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
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Faster, Shorter, More Often
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
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
Monday, September 21, 2009
To Life
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
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
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Fear, and Not Fear
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
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
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
News
......"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
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
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Faith Versus Fear
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
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
Monday, August 31, 2009
Happy Gabe's Birthday
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
A Weblink To Ponder And Implement
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
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
Monday, August 24, 2009
Still Working On It
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
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
Saturday, August 22, 2009
A Surprising Turn, And An Opportunity To Live My Words
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
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
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Allied Forces + Afghan Police - Taliban = 1683 Heroes
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.”
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.”
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Being There
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
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
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Another Two Days Until The Elections Are Over
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
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
Monday, August 17, 2009
Chicory, Corn and Cicadas
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
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
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Pray
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
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
Monday, August 10, 2009
What I Pray
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.
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.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Honor Thy Children
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.
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.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Wednesday email from Zach
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
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
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Letter From The Commanding Officer
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
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
So…What Are We Doing There, Exactly?
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
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
Monday, August 3, 2009
Wonderful Monotony
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,
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,
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Sleep! !!! !!!!
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.
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.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Too Quiet On The Eastern Front
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 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.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
It’s 1:30 a.m. Do You Know Where Your Kids Are?
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.
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.
Monday, July 27, 2009
We Are A Little Spoiled
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 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.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
It's Not Training Any More
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.
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.
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