asked her.

Hold up your heart’s light for anyone to see who needs it, she said.

And then she showed me. In my mind's eye, I saw/felt her reach in and take my heart. She held it up high, and it glowed in her hand. She held it like a symbol, like a torch, like something to offer.

I trust her completely.

So here you are, whoever might be reading this, worrying about someone. Believe that the person you love is going to be okay. That belief will get you through. And then hold up your heart’s light for anyone to see who needs it.

We all seem strong at times, but we are all vulnerable. I am too. Faith and fear duke it out daily on the battleground of my soul. I see them, circling like wrestlers, each watching the other carefully, trying to find the advantage, to get a hold on the other and to take it down.

But the victory is always brief; the whistle blows and a new match begins.

It is an inexorable, unstoppable part of life, this uncertainty, this grappling with fear.

So I will approach it the way I have learned to approach anything unsolvable in my life. I will unconditionally love it.

I will reach out to fear with open arms and take it close to me.

Come here, fear. Come here, you bully you meanness you deceiver. I believe that no one got to be awful because he or she was loved too much as a child. I may not be able to make you better, but I will not make you worse. I will treat you with respect and kindness and gentle honesty.

Come here, fear. Come here, you frightened child beneath the awful skin you put on to hide how vulnerable you are.

Come here, and I will hold you and love you.

Of course, I am terrified to do it. Fear can be mean and cruel. I am certainly not up to the task. But I know no other course. And I have to believe that this one will work.

At the end, I thought of the Statue of Liberty’s torch. I thought how the shape of the flame she holds aloft is much like the shape of our human hearts, if we pulled it from our chests and held them high.

It looks like what the other she was doing, holding my heart aloft, its light glowing out.

I heard the words again. Hold up your heart’s light for anyone to see who needs it.

I am just one person. But I will trust her, and not feel foolish, and hold up my light for whoever needs to see it.

The Statue of Liberty is holding her heart’s light high up, for anyone who needs to see it. I pulled up pictures of her on google.

She looks serious. This is serious work, this fighting of fear. But she looks determined and calm.

I will think of her. I will think of what she stands for, a symbol of our American struggle for independence from the lack of freedom and choice. I will think of her holding her light up high for anyone who needs to see it.

Hold up your heart’s light for anyone who wants to see it.

Good night, Zach. We look for you to come home safe. And now it is time for me to go back to sleep.

love,
Mom

Thanks for checking in,
Katie

Letter To Zach From Riley

2009-11-10T06:31:00.000-08:00

One December, Riley arrived at our house. Riley is a big young Weimeraner. He's Zach's dog, and he'll be living with us while Zach is in the Marines.

think bouncy, like Tigger. And then add Extremely Very Bouncy Lived With Marines And Is A Big Goofball.

Every now and then, Riley writes Zach a letter to tell him what it's like living at Camp Home. He gets in trouble a lot and it makes him feel better to complain about how unfair it is in a letter to Zach.

This is his most recent one.

Dear Zach,

Well, something remarkable has happened. Something truly wonderful!

Someone besides me is in trouble!

It is always me who is In Trouble. I have to tell you, it is just wonderful to hear Mom mad at somebody besides me.

Now, Really Perfect would be if The Little Cat got in trouble! I mean, Mom dotes on The Little Cat as if it was her baby. But no, that thing is never going to be in trouble. No.

And I don’t care if the Big Cat ever gets in trouble. I mean, that thing is almost like a dog itself. It is massive. And it’s not all cat-persnickety.

And it’s not me. I already told you that.
So have you guessed? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s Amy.

Now, you know Amy and I get along pretty good most of the time. But sometimes she annoys me.

I mean, she does her stupid little Trick and everybody goes on and on about what a cute little beagle she is. So I have to knock her over. Then I get yelled at for being too big and too bouncy and too rough.

And, okay, sometimes I do Bounce her and knock her down just for the fun of it. But honestly, it’s not because I’m jealous of the attention she gets.

Not exactly.

But anyway, I’m just delighted that SHE got in touble today instead of ME! It’s ALWAYS me! And this time it’s AMY! And it’s the worst kind of trouble.

You know Mom hates poop. Hates it.

Especially, especially dog poop. She absolutely cannot STAND the smell of it.

I’m laughing already telling you about this.

Two nights ago Mom was turning on the lights and looking furiously all over her bedroom in the middle of the night. She had been sleeping and had woken up, as she was saying, to the “horrific smell of dog poop in my bedroom”.

Apparently Mom’s nose is pretty good. Because she found a pile of poop right on the floor next to her bed. ON HER SOCK.

Oh, she was mad. She was SO Mad. Amy must have gotten up, took a dump on her carpet, and then trotted into the bathroom to get a drink.

Mom was so gagging she had to wake up Dad to clean it up. She tried, I’ll give her that. But it was pretty bad.

Then they went back to bed. And I was all pleased. I laughed to myself over and over because Mom was mad at Amy all the next day.

But
It
Gets
Even
Better.

It gets SO much better.

This morning, Mom was getting dressed and I heard her say
…wait for it….
….wait for it…

“Why is my heel all black?”

Then there was a little quiet moment and she picked at it... and then

She started making The Noise Mom Makes When She Is Absolutely Repulsed.

Mixed in with cuss words at Amy.

She had dog poop on her foot. She must have stepped on it when she woke up. And then went back to bed and didn’t even notice.

THEN it got EVEN BETTER!

Mom called Dad and was telling him how upset she was that she had dried dog poop on her foot, and while she was on the phone, she said that she remembered that when she went back to bed that night, she had kept feeling something wet on her sheets.

She said she thought she had stepped in the wet clean rug, and that’s what the wet was.
…wait for it again….

And while she was on the phone with Dad, she pulled back the sheets and saw that SHE HAD LITTLE BITS OF DOG POOP ON HER CLEAN WHITE SHEETS WHERE HER FEET GO.

Isn’t that wonderful? !!! Do you see why this is So Very Good?

I mean, she NEVER lets me sleep on the bed. Never. “No dogs in my bed!” How many times have you heard her say that?

But Amy got poop IN her bed. In it. On her sheets. And on her foot.

That’s just money, my man.

I can do almost anything, and she’ll forgive me in a day or two.
But Amy is going to be In Trouble For Life.

For LIFE, I tell you!

I’m so glad I didn’t do that.

Love,
Your dog,
Riley

Welcome Back, Peace Of Mind

2009-11-04T05:59:00.000-08:00

When I’m not posting here, it’s one of two reasons:
Swamped…or I don’t want to be dithering on and on again.

The news last Monday of the helicopters that crashed in Afghanistan took a lot out of me, writing-wise, for a little while. I had been driving back home late the night before, and I was thinking about Zach.

It’s true that moments of worry hit me, despite my general determination that worry is of no use, and that he is likely to be fine. I have my ways of dealing with them so that they pass.

But this mood was a little different. Something felt wrong. I worried that my instincts were in active mode. I remember thinking to myself “am I going to have to write AGAIN, ANOTHER post, about fear?”

And I remember thinking to myself how stupid I must look sometimes, always focusing on “WHAT IF” drama, worrying unnecessarily. They’re safe, I told myself. You don’t have to keep doing this to yourself.

Kathy Wilt woke me up to tell me about what was on the news. We agreed to start trying to find out whatever we could.

Here is how human nature works.

Our concern…or is it our fear?...spreads out like a ripple from our core.
It must be some kind of instinct, some drive to survive. Because the first thought is Let it not be mine who is hurt.

And then with a little hope, your heart has a little generosity, and it says let it not be ours that got hurt.

And the awful thing is that the whole time you are hoping and praying it’s not your loved one especially, and then not his friends, and then not his squadron…

You know it’s somebody.
It’s an awful truth that can’t be made better.

In addition to the worry about who it was last Monday, and the worry about Zach, about Scott, their squadron, and whoever it was that would bear it,

there was a weird little sense of vindication in me. Of, see…you were right to worry.

I was going to write this last Tuesday. But I’m glad I waited a week.
Because now I know who that voice was, saying that.

Hello, again, Fear.

Fear is almost an embodiment to me. I can talk to it when I’m not afraid. I give it a name so folks know who/what it is I’m talking about. Some might say hello, Satan…there you are again. Or maybe hello, Mara the Tempter.

I believe that fear is the root of all evil. So I just call it the simple name. easier to understand. Harder to misinterpret.

As I write this, Amelia Buttercup, my little cat, is curled up in my lap. Amelia Buttercup is the antithesis of evil. She is the most loving little creature. Love comforts us and makes us strong.

Of all the animals I have known across the years, Amelia Buttercup is unique in how dearly she loves. I wrote a children’s book about her, and I am hoping to get an agent for it soon.

In fact, what I really want is for Candlewick Press to publish it. They do many of the finest children’s classics, and I want the stories about her to reach a lot
of children. Her love can go even farther that way.

So if you know somebody at Candlewick Press, please let me know.

Know why I’m talking about that here? Me neither. But I think it’s just another way of me saying to fear, hey, buddy…wait your turn. You’re not that important to me.

Back to last Monday. Anyway, this little voice was saying, see! See! You SHOULD worry!

And last week, I believed it.

Fear almost got me roped in again.

But I’m back! Because not too many moments ago, I finally translated what it was saying to me, and here it is, unpackaged by the moment.

Translation: you should live your life in anticipation of bad things happening. You should always be on guard, expecting it.

Oh, Hell, no.

Read that sentence again. Literally. Oh, Hell…no, I am not going to give in to your temptations.

When we talked to Zach after the news, he said, with tremendous frustration in his voice, “I don’t know how those two helicopters could have collided. I just don’t understand it.” He knows the formations they fly, and the precautions.

So I am back to not fearing.

Now: I promised myself that I would be completely honest in writing this blog, unless it compromised the security of the men and women working over there.

Here’s a truth.

Zach’s helicopter was involved in a crash landing a few weeks ago. But good training kicked in, everyone stayed calm, and they landed safely in a textbook demonstration of handling that particular incident. Helicopter repaired, they flew home.

I don’t feel ready to put anything more than that in here just yet.

I don’t think Zach and I have the same views on how Afghanistan should be handled right now. He is over there right in it regularly, and I have the luxury of the mile-high view. I have to completely respect his opinions, while keeping working on my own.

All I know is that he loves the packages we all (you all!) have been sending. Little gifts of healthy food have mattered a lot. I think little things to distract them and give them humor have helped.

There are so many thoughts. The timeline of when they come back is fuzzy to me. I feel bad for National Guard soldiers, who go for a far longer timeline. The desire for all of them to come back safe regularly fills our thoughts.

And the mom advice. My emails seem to hardly ever get through, but I want to say to him if you have an approaching date, it will chafe at you as it gets closer. Don’t look at the whole thing that needs to be done or it gets harder. When you are climbing a mountain, do not look at the whole rise above you, or it will defeat you. Look at your path right now, right this second, and do that. Never look at the hill.

So stop looking at the calendar. Look at today.

I think that is good advice for me, too.

I have good things to do today. I hope you do too.

Thanks for checking in,
Katie

Dear President Obama: No Drama Decisions

2009-10-26T15:53:00.000-07:00

I am the mother of a U.S. Marine who flies as part of a helicopter crew in southern Helmand Province. You can imagine that this morning was a tense one for us, as we wondered.

It was not aided by news of the riot in Kabul. And as I watched the news footage, I thought of you and your upcoming decision.

I hope that you will let me share my thoughts with you.

Although I have emotions just like any human being, I run my decisions on logic and data.

First: despite the drama and pain of today’s loss, I remind myself that there have been hundreds, thousands of helicopter flights which have taken off and landed safely. The few dangerous incidents that happen cannot be allowed to override the vast majority of safely executed missions.

Second, I would not let Americans who get worked up about the riot in Kabul (perhaps thinking that “they” want us out so we should get out) influence my decision either. A thousand students protesting in Kabul is just that: people expressing their feelings. They have a right. Even if they were manipulated into doing it. That doesn't mean it should drive your decision.

While students express their opinions with more passion and volatility than many older people…let us not forget that students in Kabul may be influenced by forces not felt by elsewhere in the world. People in Afghanistan live side by side with Taliban believers, and their actions may therefore be more vulnerable to family members or themselves being in threatened.

This is not to say that I disrespect their right to voice the opinions they are expressing. As an American who believes in free speech, I support their right to express their opinion. If someone burned a bible, lots of folks in these parts would be upset - even if it wasn't true.

This is also not to say that I don’t believe they mean their protests. For heaven’s sake…Americans have hurt one another over their political and religious differences! Some Americans feel passionately that you’re doing a bad job. So I wouldn’t worry about another group having that opinion.

The truth is, Mr. President, that I don’t believe that you (or Mrs. Obama, who I admire) have ever done things because someone told you to. I believe you are one of those rare individuals who have the strength of their convictions and are not afraid to make decisions based on your personal popularity. And while I know you are a Democrat, and therefore have party loyalties - and obligations? - I do not believe that you succumb to that terribly dangerous partisanship of ‘party first’ – that too many elected officials practice, which is insidious at tearing away the work that good people try to do.

I believe that you will make your decision based on what you truly believe is the best thing for our country, our soldiers, and the peace of the world...not based on how it would affect your ability to be re-elected.

So, President Obama, while you grieve at the crashes of today, as you do every day we lose a soldier...do not let the painful drama of today overwhelm the data and logic of your best advisors. Listen to all of them. Develop a strategy that will accomplish good work in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, and other places in the world.

And do not fear.

Do not make your decisions based on fear.

When my son said he was joining the Marines, I cried. Now, there, he is proud of helping both American and NATO soldiers, the Afghan people to whom he has delivered grain, and the Afghan soldiers with whom he has flown.

Am I scared? Sure. Every day. And every day, I remind myself to choose not to give in to that.

President Obama, you came into office during one of the two worst financial disasters our country has ever faced, with health care looming as a disaster both financially and management-wise right behind that.

At the end of this term in office, you’re facing the 12/21/2012 predictions. I think it’s hogwash; but I’d be planning some major craziness-control to deal with the folks who decide to use that date for their personal agendas.

I mean…really. Dude; with those bookends, you might as well just do what you want. I mean, you’ve got so much stacked against you that you might as well throw away the memo about how to protect your reputation, and just be strong.

You’ve just got to do your job. No matter what you do, half the country will oppose it.

You’re not perfect. But I believe you’re intelligent enough and responsible enough and caring enough - and courageous enough - to find the best possible course through this.

You’re welcome to read the blog I wrote on October 16 on www.afghanistantourofduty.blogspot.com to see my thoughts on increasing troops. Just do it with wise strategy. I believe you will.

I think that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda must not be allowed to run the world through fear. Don’t you be afraid to do what you believe should be done. Ever.

I don't think you will.

Our hearts and prayers to the people who lost someone they love.

Sincerely,
Katie Aiken Ritter

CBS News

2009-10-16T18:34:00.000-07:00

I meant to watch Katie Couric’s coverage on CBS during this week. Entitled Afghanistan: The Road Ahead, it’s a series of pieces about the goals in Afghanistan, the ways they are being approached, and the frustrations of the work.

I only got to watch one episode – so I’m looking it all up via Google. Please take the time. Oh, I hope people watched it. I talked with a friend after seeing the 60 Minutes coverage on Sunday the 11th. We had completely different takes on “what should be done”. But at least we were talking about it.

It’s too easy to forget about it.

What happens if we forget about it?

What happens if we go away, as a government? If we say, well, we can’t beat the Taliban, and we have no business being in this other country…what happens if we pack up and go away?

Well, let’s think.

1. The Taliban will open champagne bottles. Actually, they don’t drink alcoholic beverages. But they’ll celebrate. They will dance and sing and talk about how they kicked America’s ass.

2. Then they’ll regroup.

3. Remember 9/11? Oh yeah. That was the Taliban, coming from Afghanistan training bases.

And if you think planes crashing into buildings is, well, passé, they’ve got plenty of other ideas.

From http://www.blogger.com/www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/15/eveningnews/main5386052.shtml?tag=cbsnewsMainColumnArea

"I lost my leg," 11-year-old Eidullah says, "I'm angry because we were not guilty of anything."

Eidullah was asked by the Taliban to deliver a fruit basket to a local commander who was cooperating with U.S. forces. Hidden in the basket was a bomb. However, the commander wasn't hurt because the bomb exploded prematurely -- maiming Eidullah and injuring his eight friends.

Some of their lives were saved by American surgeons at a nearby military hospital. Doctors say they are seeing more children involved in bombings.

"It shows the lengths that al Qaeda will go to and the indifference that they have to these pure kids," said Lt. Col. Benjamin Kam, an orthopedic surgeon.

The children recruited by the Taliban and al Qaeda are often willingly sent to the terror camps by their parents. The promise of free food, shelter and education for their sons is too difficult to turn down.

But the children who were tricked face a lifetime of painful procedures to treat their wounds.

Nine-year-old Mohammad had a nerve in his leg severed in the blast.

"Unfortunately he will lose function in this section of his leg. He'll eventually have to have it amputated," said Dr. Scott Russi, chief of surgery at Shamrock Combat Hospital.

Out of the nine children injured, two lost limbs, one lost sight. All of their lives will be forever altered.

Eleven-year-old Bachmaner was one of the lucky ones. He only suffered a broken leg. He wishes he could go back to his old life. "We all used to play soccer," he says, "now we can't walk without pain."

It's not childhood games that Eidullah is worried about now. His father is blind and as the oldest son, tradition demands that he take care of his family. Now, he doubts he can.

He, like hundreds of other children, are caught up in a war they had no expectation of fighting.
When we spoke with Zach not long ago, they were working, among other things, on delivering sacks of grain to the Afghan people.

Hungry people do desperate things. See in Red above.

How many of us here in our country ever, ever have had to think about having to give up a child just so he can eat?
I couldn’t even bear to think of them going to sleep-over camp.

Okay, I don’t care what people believe or what their religious beliefs are or what their political views are. They should not have to give up their children to terrorists so their kids can eat.

No.

And if it’s the Taliban keeping them growing poppies to sell heroin to our kids, and not letting them grow crops to feed their kids…um…well, we need to stop that.

For our kids, so they won’t get addicted to stuff that will ruin our families here at home.
For their kids, so they will be able to live a little kid’s life. And play soccer.

Winning, war, politics, Dems, Republicans….The Bush/Cheney legacy, Obama’s campaign, McCrystal’s strategy….I have to think of this in the way I think of everything:

That imaginary tattoo on my left forearm.

Treat other people the way you would want to be treated.

If I couldn’t grow food for my kids because I had to grow poppies for somebody who was holding our village in fear, I would want some help.

I might ‘hate’ an occupying army…but like they say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
I would want somebody strong enough to help me get free of the hunger and the fear and the oppression.
I would want somebody smart. Because the more I trusted them, the more at risk my family would be. So I’d really, really need them to be smart enough to come out on top.
I would be afraid to trust them. Because what if they didn’t? What if they left? What would happen to me and my family? It’s happened the last eight years. They don’t know the American president, and many of the American people are wanting less troops, not more. So yeah, I’d be afraid to trust.

I can’t believe I am in the position of saying something I never, ever, ever thought I would say.

What can we possibly say that will erase the fact that we focused on Iraq and let the Taliban grow strong there?

We can’t say anything. We can only do.

We need to do what we need to do. We don’t need to tell them who should run in their election. We don’t need to tell them what to believe, what to eat, how to raise their children.

But we need to make sure they are not hungry, and not afraid.

Fear is a terrible, powerful force. Let us not be afraid to face it down.

With love, patience, respect, hard work. And generosity.

Plant that, consistently, and watch it grow.

Just my opinion. Kudos to HMH-463 and all the men and women over in camp there. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your hard work, your good spirits under pressure, and just for volunteering in the first place.

Thanks for checking in,
Katie

A Birthday Treat.

2009-10-11T09:23:00.000-07:00

We're on a family weekend. It's the one place I really want to go each year, my birthday trip to the Virginia mountains.

Next year, we really want so much to be all together. Up there, laughing, the guys throwing acorns at each other, arguing with me about hiking. Happy.
To paraphrase a saying from Passover:

Next year, in Virginia.

Thanks for checking in,
Katie.

Fear, Revisited: The Other Tattoo (on my left forearm)

2009-10-06T03:31:00.000-07:00

I’m really having trouble with some of what I wrote yesterday, for three reasons.

1. I think I may be a hypocrite
2. I worry what reactions my honesty about what I think causes in others
3. The accident that happened while I was writing it

Last things first.

Monday morning, right while I was writing yesterday’s blog post, a 911 alert went out about an accident that had just happened a mile away from my house.

A mile, here, is close. We live in a very rural area. A mile in the city isn’t in your neighborhood. A mile here, at the intersection where it happened, means that a neighbor was hurt.

My husband Mark, who is an EMT, went out knowing that he could get there minutes before the fire truck, to be of whatever assistance he could in that little time. Pressure on a bleed. Traffic control. Reassurance. You never know.

Timothy Wheatley, father of three, waa killed when his Honda Civic was broadsided by a UPS truck. His little girl in the car had to go to shock trauma in critical condition.

There is a report by an eyewitness that indicates the UPS driver may have run the red light. But why?

And that brings me to item 2. I really care about not doing any damage of any kind to the people of HMH-463.

I cannot imagine what it is like to be them, living away from home in the conditions I have described. Add a lot of testosterone on overflow – there’s no place to really blow it off the way men can here at home – and all kinds of things can happen. Two of them are ridiculously funny humor…and anger.

I worry, in the little worry factory of my brain, that something I say will be distressing to an HMH-463 friend or family member who reads this blog, and somehow that will translate into a bad experience for the men and women over there.

We’re all human beings. We humans have the best of intentions on our good days, and we’re nasty on our bad days. The same people who would risk life and limb to save someone will also blow little things out of proportion, and take offense when we shouldn’t, and read emails the wrong way. I do it just like everybody else.

So, in this journal, do I tell the truth…and the whole truth...or do I keep some of my thoughts and opinions to myself?

Do I talk about my beliefs about how God does or doesn’t protect people? Maybe some of us need that belief every single day to get them through. Maybe I don’t need to say something that might challenge their feelings. It’s my blog, I know, and I can write whatever I want, and people can either argue with me (and post it, right there on the blog, if you want) or just stop reading…but I’ve never been one to not care what others think or feel.

So how do I be honest to the task of recording our family’s experience of this deployment? What goes in…and what thoughts are kept silent?

Not an easy choice.

Not an easy choice.

What can we at home here do that will protect them most in the end?

We’re not over there. We can’t see. We only get little bits of information, filtered through short phone calls and each person’s perspective. But if one of them has a worry about a girlfriend back home, or has a fight with his wife, or money troubles on the mind, or an argument with a co-worker…how’s it affect the unit?

I don’t think that what I say could upset anyone…but you never know. And as far as I’m concerned, all the folks who care about HMH-463 are one big family. We all want ALL of them home safely.

And the folks at home, all of us dads and moms and wives and husbands and fiancés and kids and grandparents and brothers and sisters and grandparents, and girlfriends and aunts, uncles, cousins, friends…the whole shebang of us…well, we’re all connected. We all have this shared hope. I want to support that, share they’re okay information with folks who don’t get regular calls, lighten the load, whatever. Connect with each other in this shared experience.

Timothy Wheatley. The UPS truck. What happened?

Maybe the driver saw the red light. Maybe he hit his brakes. Maybe the truck didn’t stop.

I woke at 3 am today, worrying about brakes and mechanical stuff and praying.

Do the mechs at 463 know how important they are? How treasured?
Do the pilots?
Do the cooks?
Does the guy who cleans the toilets?

Because in the dark hours of the night when I wake up and worry, I love the team that keeps each other safe. You want your loved one home. The people who run the kitchens, may they do it with pride in their work, so that our loved ones have that small comfort of good food. The pilots and crew chiefs and AOs who crew the planes, may they do the best they can, so the flights with their precious cargo of humans and comfort and supplies get where they need to go.

And the mechs. I think I love them the most, and have the whole time my son has been at his job.

I don’t know that the mechs get a lot of recognition or notice…but I want to say on behalf of the home team listed above…we know.

Those of you who make sure those crazy birds can fly safe…thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for every bolt tightened, every belt tested and replaced, every fluid topped off. Thanks for making sure that baby works like a charm.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I pray you keep doing that job well. Your work is incredibly important to us.

And now, to item 1.
I’m a hypocrite. Because even though I talk out loud about what I believe and what I don’t…I still pray.

Maybe the biggest difference between me and another is not what we believe, but how we believe.

I believe that by asking questions and testing ideas and thinking, we can sift the wheat from the chaff, the good ideas from the stuff that’s been tacked onto it later, and come closer to the Central Stuff that is at the core of our humanity, the divine spirit that makes us instinctively try to do good.

Some folks just believe.

That’s their way. It sure would be more relaxing than this 4 am thinking, but this is the spirit the good Lord gave me, so I figure I have to work with what I’ve got.

But what matters is maybe not how we go about doing good, but simply that we’re all trying in our own way to do a little bit of good in the world.

Treat other people the way we want to be treated.

In case you’re wondering, that would be the matching tattoo on my other forearm. Pretty? No. But wouldn't it be a good reminder, every day, to remind us of how we could take care of each other?

Thanks for checking in,
Katie

Arrgh! I Might Have To Get The Tattoo After All.

2009-10-05T05:38:00.000-07:00

I promised myself to be honest with this blog. Not to worry about who was reading it and why, but to just honestly record for our family and for myself what the experience of having our son in Afghanistan was like.

So, here goes…again.
I’m scared.

Again.

Dammit, I get so mad at myself. Because it’s unnecessary!
I’m not scared because Zach is in some great danger.
I’m scared because I’m inclined to fear.
Yep; a little kid would call me a scared-y cat.

A scared-y cat is afraid to touch the things other kids would touch. Afraid of stupid stuff. Well, I have been afraid of things my whole life. I keep thinking I’ll beat fear, finally; but it keeps coming back in a different form. I'm always scared of something.

So, I’m saying to you, Fear…let’s tango again.

I wrote this blog several weeks ago, and life was really busy, and a couple of days passed by and I didn’t get it up, and then it was out of sequence, and it sat on my computer. And I thought, oh, I won’t have to post this one. I’ve gotten my fear under control.

Well, I woke this morning, counting hours again, and realized, no…it’s getting ahold of me again. So it’s time to put this one up.

Dammit.

Dammit, damn it, damn it.

…counting hours? That means I take whatever shift Zach is working and, even though he hasn’t told any of us the hours of the shifts, Courtney and I have each tried to guess what time they start and stop. (We had very different ideas!) So I count the hours forward from Eastern Standard Time to their time, and if I think his shift is over, I feel better.

Here’s why this is stupid:

1. He could have died from the freakin’ appendicitis, for God’s sake, had it ruptured during one of the long flights over to Afghanistan.

2. Him being finished flying doesn’t mean I know anything about how that day went. I only really know he’s fine when he calls us or Court texts me.

3. Gabe's accident, the writing below, and the death here of one of Zach’s classmates last week tell me regularly that he’s just as safe there, maybe safer, than folks here.

So here’s the post I wrote earlier. I’ll add the rest to the end.

I’m feeling reckless this morning, and I want to take it on.

Fear, that is.

When we tell someone our son is serving in Afghanistan, they get a horrified look and say, “Oh, I’m sorry.”

Well, I’m not.

I’m not sorry, because I was not afraid when he left. I got my act together for that, and now, I deal with fear if and when it comes up, and I am not afraid because I decided it was stupid and wrong and bad and wasteful to be afraid.

People say "I’m so sorry” because to them, Afghanistan means The Possibility Of Bad Things. Well, of course there is the possibility of bad things happening there, especially to soldiers who are serving on the ground and exposed to IEDs.

The days we don’t hear from Zach, it’s usually because communications have been shut down because someone has been hurt or has been killed and their family members are being notified.

The three ugliest parts of war are loss of life, loss of wholeness, and torture. Unfortunately the human race seems to be hard-wired to go to war. But that does not mean we have to accept it or ignore it.

But listen. It’s not all bad over there...and it’s not all good over here.

On Friday, my husband went to the funeral of a co-worker’s son. Heartbreaking.

He wasn’t in Afghanistan.

He was in Arizona.
He was just a kid who got caught up in things that hurt him.

There is risk everywhere. Sometimes people here are in more danger (uh, see recent posts!) than our soldiers there. Plus, our people over there are so well trained. So strong. So capable. So good. They are. They really are.

So, I see it differently. I choose to see that Afghanistan means opportunity: learning, horizons widening, new friends, trusting in yourself, growing as a person, appreciation for home, appreciation of another culture.

To me, the most beautiful word in the English language to me is possibility. And in Afghanistan, there is so much for them to see and learn and experience that is good.

This is not to diminish one iota the frustration, the stress, the danger, the heat and cold, the privation, the loneliness, the longing for home and the hard work that our people in uniform have to manage every day.

But they working so hard, trying to do good there. And they are justifiably proud of their work. They will come back here stronger than before, in every way.

The possibilities for good happening to each of them is significantly better than the possibilities of bad happening.

Let us offer compassion that is deep and warmth and healing to those families who have had to bear a death or a traumatic injury. Let us be strong for them, and let us help them to celebrate life again, and the possibility of all the wonderful things that did happen, and should have happened for their loved ones, and can still happen in their hearts and for ours.

Possibility. Celebrate life.

And that was the end of that blog.

I thought when I wrote it that I had put fear to bed. Silly, silly girl!

Now, I am starting to wake up and regularly hear in my head Bill Murray in the old stupid movie Stripes bawling "Blowed Up, Sir!" in response to his leader’s question about a squadmate.

And I get angry. I get angry because I feel the fear slipping in. I start to have ugly images in my mind that I do not want, that are not necessary, that are not connected to the likelihood of things happening. Images created by fear to serve itself only. They do not improve my life in one way – so they are not of value to me. More importantly, they do not keep Zach safer in any way – so they are of no value to him. And if they are of no value to any of us…that means they are TRASH...so why am I allowing them to live in my mind?

I don’t have an answer for the question. But I’m sure as hell going to put it out there for others to think about as well:

IF FEAR IS TRASH, IF IT OFFERS NOTHING OF VALUE TO US...WHY DO WE REGULARLY WELCOME IT INTO THE BEST PLACES OF OUR HEART, WHERE IT POISONS OUR LIVES?

Take that, Fear.
We’re on to your game.

You trick us into thinking you’re helping us… but you’re not. You don’t keep my son safe.

His machinery operating correctly, and good training, and his presence of mind and great co-workers, and a great ground crew, and the kindness of other people, Afghan and otherwise, and good weather and good luck – all these things keep him safe.

Note to my Christian friends who read this blog: you may say, hey, something’s missing from that list…! While I deeply respect the goodness of all religions, and I’m deeply reverent myself of Jesus’ teachings, Jesus never promised his disciples that faith in God or His ways would protect them against physical harm. In fact, most of them came to pretty terrible ends.

So, while I regularly pray for Zach’s and Scott’s safety, and for the whole squadron (and okay, for the whole world to live in peace and safety)…please, in the forgiveness that Jesus specifically requires of us, forgive me for not listing God on that keeping-them-safe list.

To me, it seems exceptionally disrespectful of those who have had to live through the death or traumatic injury to their loved one to somehow imply that God was okay with ignoring their prayers.

Nope. I don’t believe that. I believe that one of the things on the list above didn’t happen right, and I don’t for one instant believe that God caused that because of some “everything happens for a reason” intention.

Note to self: read Bad Things Happen To Good People soon, and Lewis Carroll’s The Problem With Pain, to see what they say.

Back to this writing.

I’m feeling really cocky and reckless now. I took on Fear, and dude, for now, I’m winning again.

Take that again, Fear. I’m not inviting you into the living room of my mind any more.

You snuck in again, lying to me that you were somehow protecting me, and I stupidly believed you again, and now here you are, talking trash and stinking up the place and making me feel bad and putting those terrible, terrible images into my head, and meanwhile telling me how you’re protecting me and I should feel you more often….

…well, no. NO.

You don’t keep me safe.
You don’t keep Zach or any of our men and women safe.
You don’t keep the folks here at home safe.

You tell me that you take care of me...but you hurt me.
You’re an abusive liar.

Get out of my head and my heart.
Get out of my home.

FUCK you.
(um, hey Mom…sorry for the language.)

Here’s what we’re going to do, Fear. We’re going to do the OPPOSITE of what you recommend we do. Instead of reverencing you, and letting you control us, …we’re going to be happy. Recklessly happy! Unfearfully happy! Unafraid! We’re going to choose life and celebration and possibility. We're not going to spend any time listening to you and worrying.

Because the truth is, fear diminishes life and destroys it. Fear takes away moments of gladness-now with threats of sadness-then. Fear tells lies about the odds.

Life is creation and creativity. Life IS celebration of what-can-be, and possibility.

Even in death.

This starts getting to the heart of celebrating even in the presence of death.
Not celebrating the pain of it; no: but celebrating the existence of the life that gave birth to love so great that it causes us pain to lose any of it. Celebrating the possibility of coming to full life again, and feeling happiness again, and celebrating again.

That is at the very, very core of choosing life over fear. Choosing faith in all the good things of life over how fear tries to take them away from us.

That, I think, was one of the things at the heart of Jesus’ teachings, as well as so many others. I’ll go on and on some other time about how Jesus chose kindness over rule-keeping, or chose inclusion over exclusion. These are the parts of the message that appeal to me. So I work on them.

There are other parts of the universe for which I have no answers: real evil, and what we do with it. Why Creation seems to require an equal balance of destruction. Still working on those bits.

Anyway, this has been a long post, and I thank you for your indulgence if you are reading it. Thank you for your understanding. Thank you for your thoughts in reply, whether you agree with me or not.

Thank you most of all for maybe standing with me and looking at how Fear tells lies to you, and maybe throwing it out of your house for a bit, too.

Your decision will help me get stronger. We’ll help each other.

And now, the tattoo:

I got a tattoo when Zach left (another story). I told him there was the possibility of me getting another one.

Think of kids taking a test, and writing the answers on their hand where they could surreptitiously look at it if they were in trouble during the test.

Knowing myself and my susceptibility to fear, I told Zach that if it got too hard for me during his deployment, if I started succumbing and feeling fearful, I was going to get the answer to the Test Of Life written on my forearm, where I could look at it if things got tough.

A tattoo:
Choose Faith Over Fear.

Oh yeah! That’s the answer! Now I remember!

Okay, I’ll do what I wrote on my arm. I'll choose faith over fear.

Faith that everything CAN and USUALLY DOES work out just fine. Faith in goodness. Faith in kindness. Faith in picturing all the good things that could be happening, right this minute.

Let’s forget Bill Murray and the stupid movie line. Forget drama. Forget stupid fear. Invite a good, happy picture into your mind of your loved one. For me, Zach’s in the dining hall eating dinner. I picture him laughing and talking to the folks he’s eating with. Making jokes as he bitches about something. Feeling good about being healthy and working hard. Feeling proud, deep inside, of what it feels like to hand off bags of grain to the Afghan people, or bring mail from home to the soldiers in the forward operating bases. Feeling proud of whatever work it was he did that day, the big bits and the small bits.

I picture him content. He tells us over and over how much he enjoys his work there.

Good. Good, good, good. Good to all. Let’s be good to all. That, bit by bit, may actually help keep our loved ones safe in countless little and big ways.

Thanks to those of you who also struggle with fear for your honesty and courage in facing it and fighting it.

And thanks for checking in. I may be at the tattoo parlor when you read this.

Smiling,
Katie

Comforting Sounds

2009-10-03T05:25:00.001-07:00

I often clean the kitchen late in the evening. Never particularly strong in the homemaker department, I seem to get organized later rather than earlier, and well…that’s just how it is.

I used to worry that the noise of clinking of crockery (crockery, isn’t that a great word?!) and the banging of pots and pans would wake my children as they were falling asleep…back in the days when they went to bed before I did. I didn’t want to make so much noise, and I felt a little bit like a bad mother.

One day Zach told me that he loved the sound of me cleaning up the kitchen. He would lay in his bed and hear the noises of dishes and running water…and it comforted him. He was home, in his bed, Mom was downstairs working, and all was right with the world.

Certain sounds can mean so much. ‘

During this deployment, Ben misses his brother Zach so much. Gabe misses him too, but Gabe is steadier, less emotional. But Ben and Zach are like twins born five years apart, and the strain of not talking to Zach was mounting up in Ben.

Now…Ben never answers his phone. As in, N-E-V-E-R. And Zach has small windows of time he is able to call, and sometimes it takes ten or fifteen minutes to get a line thru. Our house phone is VOIP, and will often not ring when a call comes through – it goes straight to voice mail, and we don't even know someone called when we're sitting right there.

So our phone protocol with Zach is Call Mom’s Phone First. I have it with me always, and I will answer it any time of the day or night. I can be awake in a flash.

But I told Ben to watch his phone, because I’d asked Zach to call him and catch up.

One morning not long after, Zach called us. He’d tried Ben already earlier, but Ben was sleeping over at a friend’s house, and of course did not hear his phone ring, or answer it. Zach told us he had tried, and had left a message for him.

We were all taking turns talking at home, and I heard Ben come in. I met him at the door with the phone, so happy he would not miss talking to his brother…and saw tears streaming down his face.

He had heard the voicemail, and his heart was breaking with the need to talk together with his brother.

Which he got to do! I’m so very grateful that he came home when he did, rather than five minutes later. It just worked out. They had a blissful, long ten minutes or so. It helped immensely.

What is it about the sound of a particular human voice that we need to hear SO MUCH, and hearing it soothes our heart so much?

What is it about that particular vibration coming over the phone lines, creating a matching vibration in our little ear bones, traveling the nerve synapses to the part of our brain that recognizes it and translates it to concepts, ideas, words, and those somehow traveling on to our heart…how does that sound create something that soothes us so?

I don’t know what complex mix of brain chemistry and physical energy takes place. I only know that a kind of magic happened. Brothers connected. Everything got better.

There is no medicine like the sound of a loved one’s voice. Thank goodness for telephones, and a HUGE, HUGE thank you to the United States companies that sponsor free calls for our men and women on deployment.

Thanks for checking in,
Katie

I (don't) Love The Smell Of PooBurning In The Morning

2009-09-30T05:33:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning, hometown USA:

People stretching, someone up early, dishes making noise, cupboards slamming, rolling over, thinking no, I'm too tired stretching more, and then that smell, that irresistable smell, that oh, it's not healthy but DAMN that smells good I better get up or I won't get any, the smell of fat and plenty and harvest time wakes you up for real.

It's like the smell of hot buttered popcorn; bad for you, but irresistable.

Wafting up. Teasing you out of bed. Seducing you away from your partner, the Healthy Diet.

Bacon sizzling in the pan. Oh...My...Gosh.

Smell it. It's wonderful. Fat and intoxicating. Your butt can grow just breathing it in, it's so rich.

Zach, waking up for work, half-asleep, dreaming of home, breathing in deep, deeper, smelling that rich fragrance of his dreams.

Oh, wait.

That's not bacon.

What the hell is THAT???!!!

That's AWFUL!

Cue the sound track banjos screeching to a halt, lights up, eyes startling open. What the hell IS that???"

That, dear soldier, is the smell of last night's spaghetti dinner, processed hour by hour through the digestive tract, garlic bread and salad and the brownie and intestinal gas pooped out into the portable toilets,

...being burned.

Oh,yeah it is.

Times several thousand soldiers.

Every....single....day.

Can you imagine how that must smell?

Zach told me that one of the things he fantasizes about having when he gets back home is a clean, shining white porcelain seat with a lovely nickle-plated flush handle. The sound of water, swishing through pipes. A vent fan.

Not the rows of portable toilets lined up, baking in the sweltering desert sun, which he swears get emptied and cleaned once every week...or so...whether they need it or not.

Oh, my gosh, I almost cried right then and there. Of all the dangers and rigors of deployment, if I was the one out there, that's the one that would be hardest for me.

I can face many, many things, but the prospect of several trips a day to that thing would probably cause me to lay face down in the desert sand and I don't know, just give up.

Germaphobes, quit shaking in your boots and stand tall. We can face this enemy. We would have to. All of our soldiers on deployment over there have to. Every day.

So this year, when I am inclined to bitch and moan and complain about some little thing or other, some little problem of life or person or whatever, I think of what it would be like to live, eat, sleep, work, and try to relax to the constant, daily, everpresent smell of burning shit.

Remembering that I do not have anything, anything, ANYTHING in my life as bad as Shit On Fire, I shut up and just git 'er done.

Feel better now? Life not as bad as you thought? I hoped this might help!

Thanks for checking in,
Katie

Faster, Shorter, More Often

2009-09-27T04:53:00.000-07:00

I have gotten stuck in feeling as if I have to write something profound for these entries. But the original intention was to simply keep a journal, and write something profound if it came up.

With a big item finished in my life - the novel finished - I'm going to try and now stick to that original intention better. Here's the letter I just sent to Zach:

So, dearest heart,
I was picturing you the other night, when you guys were broken down. Going over you detail by detail, your smile, your beautiful neck, your shoulders, your feet. Only a mother and a girlfriend do stuff like that! You are so beautiful, and I love your smile, and everything about you.

Just everything.

Grandmom or Dad told me about the cigar smokes in the desert and the talks about life and big ideas. While I don’t love the cigars (LOL, mom talking :-) I do love that Pop and Grandmom sent them to you and you get time to think about stuff bigger and beyond. I like that.

Courtney and I talked yesterday for a few moments. She is stressing about the next upcoming test. I gently laughed at her and told her it would be fine. I know she’ll do just fine. She always does.

Cripes, that was actually two days ago. We were in the grocery store getting stuff for Gabe. Yesterday I was a the annual Legacy Chase in Baltimore, the big horse race at Shawan Downs that my dear friend David Ashton invites me to. She and I talked then and I promised to call her back after the event – but, oops, went home, took care of Gabe, cleaned for Gmom and Becky and Andy to come visit, helped Gabe take his first bath (yay!) welcomed Dad home, and forgot. Darn it. I’ll call her later today.

It’s a steady autumn rain today. The trees have barely started changing colors, just the first few, but even though everything is still green, green, green, it’s becoming that kind of olive-green, so you know they are ready. Except the grass, which has grown all summer as if it’s spring. Dad and I hardly ever fight, so he hasn’t needed to mow it all in a huff to calm down, but it seems to get done. Although I am still not allowed to use the mower, which is stupid.

You said your weeks go so fast - in that way, mine are a little like yours. I feel as if I have two days in the week, Monday and Friday. Monday I start my home week, and Friday (except the last two weekends) I start my Cheapeake City week. They come so fast. Spring, gone. Summer, gone. Autumn…whoa.

The Big News: I finished my book. Yep.

I had hoped to finish it by the time you went on deployment so that I could focus on writing the Afghanistan blog, but missed that deadline. Then I got to the very ending – the last few thousand words – and I just couldn’t write it. I wanted the ending to be strong, and good writing, and set up the sequel nicely, and I just had no idea how to do it and pack it into so few words. But Friday morning, I woke up and could feel the little fiddling feeling in my brain that I am starting to recognize as it’s time to write and I just sat up in bed, opened my computer, and five hours later, the end was written.

I will send you a CD copy to read, if you like. I have to go over the whole thing again, for typos and to format it properly…but it’s now time to start finding a literary agent.

I told Dad, Gabe, Ben, and then about an hour later, it kind of dawned on me..."I just wrote a whole book…I just finished my first novel!!!!!" I felt like a little balloon, the one Eeyore gets for a birthday present, just flat and like all the air had gone out of me, as if I’d been holding my breath since December when I started. And then I took a great nap.

Gabe is able to put a little weight on his leg – just for a short while. But it eases the trip down to the bathroom, although the trip back he can’t do it yet. The wonderful thing to him was to get into a hot bath for the first time in three weeks. I imagine you’ll make the same "ahhhhh" sound when you can when you get home!

We love you so much. Ben was very impressed with the Legacy Chase, which is exactly why I took him. Ben was my date while Dad covered the shop for me, which I hugely appreciated). I think it really made him think about life and how he wants to get where he wants to go. The first two people we talked to there were a former fighter pilot and a former CIA worker. I told him to write it down so he doesn’t forget by Thursday. But it was a good conversation. I have great faith in him. He'll start slow but I think he'll build up to a pretty good cruising altitude.

Take care, stay safe. I update folks all the time about you. We all love you and are proud of you and so very,very glad that you are happy.

Tell us little details. We love hearing them. Love to you,
Mom

To Life

2009-09-21T17:29:00.000-07:00

Here in Baltimore, in the tiny battleground of Gabe’s wrist, a fight is in full swing.

The surgery, which was predicted to take two hours, has been nearly four hours now. We just got a call from the OR nurse. It’s been difficult. It’s going to be a while longer. Maybe another hour.

Is Gabe okay? I asked. Yes. He’s fine. And the doctor is really good.

I can picture it, the landscape of broken bone and sheared cartilage, the pieces which need to be put back together securely enough somehow so that tendons can pull fingers, so that hands have full strength to lift, to twist. I picture Gabe a month ago, agile, supple, up and down in a flash, working on things on his truck. His hands moving fast…too fast. Slow down, we would say. But he was so proud of his quickness. I want those hands to work well, really well, again.

The surgeon is in there, making choices. What to hook to what, and how. Not having anywhere near good choices to work with. Maybe weighing difficult decisions of what could be lost.

I think of the doctor leading the operation. He’s a superstar, I was told by Gabe's renowned leg surgeon. He’s the guy I would want operating on my kid if need be. This very talented man is still in there, now going into the fifth hour. They have been fighting, doing their best with the rules of flesh and bone and physics and tension and tissue and a very limited space to work in and much to leverage, to get the job done as well as they can. Inevitably, they will be unhappy with parts of the process. Some of it will not go as well as they had hoped. There may be permanent damage.

It is hard to write that. I do not take it lightly. I am just forcing myself to look at this dispassionately, and honestly.

If we are talking about putting a wrist back together, it’s one thing. If we are talking about doing the best job you can to design the rules of a war, permanent damage means something else. It means the life and health of men and sometimes women, who deserve to live, and be as healthy and happy as you and me.

Kathy Wilt, Scott’s mom, emailed me a couple of weeks ago. She has mentally adopted every soldier over in the province. I think it’s a mom thing, to open your heart like that, and Kathy really, really does. Her anguish over the Rules Of Engagement – the ROE – that is supposed to protect Afghan civilians but sometimes leaves our soldiers wanting, was deep and heartfelt - and understandable. And shared by many.

There is not going to be a succinct summing-up of life, a perspective that puts everything in place here. The wrist repair and the war have this in common: it’s work that's not pretty. It’s not perfect. We just hope it works the best it can.

And we have to trust that the folks in charge – the NATO leaders and the folks in the operating room here – are doing the very, very, very best they are able. That's a leap of faith when you are talking about the life and health of someone you love.

Dear hearts who have suffered loss, may you find the peace you need to live with it.

The rest of us…let us be grateful. In fact, let us be ridiculously happy, aware of life, celebrating it. The world is trying to be good and do good. Ramadan, the time for Muslims to ask for forgiveness and to do good deeds, has just ended. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, has begun, and soon it will be Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement. Today we celebrate the close of this year’s summer, and look forward to autumn; it's the fall equinox, known as Mabon to the ancient Celtic tribes. My Buddhist sister and my Episcopalian church have prayed for my sons this week.

It's no particular holiday here in the fluorescent halls of Sinai Hospital. It's just another wonderful, patient-filled night. The surgery is over, and Gabe's wrist is going to be mostly okay again over time.

Life is good. Things go wrong sometimes, sometimes terribly wrong; but more often in life, I believe things go okay. Let us love and comfort those in pain; but let us live with joy and hope for good.

I have faith in good. In the best of times and in the hard times.

Especially here, today, now.

Thank you, Dr. Dietch. You ROCK.
Thank you, good luck; and to all: to life, to life, l’chaim...to life.

Thanks for checking in,
Katie

Fear, and Not Fear

2009-09-17T05:57:00.000-07:00

I’m sitting in the lobby of the Rubin Institute for Advanced Orthopedics at Sinai Hospital. Gabe is getting x-rays as his first step in transferring to this practice from the trauma team at Christiana Care.

An 80th birthday party, cake and candles waiting.
A quiet country road, curving between trees and open sunlight.

A curve.
Gravel, invisible in the shade.

Life changes in the littlest of moments.

If he had left seconds earlier or later, the little moment may not have happened.
If they had gone back for a forgotten purse, the little intersection might not have taken place.

But it did. He took the curve, not seeing the gravel all over the road on his side as the road transitioned from sunlight to shade, and immediately his life became a set of impossible options. Sliding, hoping to regain control, his motorcycle went across two yellow lines, and met the girl and her mom and their new car...via the windshield.

He remembers thinking, well, I’m going to hit hard. I’m going to be hurt. Let’s see how it goes.

A friend told me that he fell from a collapsing scaffold, dropping forty feet before he hit the ground, and he remembers seeing every building component he passed on the way down, remembers seeing fine details in the paint as he fell. He remembers things hitting him, scaffolding falling on him, after he hit. But he doesn’t remember the impact.

What does our mind do in that heartbeat, that one-two seconds of awareness, before the trauma? How does our mind see and record in super speed? Or is it that our eyes and senses always record at that speed, our mind always process at that speed…but when we blinder-out irrelevant details, we are for that tiny interval aware of our lightning-fast processing of visual information?

And oddly, why are all sounds blocked out? Why is vision critical then, when we cannot begin to use the information being fed so precisely to us?

And why don't we remember the most painful part?

Gabe doesn’t remember the impact. He remembers less than half-a-second before, and half-a-second later. His motorcycle hit the car head-on, he hit the car, and then he rolled off the hood of the car and fell to the ground.

He does not know that he bounced. He was lying several feet away from the car, in terrible pain but calmly assessing his injuries when we arrived on the scene seconds later, following him to the birthday party.

Now, here at the Rubin Center, I find myself thinking about the small mechanics of what hit what, and in what order. I have not been able to do that in the ten days since the accident. My mind has gotten close to it, and has shied away, not willing and not able to go to the terrible moment and details of what happened.

It does not really matter; but the breaks to his leg, pinned together, will need to be undone and reset again, and the breaks to his wrist are extremely bad and complicated. We are learning about the differences between regular breaks and high-speed trauma breaks, and how your body heals differently. The mechanics of the accident do matter, in terms of healing.

And so, that has given me permission almost, to think about what nauseated me earlier. In slow motion, I am starting to picture what I have not been able to picture before: the bike approaching the car, the front tire blistering through the bumper straight through to the frame of the car, hitting it so hard that the motorcycle tire rim buckled in two places so deeply you could cradle a whole grapefruit in the curve, and then broke.

And then the bike twisting slightly sideways, crumpling against the car. His body lifting off the bike, following the line of motion, while the two terrified occupants saw a royal blue helmet carve a crater in their windshield.

Where did his leg hit, and how? What precise mechanical angle and speed and pressure of bone against metal caused it to break? What did his arm hit, and how?

Looking at it will not change anything. Thankfully, he has insurance and we live close to world-class treatment centers. The people here are going to put it back together. But it gives me some little peace to finally look the thing in the eye, and stop avoiding it.

The mind of the person in the accident records nearly all of it in great detail, immediately.
The minds of the people who love them cannot bear to think of the details, for a long while.

But our minds must explore, eventually. We have to go there. For some reason, we human beings must look for peace in the most awful of places.

What does this have to do with HMH-463 in Afghanistan? Well, two things.

One: I’ve written about fear already, the fear of death or injury to someone we love over there. It’s a big deal. I’m going to write about it again and again, I’m going to step up and do the dance with fear and face it and call it by name and tango with it until I know I can outdance it again.

One: I have said more than one time to myself and other people that I am sometimes more afraid of what can happen to Zach’s two younger brothers than I am of him. Zach is well-trained, and works with a great team in a fabulous squadron with amazing equipment. Odd as it may sound to say it, realistically and statistically, he is a very safe young man.

But here at home, Ben crosses that double-yellow center line pretty often. Not on a motorcycle…but in choices, choices about staying out late and partying with friends versus working, choices that blur the line between right and wrong, and do nothing to move that amazing mind of his towards accomplishments of which it is capable. Some kids pull out, and are fine. Some kids don’t. We all worry about slippery slope on which he and his friends travel, and worry about how taking chances with freedom can limit your freedoms in life.

With Gabe, it’s different worries. Worries about attractions of a different kind, fascinations with technology and games, and how time wasted on them can reduce options in life as a person gets older, because as parents, we see that opportunity comes to those who make it. Worries that he goes too fast internally, that it makes him go too fast externally sometimes, in large things and small. It makes him impatient and angry at times, makes him push the envelope…and it puts him at risk.

And of course, that motorcycle. I’ve pushed back awful imaginings of what could happen. The whole first two years we fought, about following-interval distances and speed and on which roads I was too nervous for him to drive (the beltway). Five years after he got it, I was just finally relaxing about him riding it. Almost.

This accident was not his fault in any way. Nothing he did contributed to it. But now, with two world-class doctors assessing his leg and arm, it looks as if he is going to have a long time to learn to go slow.

So the first thing this has to do with HMH-463 is that maybe we don’t need to worry so much. Things at home can be just as dangerous for us; and we need to take care of ourselves for them so we don’t cause them worry, and we’re in good shape to hug them when they get back.

Gabe will be right when all is said and done, several months from now. But there will be lots of time for reflection, for thinking back…for looking ahead and deciding the new path. Maybe even for going to the moment of the accident over and over, cursing himself for small choices…if I’d done this or that, if I’d slept later today, if I’d left for the party earlier.. We humans have to do that: go back again and again to the bad place, looking for acceptance and peace.

And that takes me to the second thing this has to with Afghanistan: humans finding peace, within and without, in the worst of places.

I heard once that the men who fought one another long and bitterly in Iwo Jima for months, Japanese men and the American Marines reunited years later, rushed at one another, embracing, crying. Only they knew the horror of what they had inflicted on one another, of what each side had lived through. In the need to heal, they looked in the darkest of places, and it helped them find peace and acceptance.

Each of us, having someone they love in a war zone, has her or his own limit of how far we can look into the place of fear. Each of us has a personal limit, like me looking at Gabe’s moment of impact: I can go no further, not any further, just now.

But eventually, we do. Our minds get stronger, little by little. We inch forward in our thoughts and peek towards those things that could scare us: ugly possibilities. Moments of truth.

We look at the difficult parts because we are human, because we must, because we want nothing to limit us…and especially not fear, the most powerful limiter of all.

In the end, understanding what could happen or has happened will change nothing. But somehow, in the process of gathering courage to look, we grow in strength.

The good grace that blessed our lives the day of Gabe’s accident is holding steady. Amazing surgeons are putting his leg and arm bones and his possibilities back together. Exactly what happened, and how, is only of tangential interest to them.

But to me, peeking at it, I find little bits of strength in garnering the courage to look, even just a peek, at the difficult what-ifs and what-dids.

Life requires stretching and strength. I thank all my children – Zach, Gabe and Ben – for the opportunities they have given me to grow. They have made me a strong mother, a woman with a deep, deep sense of humor, a more patient and compassionate person. And they have helped me look fear straight in the eyes a couple of times, and not back down. I don’t want many more of those times…but they have made me a better person than I would have been.

For all three of them, and for our service people and their loved ones, especially HMH-463, I hope for the same stretching-and-strength to happen.

Thanks for checking in,
Katie

News

2009-09-09T03:28:00.000-07:00

......"a suicide bomber struck outside a British military base in southern Helmand province on Wednesday, killing two Afghan truck drivers and seriously wounding international troops, officials said.

The explosion occurred in a parking area outside the gates of Camp Bastion, said Daoud Ahmadi, a spokesman for the governor. Large trucks that deliver supplies to the camp wait there for clearance to enter the base.

Sidenstricker said initial reports suggested the attacker was a wearing a vest laden with explosives. She said several service members were seriously wounded. She did not provide their nationalities. Several countries have troops on the base.

Ahmadi said the blast also destroyed some trucks."

- http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,548121,00.html?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a4:g4:r1:c0.000000:b0:z5

Faith Versus Fear

2009-09-03T08:59:00.000-07:00

I’ve been putting off writing this journal and you don’t know why, but I know why. I promised one thing to myself in writing, and that was that I would be completely, completely honest with myself and with you about the experience…and I haven’t wanted to be honest about this.

It’s because an old acquaintance showed up, and has been distracting me.

He knows me so well. He knows all my vulnerable points, he knows how to get me to see things his way, he knows everything about me…and we have danced together so many, many times.

I love him, in a strange way. He always wants to get me, and fighting him off has made me a stronger person. So I am grateful to him for that. But he has so much control over me, and he makes me miserable, and so I hate him too.

He has been showing up in the last week, whispering seductive lies to me, and it is time to put a stop to it. It is time to close my ears and heart to him.

So, my old partner, I am calling you out from secrecy, where you have been lingering inside me, growing, into the light that makes you wither and die.

Yes, you, Fear. I’m taking you on…again...and I’m going to win. Again.

The first thing I learned about fear is this: Fear is the greatest liar in the world.

Fear will tell you that it will keep you safe.
That is a lie. It does not keep you safe.
Fearing something does not keep you safe from it.

Now, I’m not advocating a complete abdication of common sense. Don’t go touching something that is filthy and then sticking your fingers in your mouth or eyes, laughing haha, I’m not afraid to get sick! Because you just might come down with a big case of stupidity. Or the flu.

Don’t jump off the bridge. Dumbass.

I’m talking about fears that are emotional.

Let’s say you’re afraid of flying.
Being afraid of it does not keep you safe.
Being afraid of it means you may not fly. And you will then miss out on lots and lots of good fun things you could have done. And you will teach your children to be afraid to fly. And fear will grow in power in your life, and then take more and more things away from you. The ability to drive over bridges. The ability to climb hills.

It will cut you down to nothing, and it will control you utterly – if you let it.
So do not let fear tell you that it is protecting you, when its intention is to ruin you.

I know what I’m talking about. Ask any family member how much work it took me to get over an irrational fear of flying. Twenty frickin’ years, it was so deep in me. That’s another story. But I fly just fine now. And so do my kids.

The Second Lie:
Fear will tell you want to do to protect yourself from being hurt.
That is a lie too.
Fear will make you do the very thing that will cause you to get hurt in the very way you don’t want to be.

For example, think of a couple having a fight. He thinks that she’s taking advantage of him, and he’s afraid he’s going to get hurt. So Fear tells him to put up walls, to shut her out, to be cold.

Um…what’s that going to do?

She’s going to feel shut out and rejected, and pull back, maybe even leave him…and then he’s going to get hurt.

So Fear’s advice caused exactly what he didn’t want to happen, to happen.

Think about it the next time you find yourself afraid of an emotional test, a feared loss. And then test out what happens if I ignore the fear and go forth bravely with the truth and hope and honesty?

You might find some shocking results. I mean it. Test it.

Fear will tell you it is your friend.
It isn’t.

It is your worst enemy.

So what’s Fear been saying to me? I’m going to type it out exactly the way it is. I may look overly emotional, I may look stupid, but I don’t care. Telling the truth makes me stronger, so I’m not afraid to tell the truth.

Here’s the big truth, that Fear does not want you to know:
Telling the truth about fear diminishes and destroys it.

It doesn’t mean a bad thing will never happen.
But it means the bad thing loses its control over you.

At the root of all fear is this little sentence:
I’m afraid I won’t be happy.

If I don’t get picked for the team, I’m afraid I’ll look stupid… I’m afraid I won’t be happy.
If I don’t get that guy, I’m afraid my heart will break… I’m afraid I won’t be happy.
If my child is hurt, I’m afraid I will not be able to live… I’m afraid I won’t be happy.

That’s the powerful little splinter in the middle of the pus of fear.

But if the fear is destroyed instead, it cannot twist your life around and diminish it.
It means you can survive, anything. It means you can be happy, no matter what.
I am staring fear in the face, unblinking, while I type that. It was hard to type that. But I will not kow-tow to Fear. I will call it out and tell the truth about it.

I will be un-afraid.

Fear started in slow, as he always does. Telling me that the first month of deployment was over. Something about that first-month mark passing opened the door, and in he came. Just a whiff, at first. Just a little tiny tiny voice saying, one month passed…and then he hissed six or seven to go.

Little by little, the thoughts came more often. A bad dream. A scary image. I pushed them back, but they added up.

Yesterday, I had occasion to call Robyn Anderson for a quote on an article I’m writing for a local magazine.

Robyn is a beautiful person whom I respect and admire. A strong and compassionate and courageous woman. She is the mother of a remarkable young man, Marine Lance Corporal Norm Snyder, who was killed in Iraq in 2005. His good friend Corporal Josh Snyder was killed in Iraq the next month. Both boys were from Hereford High School.

You can see why fear finds an opportunity to creep in here, with two more boys from Hereford who are friends deployed over there.

I am sweating profusely just writing about it.

But let’s be logical.
There are other boys from Hereford that I don’t know who are deployed now too. So fear is tempting me to be afraid when it’s just a coincidence and not a very similar one at that.

So there, fear.

Robyn shared with me her worry that something she said had in some way tempted fate.
Boy, do I know that one.
I am afraid to say lots of things, as if somehow uttering them out loud will cause them to come true.

Does it?

Do our words somehow reach out into the chaos of the universe and call up malevolent forces that converge to wreak havoc and pain on someone we love?

Oh, for heaven’s sake. No.
When I say it that way, it sounds ridiculous.

But my companion inside, Fear, whispers…is it?

If prayer works to create good, does fear work to create bad?

I don’t know. I just do not know. I don’t think so. But Robyn and I understood each other, how carefully we word things sometimes, what we say aloud easily and what we don’t, and why. I don’t know how things are connected.

So what do we do when we have something that makes us afraid?

My one big rule is speak the fear out loud, and it loses power over you.

This one is terrifying. My fingers are flying over the keyboards, and I don’t know how when I get to the sentence that I will have the ability to do it…but here, fk, fk, fk, here we go:

I am afraid that Zach could get seriously hurt or die serving in Afghanistan.

There. I said it.

If you were sitting here watching me type, you would have seen how long it took to type each individual letter of that sentence. You would have seen me put the period at the end of it and bury my face in my hands and weep.

Fear makes me afraid to say out loud what I am afraid of.
Guess what: I just took on the fear, a little bit. I did what it told me not to do.
And I won.

And now, that place in my heart where that little bit of fear used to live is cleaned out.
There is a new bit of room there, for me to put something good in.

I think I will put faith in there. I will put in faith in goodness. I will put in faith that my son is not only extremely lucky, he is trained well. I will put in faith that the whole team is a GREAT group of guys who joke around a lot and maybe fight sometimes, but all care passionately about doing their jobs well. I will put in faith in statistics. The odds are WITH all of them coming home safe and sound, and they will help each other do it.

I will put in the absolute certainty that I have had that he will come home just fine, proud and happy and smiling and strong and healthy. I have had that certainty about their whole squadron. Fear has tried to take it away from me, but I know it to be true now that I have cleaned the windshield (as one of my dear friends says).

And I what I will put there is one more thing. I will love the fear. I shower it with all the goodness of my heart. Because it is, in the end, once you strip down all of its power and ugliness, just a little scared kid inside me, wanting to be okay.

Love yourself. Be honest about where you are weak and struggling. Trust in faith in goodness, not in fear.
You will be stronger, your loved ones will be safer, and you will all be okay.

And then…give yourself the freedom and celebration of laughter. You are free, you are safe, you are stronger, you are happy, and your loved ones are and will be too.

I believe that my son Zach will be fine. I believe that the whole squadron will be fine. Better than fine; they will be great.

Thanks for checking in,
Katie

Happy Gabe's Birthday

2009-08-31T10:06:00.000-07:00

I have been remiss in writing because I’ve been working on another project for three weeks. It’s almost complete; just one or two more days at most, and I am happy to get back to writing steadily.

Today is August 31st, Zach’s brother Gabe’s 24th birthday…so a good day. The music which plays annually during Gabe’s celebration is in full chorus. I forgot, when I wrote about corn, chicory and cicadas to include one more ‘c’: crickets!

Here in Maryland, as the corn grows tall and green and sleek - in a year with good rain, which we have had - and the cicadas chirp in the trees, and the chicory blooms blue mist along summer roads...

crickets sing.

There is no music in the world as sweet as their song.

You hear it with the windows open, driving along, and it never stops: at 40, 50, 60 miles an hour, enough crickets sing in every square acre that as we zoom out of range of the song of one cricket, another five or a dozen or a hundred come into range, so the sweet chirp flows continuously along miles and miles of summer roads rolling through fields to anywhere, to everywhere.

I don’t think crickets eat anything. I don’t think they hurt anything.

They just show up and sing. Their song is the prelude to the seasonal dance in which summer gives way to autumn. In their music, you can hear leaves beginning to turn yellow, and pumpkins ripening. Deep under the ground, the earth begins to cool, and dream of frost.

Happy cricket-song birthday, Gabe. Rumor has it that someone may be calling you today, if he can get a line out.

A Weblink To Ponder And Implement

2009-08-26T06:02:00.000-07:00

There’s always a line forming to the left to criticize the military. We’re all armchair generals. This could have been done better, that could have been managed better, and the whole shebang could be implemented better.

I’m not a general. I’m not a strategist. Aw, heckk, I can’t even manage my own desk, not to mention three kids. And I’m not sure exactly when I last changed my oil and am now afraid to look, and worse yet, I’ll forget to check tomorrow.

But no matter what chaos is going on in my life, no matter how much I botch things up, I try hard to live the “treat other people the way you want to be treated” mandate. And the other one, which adjures us to respect the dignity of all human beings.

But what if other people make it hard for us to do that, because they don't play by the same rules? Then it's pretty hard to stick to your high moral ground. I would imagine the good folks at the top of institutions and organizations, being human too, would struggle with it.

So it was a kind of shock and pleasure to read this on the United States Marine Corps website, talking about the beginning of the work to support the elections: http://www.blogger.com/www.marines.mil/units/hqmc/Pages/BrigGenNicholson%E2%80%98Theintentionwastogoinbig,strong,fast%E2%80%99.aspx

The quote that caught me from the link was “the Marines' presence restricts enemy groups’ freedom of movement and helps restore peace and prosperity to the local populace.”

I like that.

It’s not badass. Badass can be way fun, as I well know, but this is way deeper and more lasting and important.

Peace and prosperity: it’s what we wish for those we love.

Sometimes folks in the local populace doesn’t even appreciate what our men and women are doing. But the Marines and other service members do the very best they can, every day, anyway.

And sometimes folks in the local populace are shooting at them, or trying to blow them up.

The minds at the top of the USMC know the cost to families who lose someone they love. They know the frustration and fury of an IED explosion taking the life of a soldier. They know what disfigurement and dismemberment mean to able young human beings.

And yet, those minds at the top are looking, not to “maintain order” or to “subdue the resistance”. No; it’s a far gentler, far deeper goal: to restore peace and prosperity.

That’s generous.

War presses on people from the top, and from the bottom.

From the bottom is the place where bullets fly. It’s the 'today' of war. It is the sad result of a complete inability of two sides to talk to one another successfully or resolve differences.

From the top is where the ideas are put in motion. It’s the 'tomorrow' of the world. It sets the tone for the 'today' of war.

From the top comes the guidance for our soldiers:

• Use your head, use logic, use restraint
• Don’t feel about what you do. Just do it, and do it right

Human beings who serve as soldiers see terrible things. They see things that can make them sad the rest of their lives. And they find meaning in small goodnesses.

When the Taliban destroys a human life, whether a friend or a local child or a member of their big team,

They feel angry. Really angry.
They feel hate and desire for revenge.

Yet they are expected each day to set themselves back to neutral and get to work.
To “help restore peace and prosperity to the local populace.”

Please join me in feeling admiration and respect for all the service members who walk this difficult line each day, and do it with grace, dignity, and humor.

Could you and I practice such good intentions and restraint under such pressure? Will we?

I said at the beginning of this blog that my intentions are to use this experience of our son's deployment to work hard on myself for eight months to become a better human being.

Class is in session.

Thanks for checking in,
Katie

Still Working On It

2009-08-24T19:15:00.000-07:00

The funny thing is, when you're standing at T in the road, it feels really easy to go one direction, and really hard to go another one.

Anger comes easy.
Peace comes hard.

The other funny thing is that, whichever direction you take, the direction kind of takes over you.

Anger gets more and more intense.
Peace comes easier and easier.

I found myself struggling to do the right thing, to put aside my hurt feelings and feelings of "what do you mean, you think my work could be wrong/dangerous/too open?!??!!".

But once I made that choice, the way got easier. I found myself being more and more eager to talk, and to make sure that I was listening, as well as working on things from my own (generally fair) perspective.

It is a life lesson. The first step in doing anything is the hardest. The next step is easier, and the next easier still.

So we should choose our first little step, pay attention to our initial reactions, very, very carefully. Because easier and easier of some things is good...but easier and easier of others could be disastrous.

____________

On another note: we got a pink note.

A pink envelope arrived in the mail, with a familiar FPO return address and the name of a Gunny Sargeant many of your guys would recognize. We were SO CURIOUS! Who was writing us from there?

It was a thank-you note. "Each small kindness, like a seed, grows tall in memory." And inside, thanks for a certain picnic to which we helped contribute.

Wow. That was unexpected and treaured. I cried. The note will stay on my desk...until we get the chance to, as they say, catch them on the rebound.

This might help plan it: http://www.operationwelcomehomemd.org/

If you are emailing or writing, thank you. If you aren't...let me ask you to take a moment. Just a few words about daily life, what you're doing, gives them a precious, precious connection to home.

Thanks for checking in,
Katie

A Surprising Turn, And An Opportunity To Live My Words

2009-08-22T09:44:00.000-07:00

I have a saying: World Peace starts in my heart.

Think about it. World peace isn’t about what they do. It’s about what we do.

It’s all very well to talk about what we hope and want and expect them to do.

But are we willing to do it ourselves?

It gets so much tougher when we try to work at peace, with our own issues, in our own lives, with people we know!

I wanted to write this blog without any particular agenda in mine, except what is stated in the “About Me” box:

• I wanted to honor the work of HMH-463. I wanted to document what it is like to be the parent of someone over there. Lots of people have someone they love over there, but not everybody likes to write. I do.

• I wanted to do something good with a sometimes-challenging experience, and to create something of value.

My pledge to myself was only that I would be completely honest: I would not demonize or heroize war and soldiers. I would neither gloss over or glorify war, nor diminish the challenges. I would not be melodramatic, or overly sentimental, or parochial. I would not succumb to patriotism that has a hidden agenda of hatred in disguise.

I would just talk about things as they came up, and share those thoughts with others, and in some vague undefined way, to encourage peace.

It came as a complete shock, therefore, to be called on the carpet by not one but two women who also have loved ones in HMH-463, who believe this blog could endanger the lives of the people of our squadron.

This post is about the process of working through a difference of opinion with respect. I am writing about this conversation because it directly relates to the experience of creating peace. I AM NOT asking anyone to take a side. I do not want that to happen AT ALL, so please do not be tempted to do so! Keep reading!

This experience of being suggested/told what I should write about and what I shouldn’t has ranged from feeling definitely uncomfortable… to being emotionally painful . To feel accused, even in polite language, of doing something that would be damaging or even dangerous to their loved ones and my own son was hurtful. To be told that I was/had been reported to the USMC for censure was shocking to me.

I am passionate about my writing work. I write carefully, I think deeply about my words, and I sometimes work very, very carefully in working through an idea.

I do not believe that the things I have been asked to remove from this blog are in any way damaging, or could create danger, for the missions of HMH-463.

But they do. So here is where the rubber hits the road, as the saying goes. I’ve been writing this and thinking about the folks over there – the Taliban – and praying for peace in their hearts. But here is conflict, right at my doorstep, and with people on the same ‘team’.

WORLD PEACE STARTS IN MY HEART.

These women are giving me an opportunity to live my words. I have in this circumstance a chance to take my own advice about handling differences of opinion and belief to create peace instead of conflict.

I could take the distress I feel about the challenge and criticism of my words and get upset, even angry. Most big fights start over pretty small differences. But let’s think:

First: They are not trying to hurt me.

Second: They are trying to protect their loved ones.

Third: We have the same goals.

So how do we handle a emotionally serious difference of opinion?

Well.

Hmm.

I really, deeply respect the concerns of the women who contacted me. If you’re reading this, please hear the love and respect in my words.

I promised them that I would go through this blog today, and look through the entries for things that would be potentially dangerous.

I will do that.

But I will do it, not as a knee-jerk reaction – erase everything! Shut it all down! It is okay that we have different opinions. Respect for someone else’s feelings and opinion does not mean abdicating your own feelings and opinion.

So I will examine my viewpoint and my work as you have requested. And I will do it as people in deployment are expected to do things under pressure:

Calmly. Logically. With respect and intelligence.

A decision made for emotional reasons may feel right, but is almost always bad in implementation.

I have another saying.

Fear is the root of all evil. And evil cannot thrive without the presence of fear
.
So, logically, and with research and documentation to support it… what’s safe to write about, and what isn’t?

Well, here’s an example from CBS news. (I deeply respect Lara Logan’s work!)

This worldwide news coverage clearly states the soldier’s names, their company, and their mission, as well as the emotional challenges they face and the success they feel in overcoming them (skip the ad):
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5258698n&tag=morephotovideo

In this print piece for CBS, and in another one I didn’t link, the future strategy, albeit without details, is also clearly discussed as well by the reporter. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/13/world/main5239251.shtml

For the record, I don’t discuss strategy. I wouldn’t, and even if I were so stupid, I can’t. My son does not divulge anything of that nature to us.

He also told me that because of me getting reported, he has already been called in by a superior officer to discuss this writing of mine, and that basically the rule is: once it’s happened, it’s okay to write about anything. Just nothing in advance.

He does not tell us any details about flights. Despite that, I did remove some wording regarding that mentions flight frequency - even though, realistically, I'm sure the folks they fly over know the schedule.

It seems that the item of most concern is the letter I reprinted from the CO. I genuinely do not understand how it could endanger the men in any way...but it concerns them deeply. So, out of respect for the women who need their feelings to be honored, I will be removing that letter and just quoting generic parts from it.

I went through and removed numbers where I could find them, about the size of the squadron, the flight crews, hours of days, etc. Although this information can be found elsewhere, I feel good in caring about their feelings to remove it from here.

Lastly, I did a check, googling combinations that would cause this blog to come up. And I couldn’t get it to come up in Google. But I did come across several written by Afghans, who write in danger, and which express so much that I wanted to learn. It was good to read that they value the help we are giving their country. The first one I read was shut down in 2007, after writing extensively against the Taliban.

I hope he is all right.

This blog was set up from the beginning to not be translated into Arabic languages. I thought carefully about that, and while I believe that cultural exchange is a powerful tool for peace, in the end, decided against it for OPSEC reasons.

I hope, my friends, that you will know that your concerns have been genuinely heard and addressed. The changes should be finished by the end of the day. Please let me know if you have continuing concerns, and what the specifics are.

And I hope that I have lived my beliefs. It is one thing to have beliefs. It is quite another to put them into action.

World peace starts in my heart. I hope that I have been respectful, both of the concerns of others and of my own beliefs. If more is needed, please let me know.

Because in the end, often it is not as much about the result we achieve, as the process we follow to get there.

A good process which includes respect, honesty, intelligence and compassion will always end in a good result… even if it’s not the result we originally planned.

It may be even better.

With our combined prayers for the safety, health and well-being of all the people of HMH-463,
thanks so much for checking in.

Katie

Allied Forces + Afghan Police - Taliban = 1683 Heroes

2009-08-20T18:57:00.000-07:00

First, personally, I am grateful to read in the news returns that
no
American
soldiers
were
killed or injured
during the election.

Take that, Taliban.

Secondly,
There's a news clip copied from The New York Times below.
There's a little number in it that means a lot.

The number is 1683.

That's the number of brave souls who,
in Taliban-dominated Helmand Province,
despite threats of death
despite threats of dismemberment
despite fear of bombings at the voting centers
despite concerns of election corruption
cared enough about freedom
to walk to the polls
openly
and
cast a vote for freedom.

We don't know who they are.
I don't know if they all were men, or if any might have been women
how many were too old to be dominated
or who had kids at home who needed them
who were young and in love
or who were just tired of being dominated
but I hope their neighbors see them walking tall.
I hope they walk tall for many years to come
and remember
that today
they looked bullying in the face
and dipped their finger in voting ink
in defiance of fear
in belief in courage.

Amen.

I am - and I know we all are - so incredibly, incredibly proud of our loved ones who supported this election, either on the ground or in the air. Well DONE, Marines!

The Taliban failed to stop the voting Thursday in this dusty town in the insurgency’s heartland, but they did a good job of putting a scare into everyone who did.

http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/latest-updates-on-afghanistans-election/?hp :

A total of 1,683 Afghan men cast ballots in the cement-brick school that served as the town’s main polling place, a number high enough to buoy the spirits of local officials — although no one could say how many voters were actually registered in the district, whose population is about 80,000. Those who defied the insurgents’ threats to sever the fingers of anyone caught voting were almost too nervous to talk.

“Until the day I die, I will support this government,” said Niamatullah, lowering his voice to a whisper and walking away from a crowd that had gathered outside the polling center. “But there is no security. The Taliban are still strong.”

Being There

2009-08-19T11:41:00.001-07:00

What it's like for soldiers on the ground, from CBS News:
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/08/17/world/worldwatch/entry5246256.shtml

An article written by a friend of mine from college, James Rupert, who is in Afghanistan by choice:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ajyJvwwYY.Nc

It's nearing midnight in Afghanistan. Election day is almost here.

What will happen?

Thank you for checking in,
Katie

Another Two Days Until The Elections Are Over

2009-08-18T16:32:00.000-07:00

It’s raining tonight in Maryland. It feels so good, to have the humidity and the heat washed away by the storm. Now we are getting those wonderful little-stream-gurgling sounds, of raindrops dripping from heavy wet leaves, cool in the dusk. The light coming in from the very edge of sunset has colored the mist in the air with gold.

I think of how hot and dry it is in Afghanistan. The current weather for camp is: “Blowing Widespread Dust”.

I wonder what the Afghan farmers would think of rain.

I wonder what it would be like on Thursday, August 20, the day of their elections, if it rained gently on everyone.

Would they look up at the sky in wonder and delight? Or would they be afraid, because rain is not normal there? I have googled all sorts of phrases that would help me know if they have rain in that part of the world. In Bagram, they do. But in Bastion? I don’t know.

It’s a little question, but I find it comforting to think of gentle rain wetting the villages and hills, the cafes and camels, and cooling tempers and calming fear. Rain can do that.

IT IS TWO DAYS UNTIL THE ELECTION IN AFGHANISTAN. If the elections are successful, will the violence diminish greatly after that? Will people in the villages, sick of being controlled by the Taliban and in debt to them and forced to grow crops for drugs turn on the fear-mongers, and rise up against them?

Will they grow courage instead of opium poppies?

Want to hear of less suicide bombers in Thailand, in England…in America, perhaps? And definitely in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq?

Then hope and pray for a strong election, one which the Taliban CANNOT say was “fixed” by the west.

Did you know that the Taliban has put up notices threatening to cut off the finger of anyone who has ink from the voting machine on his or her finger? Or just kill them?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/world/asia/17taliban.html?bl&ex=1250740800&en=7d0939d85b32733a&ei=5087

In a small rural town, that’s a pretty big damned threat.

Would you vote? Would you tell your loved ones to vote?

Or would you succumb to fear?

I don’t know what I would do. I would hope that I would have courage, but would I have the courage, a woman, to walk down the street election day, or the day after, knowing any Taliban man who wants could pull my hand from where it was hidden in my burka, and look for the tell-tale stain of voting ink, and cut off my finger or my hand or stab me, right there, just for casting a vote?

Would I have the courage to vote?

President Obama has ordered US military personnel to guard the polling places.

Would that give me more courage? Or would it be the block beyond the polling place where the terror would wait?

Each Afghan person must wrestle with fear and hope, with courage and cowardice. It is 4:30 am their time as I write this. They are beginning the day before the elections.

Here is a picture of young men carrying the polling booths to a remote village on the backs of donkeys: www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2009/aug/18/afghanistan?picture=351795492This is isolated.

And it creates an exercise in trust: trust and hope that each person in each dusty little town can cast their votes safely. Trust that the votes will get to the election officials safely, trust that the votes will be counted honestly.

Please offer your prayers, however you pray, that each individual of each province in Afghanistan - but especially in Taliban-controlled Helmand Province - will find courage, strength, and hope in his or her heart to go to the polls,

…and will express it in their vote.

May they find freedom, and safety and peace.

May the Afghan voters see in the eyes of the men guarding the polls the strength that freedom from fear gives.
and may they reach for that strength for their own country.

May the Taliban people, should they choose to vote, see the in the eyes of the men guarding the polls the strength that freedom from fear gives,
and may they wonder in their hearts, and inwardly yearn for that for themselves,
and may the desire for it erode the power that their fear has even over their own hearts.

May our loved ones who stand, LITERALLY, today, as representatives of freedom, stand safe.

May the members of HMH-463 fly safe.

May August 21 get here without one more life lost.

Thank you for checking in,
Katie

Chicory, Corn and Cicadas

2009-08-17T19:06:00.000-07:00

Mark and I went to Florida for a convention for work last week.

Orlando, in the middle of International Drive.

Fancy hotels, fine restaurants, and days of training interspersed with some amazing, top-notch speakers: football coach Lou Holtz, and the co-founder of Franklin Covey, Hyrum Smith.

Emily Bear played the piano for us.
Pause: please check out Emily Bear. She’s, um, seven: http://www.emilybear.com/
We slept in soft beds, with lots and lots of air conditioning.
There was all the delicious food you could want to eat.
Nice people from all over the world to talk to.

I was aching to go home by the third day.

Now, our guys are not in as lovely a situation as that was. Nothing even close to that nice!

And they’re guys.

So they are not going to come out and say that word “homesick”.

Which means, to keep them from feelng that way, they need to work and work. And joke around. And sleep.

And we need to make sure that we send letters, letters, letters. Pictures.

Don’t send worries. Keep your humor strong. Support them with a great attitude.

-------------------------------------
Now, some thoughts for today:

Where ever you live, that’s home.

If you grew up on a farm in Arkansas, that’s the most beautiful place in the world to you. If you grew up in San Diego, or a suburb of Rapid City, or in rural Maine, or Florida, or whatever state…that’s home.

I might get tired in three days of your gators and your summer humidity and your palm trees, but to you, that’s home. And beautiful.

I might not like your curved development streets, one leading to another, but to you, that’s the road on which you rode your bike.

I might not appreciate your dry Arizona desert, or your treeless Montana hills, but to you, they are the loveliest sights in the world.

And that’s what you’d miss. So wherever your Marine is from, that’s what he’s missing seeing.

I’m going to write about our home, so you can see it a little bit. Maybe Zach can too, from this.

It’s the middle of August, and in the middle of the middle of Maryland, that means three things:

Corn.
Chicory.
Cicadas.

The corn is high, really it is, climbing clear up to the sky. The rains have been good this year, so it’s not curled and dusty blue-gray; it’s spiky and rich full green…and the tassels have come out.

When you drive past a field full of corn on a hot summer night, with the car windows open, you can smell it. There is no smell like that of green corn flowering. It smells rich, sweet; full of promise: the crop will come in.

On the sides of the roads that meander this part of Maryland, when the corn blooms, the chicory does as well. It only blooms in the morning. Hundreds of soft blue flowers open in the early misty morning and become a haze of soft cool blue as you drive along the road.

They are beautiful.

They are wild.

You can’t cut them for a bouquet; they will immediately droop.

As the heat of the day builds, they close up. That’s it for the day; you only get the morning. They are the more beautiful because of it.

They are my favorite flowers.

The cool sweet heavenly blue of chicory, and the sweet rich smell of corn in tassel…it means summer to us.

That takes care of sight and smell…what about sound?

Sound would be the raucous chirring of cicadas.

Zach loves them.

When he and his brothers were little, we had one of the seventeen-year cicada cycles. I let them catch dozens, and bring them inside the house to fly around. As they got older, he became expert at hearing one start it’s chirp-chirp-chirrrrrrrrrpppppppp in a tree, and locating it from the sound, and tossing a big stick high, high up at the branch to knock the cicada off, and catching it as it fell.

Yeah, he did.

I loved watching him do it. It was a kid in love with nature.

Who had amazing aim with a stick.

That’s it. Nothing big deal or special today. Just listening to the cicadas singing in the trees tonight, and smelling the corn floating on the night air, and thinking of him.

Wherever you are, send some summer love - describe in the littlest detail whatever is special this time of year - to your folks on deployment. It'll be a gift across time and space to them.

Every little word you take the time to write carries love, and makes a day there better for them.

Stay safe, loved ones.

Thanks for checking in,
Katie

Pray

2009-08-12T08:13:00.000-07:00

Pray for our boys
pray for helmand province especially, since it's going to be hardest to vote there
pray for a strong free election
work for peace
love, Katie

What I Pray

2009-08-10T11:55:00.000-07:00

How easy is it, when someone wrongs you, to get irritated back? Mightily irritated, in fact. And if they do enough wrong, furiously angry. Killing mad.

It is so easy, and understandable, for us as Americans to be angry at the people who are part of the Taliban. Maybe even to hate the Taliban. They have killed people we love. They have killed innocent civilians all over the world. They have disrupted the world in many ways, made it more fearful, less free.

I think to myself about them what do you feel like when you have blown an American soldier or an Afghan bride to pieces? Do you have a sick feeling in your stomach, seeing that? Or do you rejoice?

No matter what anyone says,
I am going to choose to believe that something in them, something deep in them that they might never admit to another person, feels badly about it.

No matter how different we are, I am going to choose to believe that, being human, somewhere deep within we connect, even during war, in a way that is deeper than the divides of country or religion or hate.

So it may or may not surprise you that when I pray, I pray for the Taliban boys' peace as much as I pray for our own boys and their peace and safety.

Why?

Because their peace means our peace.

Our military people follow strict rules. In the middle of war, they are trained to follow the rules of engagement, to respect peace, and if possible, to respond without violence.

Our military do not initiate conflict. The rules of engagement are that we respond to conflict appropriately.

Our soldiers are trained to respond, and they will respond. I am not in any way advocating that they not respond. It is their duty and their job to do so, and I respect them for doing their job well.

But they will not and do not start conflict. That requires so much strength under pressure that I admire them tremendously for it.

It can be very, very difficult sometimes to walk that line. And mistakes can be made.
But it means that we will hold the line at peace if you will. We will not start it.

So if I want our boys to be safe,
I pray that the other side will not start it.

I pray, and I think of a young man in hot and dry Afghanistan. Maybe he is being taught how to wire a cell phone into a what’s-the-word, the thing that detonates a bomb remotely.

Maybe he grew up with hatred of Westerners. Maybe he was taught it from his infancy from his father, his mother, his uncle.

Maybe he didn’t, but maybe he just never fit in. Didn’t have good looks or good skin or as much money or a mother who loved him or any self-confidence because he was never good enough in his father’s eyes.

Hate societies have a way of welcoming those who feel as if the world rejected them.

Whatever the case, whether hatred of democracy and western ways and free thought were bred into him, or whether he got sucked into something that horrifies his parents…

…hate is taught.

But I believe that deep, deep inside a person,
They know right from wrong.
People know true good from real evil.
They choose.

Maybe he is afraid to disobey the orders of his Taliban leaders or his Taliban buddies or his cousin in the Taliban or his father. They are telling him to start something. Maybe he is afraid of what will happen to him. It wouldn’t be pleasant.

When I was a little, little girl, I lived in a very racist area. But before I knew the word for racism, I knew it was wrong.

We can be taught hate. But deep within us, we can choose not to hate.

We can take the tiniest little steps to something different.

And those tiny steps matter.
They are the drops that build a river of goodness.

So many times when fear comes to me, instead of letting it control me, I pray,
and I reach out to the young man of the Taliban.

Maybe not start anything today, I offer to him. Maybe when you see the helicopter fly over today, if you have a rocket on your shoulder…maybe today you will tell yourself that you are not ready…and you will let your finger relax on the trigger.

A tiny step.

A huge step.

I reach out in my heart to the young man with the cell phone is his hand. The distance is nothing in prayer.

Maybe not today, I offer, in peace and encouragement and kindess. Maybe today you will feel goodness in your heart. Maybe because if it you will not be able to finish working on that phone today. Or maybe you will drop it so that it doesn’t work right.

Or maybe when the young men in American or British camouflage are standing near the buried bomb…
maybe you will pause just the tiniest bit.

And not do it. Not start it today. Maybe just not today.

Maybe not tomorrow either. Maybe today will give you a little strength for tomorrow, and I pray for that too.

May you know peace, I pray. May you feel love. May goodness come to you and yours.

May the tiny little decision you make with your finger on the trigger or the phone
Mean a day that no one dies in Helmand Province
Not your people
Not our people
May nothing start, because of you
And your courage, your little step of peace.
And may something take flight in your heart in that moment, and soar
Towards goodness.

Believe what you want, about who God or Allah or the Universal Spirit is. Believe that some of us are going to hell and some are going to reward. Offer to anyone your way of believing.

But beyond that, please believe that
it is up to the One you believe in to sort out about
who is going to hell, and who is going to heaven,
and when

And let it go. Let the bomb go, let the trigger finger relax.
I send you love, as an emissary of peace.

I send love to them.
It is the best way I know to protect my son and his friends.

War is an event between countries. War is the nations of NATO against the Taliban. It is a big event. War has rules. War’s intention is to create peace, but it is impersonal and massive and it does not change quickly or easily.

Peace is an event between people. Peace is tiny. Peace is personal. Peace is flexible and fluid, and it happens one little decision at a time. And peace can turn on a dime. It can be created or destroyed in a moment.

The destruction of peace creates war, on a small or large scale.
The creation of peace creates peace.

Maybe the young man will feel something today from my prayers. Maybe he won’t. I’ll never know.

But what I will know deep in my heart is that I strove to create peace. I did the same good that I am asking the young man in the Taliban to do. I put aside my fear and my anger and my hate, and I offered...nothing.

I offer nothing; no advice, no criticism, no you're-wrong, no judgement. No 'start'.
And I ask for nothing: no detonation. No trigger pull. I pray for nothing to happen in that moment.

No start.

One little moment of nothing happening.
One little drop of peace.

Little by little they can wash away the war.

Honor Thy Children

2009-08-07T18:44:00.000-07:00

You probably know the saying. It goes right along in the commandments with “love God” and “treat others as you want to be treated”.

How come it doesn’t instruct us to love and honor our children, as specifically as the other rules do?

Because I’d like to do that right now.

Two days of no communications from Zach meant that a death had taken place. I have personal feelings now about the young men who are killed in Afghanistan. They are not just numbers glossed over in the news. They are part of my family's life now, because my son may be part of the team who picks up their body and begins to escort it home.

It is difficult for every single person who is part of that escorting process.

When we love someone deeply, we want to share their lives, even – and perhaps especially – the difficult parts. That is where the work of love happens. The rest of it, the easy parts, are just fun. Love looks in at the difficult parts, and even when flinching, holds out its hands to help.

So, while we learn as a family what it means to love someone who is at the front parts of a war, we are learning to look at those difficult parts too.

When Zach does not call Courtney, I know someone has died.
There is no need to turn on the television. There is a website I go to now to find out: http://icasualties.org/oef/

And there are the names, and the provinces in Afghanistan, and what the young man did, and how his death happened.

This is all so hard to write. These are human beings, loved by other people.

Zach called Courtney early this morning to talk after the communications blackout had been lifted.

On Tuesday night, they escorted the body of a young man who had been killed back to the camp. Zach spoke of it briefly to Courtney. This time, it was not a small and precious box, but a bag holding the soldier’s body to take home.

Are there gentler words? If so, I would like to know them. We must choose the most gentle, respectful words there are.

Right now it is a Friday night in the small, happy town where I live. My husband has just helped the local fire company set up an outdoor movie, and there are literally hundreds of families outside in the beautiful night air watching Kung Fu Panda from their lawn chairs, happily munching popcorn under safe, quiet, starry full-moon skies.

I am writing outside in a white rocking chair. Comfortable. Safe.

Our oldest son should be just finishing his flight duty for tonight. It would be about 4 am there.

When I was his age, I was cocktail waitressing during the night and water-skiing during the day and generally having the time of my life. Almost no responsibility what so ever.

I would like to extend admiration to my son as crew chief, and to the pilot and co-pilot of the helicopter, and the AO and the ground crew for having the presence of mind and learned skill to crew an enormous helicopter; to get that multi-million dollar bird safely maintained, loaded, up, out and back, and to watch the whole time for someone who might try to attack them.

This is why I would like us to honor our children, honor what they are capable of, so young, and so strong. As they are flying over hamlets and homes, the people looking up at the helicopter do not know the individuals flying in it, or the cargo of the plane, or how those in the plane are affected by what they are carrying in the plane.

If I saw an armed helicopter fly over my patio right now as I sit in the rocking chair, and saw Zach or Scott pointing a gun at me, would I feel safe? And what about if they looked different from me, came from another land, were dressed completely differently in battle gear? Would I feel safe?

Not likely.

But they do not know how hard these young men have trained to be able to control their emotions and assess a situation clearly and intelligently.

If my son needed to do so, he would not hesitate at all to follow protocol and fire.

But they do not know how respectful he is of human and other life. I know him. He thinks quickly. He respects life of every kind. He would not fire inappropriately.

They do not know that my son is one of the kindest, most laughing people I have ever had the privilege of knowing.

They do not know how good his pattern recognition is, how quick his eyes are.

They do not know how safe they are with him over them, even though he may have a gun trained right on them.

The mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and girlfriends in Afghanistan worry like we do.

I wish I could say to them, who are living with this war as we are, but so much closer to it: there are two boys from Hereford, Maryland up there over you. They may be carrying soldiers to the forward bases, or food to them, or medical supplies, or Humvee parts. They may have cartons of mail to soldiers who are hungry for news from home, or reassuring mail from them back to their families here.

Or they may be escorting not mail, not supplies, but something far lighter, and much harder to carry.

No matter what the cargo, no matter how they feel about it, they will manage their feelings and do their job. And underneath all the training, all the restraint-in-response, all the readiness, are young men who have good hearts.

War is the crudest form of diplomacy. And yet, it can accomplish good every day. As they fly over, the opportunity for peace exists between you. I can give you my word that they will honor it. Our sons are strong, and good. Look up, and trust.

Wednesday email from Zach

2009-08-06T13:10:00.000-07:00

It was so nice to get this email!

I’ll keep you posted, but there may be a picture of me on the USMC website soon. There was a guy from Combat Camera testing out his new night vision camera on one of our flights. He got some pretty cool pictures of us.

Dinner was good the other night. Sundays we get ice cream (which doesn’t last very long in this heat) and usually steak and seafood. The flights here are long but I’m pretty much in the swing of things now. I’m not half falling asleep by the time we land at the crack of day!

The flight crews work about a fourteen-hour day, and maintainers about twelve hours a day. I go to work in the afternoon when the sun is high and it’s halfway up the sky the next morning by the time I get to sleep.

The days pass quickly though, since every day seems the same…it’s like the movie Groundhog Day.

More folks moved in yesterday. It’s going to be nuts around here until everyone gets settled in and in a routine.

I’ve spend the last few days putting together a brief for my guys about what to expect and how things are run out here flight-wise. I catch a lot of grief from maintainers since I’ve moved up to operations because they think I don’t work. They don't really know what I do behind the scenes and how much of my time it occupies. It's okay. The experience I get managing this program will be a benefit in the real world. They also don’t spend seven hours a day in the back of the plane :-)

Everything’s going well, though. Thanks for getting that coffee and stuff, that will be way better than sugar-filled energy drinks. Give Riley a pet for me and tell everyone I said hi, and that I love you all,

Zach

Courtney relays that his predictions were correct: unloading the massive baggage that was needed to support their squadron was a huge job. Getting to work was hard because the buses were tied up with shuttling people from the airfield to their tents and bunks. And it will be meetings, and training them in the new procedures at an extremely rapid pace, and flying right away, and them getting adjusted to the heat and where to eat and how to get to work...so much, but it will, I'm sure, very neatly and quickly resolve itself, and in a day or so the whole squadron will be running the operation well. And the folks leaving can go home to a well-deserved rest.

And to welcome the new guys, the A/C broke, so everyone got to enjoy the 130 degree heat right off. Oh, and the phones went out.

Thanks for checking in,
Katie

Letter From The Commanding Officer

2009-08-05T15:03:00.000-07:00

LtCol Christopher Abrams wrote to many of the families to tell them news. He praised the squadron's efforts to date, and noted that families would be hearing that it was HOT. But, he added that morale is very high and his Marines are ready, saying, "...as you well know, we thrive when most would be uncomfortable and they are quickly adapting.

He promised to send updates every so often to provide us with some perspective and info on how they are doing, and closed in reminding us to "be confident that our Marines are well-trained and ready to accept this challenge."

They are great.

I also told Zach to quit exaggerating. He's been saying it's 130 degrees but the CO clearly says it's a balmy 112 degrees.

Thanks for checking in,
Katie

So…What Are We Doing There, Exactly?

2009-08-04T13:28:00.000-07:00

It seems so long ago, 9/11, and the beginning of the war in Afghanistan.

Over that long stretch of years, the Taliban has worked continuously to grow their influence there, especially during the time that military focus was on Iraq.

They are strong.
They bomb and hurt people, deliberately choosing civilians.
They make people afraid.

Fear is the control-choice of terrorists.

Elections are the opposite of fear: instead of curbing choices, offering them. Not telling people what they must do, but asking a people what they will do.

Elections are an example of control stemming from faith in freedom.

And so still now, as then, as so many places and times in history, it can reduce to a simple choice: will the world will be controlled by fear...or by faith in freedom?

Afghanistan is trying mightily to have elections, and the Taliban is increasing violence against those elections, and against those who will be trying to protect the people casting their votes.

Who will win? Or perhaps it should be worded, what will win? Fear? Or faith in free choice?

They are far, far from us, those bearded men in turbans walking to the polls, and their wives and children, and those running for political office. But our fate and theirs is linked in complex ways.

Our sons are over there, trying to help hold the fear at bay. The result of those elections, and the success or failure of Taliban violence at disrupting them, will feed or starve terrorism there and in other parts of the world.

Respect for survival of the fittest is ingrained in our human natures.

And in Afghanistan, respect for survival of the fittest may come down to respect for those who protected the elections…or respect for those who disrupted them.

How can we practice strength with restraint? How can we fight terrorism and not create fear?

From the webblog link below:

In his first day on the job, the new Secretary General of NATO Anders Fogh Rasmussen outlined how he plans to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a "grand central station" of terrorism.

Rasmussen started with a pledge to ensure security for the upcoming elections.

Al Jazeera's James Bays illustrates the enormity of the task, after news of more violence in the country via a uTube video on this link: www.helmandblog.blogspot.com/

Please take a moment to click on the uTube dated Tuesday.

Thank you for checking in,
Katie

Wonderful Monotony

2009-08-03T20:00:00.000-07:00

The last few days, Zach has called his girlfriend Courtney - and she’s been great about relaying information to us. Mostly he has enjoyed his work. The flights have been unexciting (that’s a very very good thing) and the days, while busy, seem to go fast.

He has flown in the couple of weeks there more hours than he would fly in a month in Hawaii. Lots and lots of flying! Still mostly at night, so it’s cooler. Not for the day guys though!

He is anxiously awaiting the first packages from home. They get mail twice a week, so I’m thinking he didn’t get our package today, and will have to wait four more days for it.

From an email:
I’m so ready for it to cool off. I took a shower today before work and the cold water was the same temp as the air...130 degrees. I’m flying nights now so it's a lot better. Still have to get the plane ready in the heat but at least the 6+ hours in the air are a little cooler.

Thanks for checking in,

Sleep! !!! !!!!

2009-08-01T13:54:00.000-07:00

Zach reported that he got the gift of straight six hours of sleep last night

It's the best and longest sleep he's gotten since they left their permanent duty station two weeks ago.

Simple pleasures :-)

Thanks for checking in.

Too Quiet On The Eastern Front

2009-07-30T17:49:00.000-07:00

It is a peaceful night here. It is quiet.
It is too quiet.

I admit to being spoiled. I said so in an earlier post. We’re a close family who talks together a fair amount, so if communication channels exist, we generally touch base with each other.

When the phone is quiet, and I don’t hear from Zach or from his girlfriend, at first I worry.

Then I tell myself that I’m being stupid, that he’s just busy or tired. Or working hard and needing to rest.

And then silence becomes deafening: I remember the communication shut-down policy on the base when someone dies.

Zach has not called us all day.

That means someone may be getting an awful message.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

As a nation, we value life. We hate loss of life.

I believe that human beings feel the same all over the world.

I believe that young men of free will are at risk of being hurt from voluntary risk-taking, no matter where they are in the world.

I know we have been lucky as a family, with the risks my boys have taken, that they are all whole and sound.

When a young person is hurt anywhere, anytime, people feel compassion and sadness.

When a young person is hurt from gunfire or a bomb as part of a military campaign, something else is added to that feeling.

I am moving very carefully and slowly here. I want to choose my words with great care and great honesty.

What is it that makes military death even harder for us?
What is it?

The military efforts in Afghanistan are escalating now in Helmand province because elections are coming up, and the Taliban is promising violence to anyone who supports free choice of leadership: http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-07-30-voa16.cfm

Many Afghan people want to vote.
Some Taliban, Afghan and otherwise, oppose it.
And there we are.

I wish the phone would ring. It would mean that, even though political and religious disagreements continue in countries far to the east of us…at least everyone is going home safe, to argue for another day.

Thank you for checking in.

It’s 1:30 a.m. Do You Know Where Your Kids Are?

2009-07-29T14:12:00.000-07:00

I’m writing that half-seriously and half-facetiously. I don’t remember what well-intentioned commercial owned that line, which was supposed to encourage improved parenting, but it sticks in our society, an imaginary finger wagging at us in admonishment.

I’ts about 6 in the evening here, which makes it 1:30 a.m. Kabul time. Zach is in the helicopter. He likes night flights.

Why? Well, among other things, it’s much cooler. The weather forecast is mid- to upper 90’s every day, but drops to the mid 60’s every night. That’s 30 degrees of heat that drifts off with the night air. Subtract warmth due to the wind-speed at which they fly, and add the heat of the helicopter, and you have a nice temperate flight.

Part of this story is about big thoughts, and part of it is about small details. The tiniest, most insignificant facts of daily life will give us a greater sense of what their deployment is like, so expect to read many little daily-life descriptions here.

One of them is about rack space. Older soldiers and environmentalists, buckle up: their tents are air conditioned.

The soldier whose bunk is below Zach’s is due to head back to his permanent duty station as his deployment ends. He is going to give Zach his bunk (rack) which is lower to the ground. So it’s cooler. Easier to get into and out of. Quieter, as it’s not right under the blower. All in all, that 3-foot change in real estate makes for a far more comfortable rack than what he has now. So he’s looking forward to that. And in typical guy style, the incoming fellow who gets the top bunk next…well, too bad for him!

Another little detail is what it’s like to mail a letter. He wanted to send a little present to his girlfriend that he bought in Bagram, and went out looking for the post office. In a camp which is rapidly growing in size, Zach apparently looked for over an hour and still couldn’t find the post office.

Was he walking? Are there buses that go about the extensive camp? We don’t know. There are so many, many things, little things, that we don’t know about their lives. I know the camp is experiencing booming growth, as the troop surges happen. The infrastructure must grow very quickly with it. I don’t know how big the camp is, or how people get around. And the phone calls are too short, too valued, to waste time asking detailed questions.

I do know that to get from “work” to their sleeping tents, they have to take a bus. I don’t know how often the buses run; I know they have to wait for them.

They have access to email, but for many it’s a long hot walk to the crowded computer center. I know that emails we send to the address Zach can get often bounce back; we’re not sure why.

And I know that to make a phone call, he must sign up for a time slot. The time slots are for ½ hour, but it seems as if he doesn’t have a whole half-hour to talk. I don’t know if all the guys there have access to the same phones, or if Zach’s office responsibilities give him easier access.

So many little, mundane-but-important wonderings. We share the same ones as other parents.

One father said he thought he hear bullet fire in the background as he was talking to his son. I would say to him that he may have heard the constant sound of chopper rotors. I may be wrong, but what an awful thing for a father to wonder about and worry over.

The proximity to phone and email does kind of give us an illusion of security. But these much-appreciated communications seem to affirm that once the adjustment to life on deployment happens, once they get to work, they relax a bit and their natural personalities show up again.

For my son, it's a strong focus on work and responsibility mixed with an easy sense of humor. It was delightful to get an email from Zach today, and to read his words. He sounds relaxed and at ease:

“I’m sitting at work with nothing to do…we are launching late tonight and won’t be back till sometime in the morning. I think I’m going to take a nap in a bit. It’s my first night flight in a while, and the first time I’ve landed in a dusty desert since Arizona in May…should be interesting.

I talked to [my girlfriend] again today. She’s doing well. It’s always so good to hear her voice even if it’s only for a few minutes a day. I’m looking forward to getting my packages from you guys and her. I have some stuff to take care of and I want to get a bit of sleep if possible before tonight’s flight.

Thank you so much for checking in.

We Are A Little Spoiled

2009-07-27T18:36:00.001-07:00

War is different, and war is the same. Back in the day, you hugged goodbye, and longed for letters that arrived days or sometimes weeks later

It's still really hard to send loved ones there.
But it's really nice that sometimes now, they get to phone home.

An FOB is a Forward Operations Base. Closer to the bullets. The closer you are, the fewer communications options, in terms of phones and mail delivery.

But the support teams who work out of the main camp have, astonishingly, access to phones and sometimes email. We feel so very, very lucky to talk as much as we have been able to do.

Zach talked with both his girlfriend and me over the weekend. She and I have an agreement to text each other when either of us gets a call. We tell each other the news from him. Even the littlest details are important to us. We share every word.

Well, maybe not every word. I mean, she's his girlfriend. But most words get shared.

The teams on Zach and Scott's helicopter fly back and forth to FOBs regularly. Their responsiblities are to take food, supplies, and precious mail and packages from home. They take soldiers to and from the FOB. They evacuate casualties, and carry home those whose lives are taken away. Sometimes they fly other people, such as journalists.

We know a little more about how hot it is there: the thermometer near the pilots' seats reads about 130 degrees.

It's, um, hotter in the back of the helicopter.

Nobody needs Paris Hilton to say..."That's hot."

Because that's really hot.

Now put on the fifty pounds of body armor, and the helmet, and get your finger on the trigger of the gun in the plane door, and fly for hours with your eyes peeled on the ground watching for any sign of flash of gunfire.

Hot, and exhausting.

We talked about how many people in Afghanistan are welcoming to the American and Allied efforts in their country. Many are also not at all. Just like our country, people have different opinions and beliefs.

Zach said it is so strange, so foreign a feeling, to fly low over settlements and see people moving around below them. Wondering if one of them will run into a building and run out with something to shoot at them. Wondering who of the people they see below are friendly, and who are not.

Many are friendly; but who do you trust? And how do you know to trust them? We who live in peaceful places do not understand the strain that that puts on human beings...on both sides.

Zach told me today that after he flew his last mission, he came back so very tired to his tent and said hi to Scott, who went out and came back five minutes later to find Zach sound, sound, sound asleep. He woke hours later in the same filthy clothes, astonished and wondering when he'd fallen asleep.

Despite the heat and the strain, they feel good about their work. They know that there are people at the FOB who are depending on them.

For us, it felt good to pack up some small things Zach asked for, and ship them to him. It just feels so very good to help people.

It doesn't solve the problems of the world...but it makes today better.

It's Not Training Any More

2009-07-25T13:59:00.000-07:00

Zach called today; good phone reception. He said that they started work immediately upon arrival. I guess with the long delays in travel, the outgoing group needs to get them up to speed quickly.

He woke long before dawn to start work. His crew just finished a double shift. The good news is, he said casually, that nobody shot at them while they were flying.

Yes.

Now: it’s the first time I am going to use the word ‘troops’, and I want to proceed carefully here.

I have always been ambivalent about the word ‘troops’. It’s a word of respect. But it’s a word of distance. Of de-humanization.

We hear about ‘troops’ going into battle or peacekeeping or support work. We stand taller in the presence of the word. It implies trained-fighting-men.

We do not hear about sons and husbands and people we love going into battle. But they are: husbands and sons and brothers and nephews and uncles and cousins and boyfriends and fiancés.

So saying ‘troops’ is shorthand for they’re trained for this and yet, it sort of dehumanizes them. The word itself strips them of their emotional connections to us and to other human beings, and isolates them. They are a body unto themselves, connected for the time being to the rest of the troops. Removed from us and our sphere of influence.

Troops are moved around the country, and troops fight battles. Troops are deployed.

Soldiers are wounded or killed or captured, rescued, evacuated or praised or punished, and return home from deployment.

Somehow soldiers, even though a similar word, sounds more compassionate than troops.

As it is time for me to use these words for the first time in my own writing, I am squirming a little inside, wondering if I will use them, if they will become as hollow in my writing as they are to me when I hear them…or if I can find something more meaningful.

In the end, a thing has to have a name for us to begin to understand it. And yet, so often, the very word that illuminates something also limits our understanding of it, and our connection to it, as well.

So I will say to you that in the long day that Zach worked today, he helped to fly young fighting men and older fighting men back and forth to different places. I don’t know where or for what.

I am need to proceed even more carefully with the next words…because they are not descriptive of a group of healthy strong men. They are descriptive of one man, someone loved by people I do not know; a young man to whom I want to be very respectful, and people to whom I want to be extremely respectful as well.

All of the travel, fatigue, frustration, good spirits and frustration were nothing but a prelude.

How do you even say this? It is too real now.

On their first day, their crew flew the remains of a soldier who had been killed back to base. He had been hit by a bomb the day before. A small and precious box carrying his remains was carefully loaded onto their plane and flown to camp, to then start the journey back to those who loved, and still love, him.

I think this may be the story of that young man. He is exceptional. Please copy and paste this into your browser and read about him for a moment:

http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/MilitaryOperations/GuardsmanChristopherKingKilledInAfghanistan.htm

Zach’s voice was more serious than I have ever heard him. Devoid of any fun at all. No joking.

With respect, and in peace,
Thank you for checking in.

Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego?

2009-07-24T05:35:00.001-07:00

The camp where Scott and Zach are stationed is…well…rural.

I looked it up on Wikipedia. Loosely translated, it says that they are in a very remote desert. As in Very Extremely Middle Of Nowhere.

If you are traveling, and you’ve been traveling by jet and then propeller plane and then bus and then donkey cart and then on foot, and you’ve reached the little town of No F&#%king Where,

...you’ve still got a hundred miles to go.

The mailing address used to be Friggin’SeriouslyRidiculouslyRemote, Afghanistan…but it was too long to get on the postcards, so they changed it to Fricking Remote, Afghanistan.

I’m thinking no plasma televisions there.

Thanks for checking in.

Getting There: Getting Close!

2009-07-22T07:19:00.001-07:00

Zach called from Bagram Airfield, which is "a militarized airport and housing complex that is located next to the ancient city of Bagram, southeast of Charikar in Parwan province of Afghanistan" (per Wiki).

He was astonished at both the freedoms the troops there have, as well as the options. "You can buy microwaves and plasma tvs... there's American fast food...!" He was also surprised by the dress code. The Marine Corps regulations are apparently much more stringent than Army ones in-country. As much as Zach chafes sometimes under the restrictions of dress, I guess he supports the underlying concept. I could tell he was not impressed by the more relaxed code at this base. But there must be a good reason, to learn over time.

Here's some about the country in which they spent the last few days: Kyrgyzstan.

Bordered by Afghanistan and China, there's so much to learn about the culture and the country: bride kidnapping, as a graceful way to escape arranged marriages. Tortuous travel year-round, impossible in winter. And much unlike our country, only 6% of the people are over age 65: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyrgyzstan

...and you have got to LOVE the headdress that's part of their traditional garb. It's a for-real Princess Hat that I dreamed of as a child from pictures of medieval tapestrys and art. I most definitely need one of these:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.state.gov/cms_images/kyrgyzstan_girl_2006_05_18.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5755.htm&h=381&w=300&sz=17&tbnid=PnyylAACxZ5IdM:&tbnh=123&tbnw=97&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dkyrgyzstan&hl=en&usg=__3O3vPObUkmNuhKgZLzmNL-sQ7v0=&ei=-R1nSsSRAs67lAfR17XdDA&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=7&ct=image

That was most of last week. Today is Bagram at www.bagram.afcent.af.mil/, where you can get a flavor of what's to come.

Thanks for visiting.

And STILL Getting There....

2009-07-21T10:47:00.000-07:00

To get on an overnight jet from California to Australia or Japan... and be there in the morning...ahhh, it's the stuff of dreams of Zach's unit right now.

They are now in DAY EIGHT of transition and travel. Hanging out in one airport or another, living out of duffel bags, waiting, waiting, waiting. Putting on gear, go-time imminent, and getting The Talk, only to be delayed two more days.

Word is that today is the day they finally start the last leg, a two- or three-day trek through different places with their camp the final destination.

Phones are available, but impossible: there are too-few phones for too many people, and your calling card has to work. Zach planned to call his girlfriend at 10:30 last night but couldn't get a phone line for three hours, until 1:30 a.m. Sometimes you can hear what he's saying, and sometimes you can't. Scott called his parents this morning, and the phone line just cut out after about forty seconds.

And yet still, they respond with tremendous patience.

I have decided that my goal this year is to Just Not Complain Any More.

My life is SO friggin' much easier than what they are going through just to get to their base camp, and they are so great about it...using humor to deal with frustration, resting when they can... just managing it.

So for the next several months:

I'm not whining.
I'm not complaining.
I'm not feeling sorry for myself.
I'm going to be cheerful at best, and neutral at worst, and
I'm just going to do what I have to do.

I might talk about it honestly, and say I'm tired, or use humor and joke about it. But beyond that, I'm going to work on developing some more core strength.

We can all use a specific period of time to work on ourselves, or to accomplish a goal.

So...Game On.

Getting There...And Getting There...And Getting There...

2009-07-20T10:54:00.000-07:00

Getting There: Day Three (Friday)

They were supposed to have a two-hour layover in Germany before heading out again. They must have arrived about 11:30 in the morning. Was it this layover that they would need to put on their body armor and wear it from them on out? I can’t remember.

Getting There: Day Four (Saturday)

Driving to work, I find myself wondering where is he? I'm going to have to get used to that feeling, I guess!

I found out later that almost at that moment, he tried to call us – and no one picked up. It's odd, Zach and I have that connection.

Later on Saturday afternoon, he called again. Tired. Tired, tired, tired to the bone. Different country, same story. A long layover. He wants to get out of his clothes and get a shower.

There was no ground crew to unload the plane, so after all that traveling, they heaved all of the massive bags out of the airplane themselves. They were exhausted…but maybe it helped to stretch cramped muscles that had been sitting and standing too long.

Then a tractor trailer needed to be unloaded – of what? he didn’t say – and he helped with that too. It sounded as if he worked on it out of desperation to do something besides flying, or waiting to fly. They want to get to camp, and get to work.

Getting There: Day Five (Sunday)

An early morning call told us that they were leaving for camp, the final leg of their journey, soon. We don’t know what means of communication they will have. I feel lucky to have gotten the calls we did already!

The phone connection had a significant delay, and lots of the words fuzzed out. Zach sounds more tired than I have ever heard him. By the time I am writing this, they should be there…?

Getting There: Day Two (Thursday)

2009-07-19T12:11:00.000-07:00

Everyone, that is, except Kathy Wilt.

While Scott spent the night with his brother and sister, Kathy stayed up long after bedtime, making cookies and black-bottom cupcakes. I can picture her, the light from the kitchen spilling out into the darkness, while she placed dozens of tiny cupcake papers into baking tins, and slid fresh cookies into a container to take to the airport.

Chocolate chip cookies…do other cultures love them as we do, or are they iconic to America only?

Kathy, I am sure, understands Pam’s gift of salmon. Making cookies late into the night, putting them into containers to take to the airport to share with everyone. It’s a gift of love that none of my words will capture. Long after the cookies are gone, the memory of her tucking them into Scott's backpack will be pulled out like a photograph, to be savored again.

The next morning, Zach’s girlfriend left at 5 am, and we all said goodbye, and then he went back to sleep. I spent the morning tiptoeing upstairs and peeking at him sleeping. What a gift, to see him in bed at home. The simplest things are the most treasured.

I worked with a database client over the internet, discussing integrating their communications database with a data warehouse. It was an improbably complicated conversation, and surreal. While I was talking, my middle son texted me come upstairs. I couldn’t go. Later he told me that I missed a great photo: three brothers and the dogs all sprawled out together, talking.

Then boys went out for breakfast, and grandparents arrived, and my sister’s family came. The flight was delayed again, and after everyone left, Zachary went into his room and closed the door and did not come out for a long time.

What is it like at twenty-five to write a “what if” letter?

Then there was a trip for a cheese steak to put in his backpack for dinner, and a trip to the local grocery for sandwiches for lunch, and back to the hotel to meet the rest of the advance team.

This time, the ticketing counter clipped right along. We all gathered in a sports bar. Five hours to wait until the flight was due to leave at 11 p.m.

Which boarded at 2 a.m.
And left at 4:30 a.m.

We said our goodbyes and hugged at about 8 p.m. Without worries, without strain. We know that the best way to support someone is to let them do their work, without them having to worry about us.

I watched Zach go through security. I could tell he was cracking jokes with the guards. the way he always does. He just likes people, and talks easily with everyone. When he took off his shirt to go through the scanner, I found throat catching.

And then the feeling was under control and gone, and he was out of sight.

Fly safe. Be safe, baby of mine.

Getting There: A Hiatus

2009-07-17T19:13:00.000-07:00

We drove almost to home, and stopped for provisions. Zach and Mark went into the store, leaving me and two very attractive young women in the back seat of the Prius.

Now would be the time to say that someone special to Zach drove all the way up from the deep South for two days, just on the chance of seeing him briefly at the airport.

She and her friends rolled into our home late Tuesday afternoon. We went on a quick tour of Maryland and spent the night on the Eastern Shore, so that I could participate in a television feature about my favorite little town. Interview over, we got back in the car and headed to the airport, picking up party food on the way back.

Lots of the other guys on the plane had said goodbye to wives and girlfriends and family back in Hawaii. Thanks to the delay of the flight to Germany, we were going to get a visit with Zach before we said our fare wells.

Sitting outside the store near home, a woman getting into her car saw the three of us girls squeezed into the back seat of the car. She laughed. You all look so cute in there I would take a picture if I had a camera.

Pam had just come from grocery shopping at Wegmans. I handed her my camera. The picture was going to be part of this story, and I wanted it.

While she learned how to use an iPhone camera, she recognized me, and we reminded each other how we connected. I introduced her to Zach's girlfriend and her best friend, and I told her what we were doing, and we laughed together.

Until Zach came out of the store with his dad. Pam has a good and loving heart. Something about the story and the impromtu visit touched her. You could see it in her eyes.

Oh, just go on and hug him, I said. It's all right. And she said no, and then darn it, she did it. A big ol' hug, laughing and crying and understanding.

Mark and Zach got into our car, and she got into her car, and then she said impulsively Would you like some salmon? I just got it... and with that, she pulled it from her car and pushed it into Zach's hands. It's highway robbery what they charge for it, but it's delicious. Take it. Just take it.

It was one of the sweetest, most human moments I've ever seen. She just wanted some way to express human feelings that are difficult to sum up. Perfect, expensive salmon was the most precious thing she had to offer at that moment; and she gave it with her whole heart.

Pam...thank you.

After that, it was home, and hugging the dogs, who were delirious with excitement, and talking with brothers, and finding bedding for everyone, and more talking and a whole lot of hugging his girlfriend, who had to leave before dawn the next day.

Zach took out his body armor, and I tried it on. The idea of working in it for a twelve-hour shift is mind-boggling. We all see pictures of troops wearing it, with their helmets, but you cannot imagine how it feels. Just strap a concrete block on your chest and one on your back and put a brick on your head, and you'll get the idea. Good grief. How do they do it? They must come back from deployments with no body fat at all. It's like working with weights for an entire day. It must be exhausting.

This isn't to glamorize the military or make them heroic or support any political agenda. It's just to help myself understand what parts of their work is like for them, and maybe to help other people who want to know understand.

The job they do: yep, they picked it. But they are human just like you and me. Lots of people go into the military for reasons that have nothing to do with wanting to be shot at. Some need opportunites lacking elsewhere in their life. Some need challenge. Some like structure, but are not necessarily warlike. Lots and lots of people in the miltary do clerical work, and cooking, and maintenance, and planning, and bridge building. Zach just happened to want to learn things about flying.

I want, as a human being, to appreciate their work. Appreciate in the true sense, which implies "I understand, from a little bit of experience" as well as "I am grateful".

I appreciated wearing body armor for all of five minutes. It weighed so much that after that brief experience I was sweating profusely in the air conditioning and started a neckache that lasted the whole next day.

Then he repacked it, ready to put on when they stopped in Germany. We all said goodnight, and went to sleep.

Happy.

Getting There: Part One

2009-07-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

It's been preparation for HMH 463 for weeks: close down apartments or barracks quarters, and put couches and televisions and microwaves and stereos and books and blankets and pillows...all the stuff of everyday life...into storage.

Take the fish from your fishtank to the petstore, so they can sell them to someone else, so you won't have to find someone to take care of the tank for you for eight months. Call your cell phone carrier to stop your service in two days: there are no cell towers in Afghanistan.

Clean out your car, and get it in storage as well. Get rides for the next several days, since you have to put your car into storage days before you leave.

Shots. Malarial pills. Reactions to medications you might need tested. Instructions that you can share with your family...and instructions you can't.

Then you start to pack, and you load (in Zach's case) 185 pounds of gear into four bags, plus your weapon padlocked in its case.

Call friends, chat, wait out the days that take forever and go fast. And then, on Tuesday at 4:00, report to the hangar to check in and get on the bus to the airport.

Check in at the United ticket counter with forty other guys and one female corpsman, all of whom are lugging massive quantities of luggage.

PAY UNITED AIRLINES $125 EACH FOR HEAVY BAGGAGE CHARGES. It's mostly the body armor that you need to wear, since you can be shot at nearly any time, and the heavy helmet that will protect your head. Wrap your emotions around the fact that as a member of the US Armed Forces, you have to pay to ship your own gear to war.

Then it's on the plane, and over the Pacific to Denver, and breakfast in the airport and a quick call to your family during the layover.

In our case, it was such welcome news: our son's unit would be flying through BWI, less than an hour from home, and was expected to have a several-hour layover.

It started as a simple request: can you bring me a barbeque sandwich from Andy Nelson's? A last favorite taste of home before eight months of who knows what food, eaten catch-as-catch-can. Then Scott wanted Chick-Fil-A, and Zach thought that was a good idea too.

So he added on: And an order of Chick-Fil-A?

Then maybe you'd better bring a big order. So we can share.

Then Word's gotten out. Everybody loves Chick-Fil-A. Bring a lot.

So we planned to bring a lot, and we talked to Kevin and Kathy Wilt, who were planning to bring a lot...and we ended up bringing a party.

Kevin Wilt talked to the great folks at Chick-Fil-A in Cockeysville, MD and they offered a generous discount. Together we got three big trays of nuggets and a fruit tray.

Kevin got two coolers full of bottles of water at Sam's Club.

Mark and I picked up some jumbo Andy Nelson's famous pulled pork sandwiches.

My friend Wernie donated melt-in-your-mouth cinnamon rolls from his restaurant, the Bohemia Cafe in Chesapeake City, MD.

Grandmom Leora Ritter picked up crab cakes to share, Baltimore's finest treat, and made a pound cake.

Without knowing if we would be able to visit - it varies according to the group and is totally at the discretion of the unit leader - or when or how they would be able to eat, we went to the airport,

and saw the most beautiful sight you can see in the world: your kid.

They were strong, healthy, laughing, and unloading massive chunks of luggage from the United carousel as if they weighed nothing. I mean, pieces of luggage that were bigger than bales of straw, and that weighed as much as a small Toyota.

They never even made it to the USO lounge where they could sit down and rest after the long flight from Hawaii. After a straight sixteen hours of traveling already, they went right upstairs to line up to check in to the next flight to Germany

We were lucky; the terminal was empty, and we commandeered a counter, and the good folks at BWI let us serve the boys a feast. They kept thanking us, but it was we who wanted to thank them, for letting us share even a little part of their lives and their trip.

We got to meet folks whose names we had heard, and got to hear their voices. There they were, real and laughing, joking with each other, with blond hair or dark or shaved bald.

They were remarkable. Patiently waiting, never arguing, they never displayed an iota of negative emotion during the many long hours we saw them standing on their feet, not moving, nowhere to go, waiting in line to check in for the flight to Germany, only to learn that it had been cancelled for the night.

Among other things, I'll say this for the Marine Corps: they know how to show profound restraint and patience, when the need is there. My feet and back were aching, and I had to find somewhere to sit down - and I had slept in a comfortable bed the night before. They stood without complaining, looking for all the world as if they had just strolled over to the airport.

And then, after six hours of waiting in line, they loaded those heavy bags onto a bus and headed over to the Holiday Inn Express - and we heard the best, most unexpected words:

You guys who live so close to here, you might as well head home with your families for the night.

It turns out you can fit five people and 185 pounds of luggage into a Prius. And we drove towards the Maryland sunset. Happy. Happy, happy, happy.