May 26th

In honor of my veteran and his now over fifteen years of service and three deployments, I am reposting this from my first blog, the one I wrote when Keith was deployed for a year in southern Iraq, the first year we were married.


Changes in Perspective


Today, on my thirty minute break at work, a coworker asked me about Keith and I attempted to describe. "It's not so bad," I said, and saw several emotions pass over her face at this statement; disbelief and a certain kind of impatience. I hastened to try and explain, "I can call him every day and he's coming home for mid tour in December and..."

And what else, exactly, made it not so bad? Her face told me she was not convinced and it reminded me what a strange gulf, even after just two months, there is between myself and someone who has never gone through this.

My scare that he might have been on the helicopter that went down did wonders to clarify my priorities. I realized that it didn't matter where on earth he was, so long as he was on earth. It didn't matter if he was far away from me, so long as he was mine. It didn't matter if he was going to be gone for a year, so long as he came back at the end of it. These truths formed the basis of things being "not so bad."

Once those things were clarified for me, everything else seemed like icing on the cake. He has a cell phone! Oh joy! He calls almost every day! I'm almost ashamed even to complain! And even more, he sends me random texts. How to describe the impact of receiving, at odd times, day or night, a statement such as "Jenny i got your number and in going to make mine i love you," or simply "I heart u".

Today he called and due to bad reception, was sent to voicemail. This was during dinner, but hectic as it was, I escaped to the veranda where there was a stronger signal and called him.

"Sweetie, you called?" he answered, his voice light with joy. I explained. He told me not to worry and that I shouldn't call, it was probably costing me six dollars a minute.

"I know," I admitted. "But it's so wonderful to be able to call you anytime!"

"I know, kitten," he said, laughing, and his voice was so delightfully rich and warm with love as he spoke. I used to take that tone of voice for granted, now I take almost nothing for granted.

Last week, I went in to work at four in the morning, after some one on the night shift called off. It had been a long, long time since I had worked an overnight shift. I had forgotten the way the dead of night turned the corridors and sitting areas into empty, looming space. All the windows were blackened, reflecting back the pale, orange lights or my ghostly reflection. I sat down at the top of the stairs and simply listened; it was as though I could hear the entire building breathe, in the hum of the electricity and the rumbling of the heating ducts.

It reminded me of years ago, my first job in this field. I got the weekend, overnight shift. I remember how time was measured by laundry and how the clothes would send up soft, white clouds of dead skin and the sickeningly sweet smell of the dryer sheets. Every two hours, my coworker and I would check each room by unlocking it and peering in to the darkness.

This was always a little unnerving, to look into the sudden black, to wait a moment until pale shapes swum into vision, took on the shape of the back of a chair, or the edge of a bed. There would be the gurgle and thrum of an oxygen machine or the throaty rumble of snoring.

The corridors themselves seemed to go on endlessly in the pale light and always something seemed to be moving out of the corner of my eye, a shape caught like a human form, or movement in the depth of a mirror. Countless times my own reflection scared the hell out of me, coming at me from the glass door to the atrium, or in the tiny pantry window.

Certain places felt worse than others, more dead. We moved through them quickly, looking straight ahead. The kitchen, with its gleaming multitude of equipment, hidden corners, dripping faucets and strange hums was the worst. We never lingered, I went there alone only briefly, I forced myself to do so just to prove a point to myself.

Towards dawn my head would fill with a dull ache, a low thrum. Exhaustion would weigh down my limbs. I would fill a Styrofoam cup with a combination of coffee and hot chocolate. The liquid tasted vaguely chalky and a little too sugary, but it was hot.

The best part of the night shift was the last two hours. We would make our last rounds and as we did, we would throw open the drapes in the common areas; the dining room, the sitting room, the ice cream parlor. In the dead of winter, the sky would still be black, the street lights still casting their dull orange glow on the sheets of ice on the pavement.

But it was an act of faith, opening the drapes, and we always did it with a flourish. It might not seem possible then, but dawn would come, light would come flooding in to the dining room, glint off of teaspoons and reading glasses. Residents would spill their orange juice and call out for coffee, they would spread crumbs on the carpet and butter their toast in the strong light of a new day.

After opening the windows, my coworker and I would go and sit in the break room and fill out the paperwork, our eyelids heavy over scratchy eyes. Then there would be the last bustle; pre dawn pills given, early birds assisted, a few beds to be made and suddenly, as I stood on the landing, I would look out through the plate glass window to a world made of blue, periwinkle blue snow, cobalt blue sky, silver blue ice and pink and gold all along the eastern rim of the world, half hidden by bare trees and roof ridges.

Then I would drive home in the quiet and sit, alone in my apartment, while the rest of the world went to work.

I remembered this time in my life so vividly and I only recently realized why; it was one of the loneliest times I have ever passed through. Now I am solitary again, but what a contrast! I live in the light, in a house built up and improved by my husband's own hands, I have the bustle and small demands of work and I have an international calling card so that I can hear my husband's voice whenever I need to, and I need not pay six dollars a minute to do so, either! Things really are not so bad.


*


-Keeping Account-


Today I remembered the first time summer wasn't forever.
Barely begun I had sensed the inevitable end;
no longer the bright, unbroken sea.
Adulthood hovered over me, my snarled hair,
my fleet and calloused feet, poised.
I've mourned ever since.
Perhaps only in a finite lens does life burn fierce enough to leave a mark;
no stranger to intensity, perhaps I needed the end for its singular clarity.
I woke this morning to a dimming of the light outside the blinds;
even then the sun appeared to be vanishing.
I knew the compass of the earth had tipped over to the other side
now the sun would rise more and more reluctantly.
Not until the end of the year, rimed and tattered, will the balance turn again.
Accustomed to the darkness, most people will not notice.
I will, and I will note that even then the weight of more than half a year
will lie between myself and your return.
In fact, I will not feel your face between my hands again until the sun tilts
once more into its steady burial and the leaves prepare for flight.
There will be leaves in the gutters and flowers bundled
in their earthenware crocks when you come home,
the air will still shimmer and taste of dust,
the summer barely past.
We'll put that starving year behind us, its bones thin, weary,
and turn together to the coming winter.

April 25th

Well, it never rains but it pours here in the Indiana household.

Yesterday, I got a call from Keith telling me he was in the Emergency Room and that I had better come down because it was very likely that he would be going into surgery for gallstones.

So, wincing, I wiggled my foot into sneakers, tied the laces with one hand- not easy to do- and drove down to the on-post hospital.

I limped up to the front desk, where the receptionist looked a tad surprised that I was not actually admitting myself.

Keith wasn't in his room when I got there; he was getting an ultrasound. When he came in, he was in a wheel chair, wearing a hospital gown and socks, which rung my heart.

When the doctor returned, it turned out that Keith does not have gall stones, so again, no one knows exactly why he is feeling the pain, but at least he didn't have to go into surgery.

The doctor thinks it might be another condition and gave Keith medication to treat the symptoms, but it's really just another shot in the dark.

We came home to a musty house because it hurts too much for me to open windows, take out the trash, vacuum, or wash dishes.

The past couple of days, I've just sort of limped around the house, looking at things and thinking, "Too much pain/effort," and wearily limped on by.

However, last night I was able to wash some dishes, which was great.

Is that not a strange thing to declare? Who knew that a person could actively desire to clean their house?

The open wounds are slowly healing up, but it's taking a while. I didn't just scrape the skin, I shaved it entirely off, and not smoothly.

But it is healing, and I love me some Neosporin. That stuff is great. Our bathroom looks like a ransacked first aid station.

Tomorrow is Family Day. This means that I, solely constituting the family of Keith, will have to show up to experience some Mandatory Military Family Fun.

I will stoicly endure the fun times and then the next day, we have our first meeting with our case worker at the adoption homestudy. We meet with her up in Atlanta.

Hopefully, by that time, I will be able to shake her hand. I met Keith's boss in the parking lot at the hospital and had to ask him to hold my hand gently, which, let's face it, sounds a little strange on the outset.

Apparently, I'm famous, because even he had heard of my accident. I have become "that wife." Lucky Keith.

So, it has gotten rather busy and messy around here, which is good practise, I think, for when we become parents.

August 5th

Keith just called. His best friend from childhood will be driving down here tomorrow, along with wife to be and their five children. They will spend the night and then drive down to Panama City, where they will be getting married.

My head is spinning. I've got a lot of cleaning to do. Actually, I'd probably better start the laundry right now.

The spare room used to be clean. Then, Keith needed some long lost and generally unnecessary item of equipment, stored somewhere in one of his eight bags of non identified stuff.

So he did what he always does. He ripped through the bags, disemboweling them and strewing their contents over the entire space. The amount of stuff that eight bags can hold is mind blowing. It's like watching a clown car unload.

So now we have what looks like an Army Surplus store's entire inventory blanketing the bed and carpeting the spare room. And the other spare room was never actually converted from a storage area. All it is is a bare room full of boxes and one really old desk in the corner.

This must all be converted into something resembling two bedrooms.

Oh goodness.

Sayonara, story. No more pleasant meanderings along your wooded paths, your quiet houses. Not for me the work of drawing out the moss grown, ancient convent, with its orchards and tolling bells, with paths of grass and dormitory rooms with steeply slanting ceilings.

The sweet scent of boiling rice, the scarlet maple leaves slipping through the air, the shuffling sound of socks upon the tatami mat and the cool autumn evening; I must put it all away, for the next few days. It all must wait, and simmer away without me.

June 27th

Thank God for Monday. This weekend was so busy. We had a pool party on Saturday, so there was much cleaning and preparing to do early on Saturday and the guests stayed until eight pm.

As usual, I was my spaz-o-rific self. Only more so, I'm afraid, because the place I go in order to write Torii doesn't exactly get folded completely away when I'm not writing it, if you know what I mean. So I was super weird and awkward. The only good thing is that I was completely resigned and therefore, sort of cheerfully weird.

I think everyone had a good time; I know the guys did. There were two wives, one I knew from Kentucky and one I had never met before. Naturally, the Kentucky wife and I were more comfortable with each other, which sort of left the other wife out. I noticed this happening and then earnestly tried to include the wife in our conversation, knowing exactly how that feels, having been in her position many times before. I don't know how well I managed it.

I got to hold two babies, one two months and the other five months, which caused me no pain at all and a great deal of pleasure. I seem to be in a completely different place concerning children. It still stings when it occurs to me that we are not conceiving; like, what is wrong with us, exactly? Why not us? It's sort of a passing pain. And sometimes I remember what it was we thought our life would be like, and I feel a certain kind of grief.

Most of the time, however, I'm content. The life I'm living now would be absolutely impossible with a child. There would be no quiet, no time to oneself, no more clean house. There would be no writing. I'm content to be doing this with my life right now.

Later on, we'll adopt. It doesn't matter how old we'll be when we adopt: aging eggs have nothing to do with that. Though, I'm supposed to be signing myself into the doctor's program here so that we can get back into the whole infertility thing.

Anyway, so on Saturday night we had just collapsed onto the bed when Keith got a call from the MPs. A friend of his had been drinking and then had gotten into a major fight. The MPs said either Keith could come pick him up and take him to our house to sober up, or he'd have to spend the night in a barracks room.

So, there we were, out on a little evening jaunt. Before we got there, his wife called and said they'd moved him to the MP office, though we could still pick him up. The problem was, we had no idea where that was.

We asked the gate guard and got almost there, then got turned around and headed all the way back, past that gate and to a dinky little gate in the middle of nowhere. There are no such gates in Ft. Carson, or Ft. Knox that I remember, but Ft. Benning is just full of them.

Make the wrong turn, and they can be staring you down before you know it. They lead nowhere. They are not manned. They have those spike strips laid down, so you can go out, but then never return. You are just ejected, as it were, from paradise, and made to find your own way home.

I said, "The hell with this." and pulled off the road and two MP cars drove on past me. Boy, was that ever eerie. I knew cars were behind me, but I had no idea they were police cars. Thank goodness I didn't know, my anxiety was already high enough as it was.

We turned around and asked at a minimart and headed off again into the night and came to the older part of post. That's the part that looks like the show "Army Wives." It's full of old white stuccoed houses and plaques and the speed limit is 15 miles per hour for miles. And you'd better keep to it, because you don't want some fullbird colonel's wizened wife on the phone to the MPs complaining about the rabble that's speeding down the road at an unthinkable thirty miles per hour, threatening children, toy dogs and patriotic parades.

Anyway. So we crawled along. We were just completely lost, just turning at random along this maze of tiny roads with massive speed bumps, past houses that all looked the same because... wait... they are exactly the same. The same houses, the same parks, the same ghostly trees, trimmed bushes, the same plaques. Over and over and over again, round and round we go.

Finally Keith called the MP back. The MP said it was too late anyway, his boss had come along and made plans for the guy, plans which did not include him getting off the hook. Ironically, mere moments later, Keith exclaimed "I know where we are!" and that is how we found our way home.

Then yesterday, in the pool, Keith said, "Hun, I'm sorry I get so angry at you when you're driving."

And I was all, "That's ok; I know it's because you're stressed out by the circumstances. It's not really about my driving."

A pause, while several expressions passed over his face. "Right...." he said at last. "That's exactly the way it is. It's the circumstances. But I'm telling you, if you were my soldier..." another long pause, "....God help you," he finished solemnly.

June 23rd

Yesterday, when I called Keith around eight or so in the morning, as I usually do, he did not pick up. That seemed strange, but sometimes he is busy or whatever. So I waited for him to call back. He did not. I didn't hear from him until two in the afternoon.

It turned out he had had another episode of heat stroke, the fourth this year and the second one to land him in the hospital. Once you have one, you're more susceptible to another, and so on and so forth.

But the man doesn't learn. He still thinks sheer will power will overcome the laws of nature, and so ends up flat on his back on gurney being fed fluids through an I.V. line. Various tests they took did not come out looking good.

He's at the doctor's today; a miracle in itself. Usually he never appears for the follow up visit. But I threatened him with all kinds of death and destruction if he didn't go, so he's sitting in the waiting room as I type. I have a feeling that a major change of diet is coming our way.

So, yesterday my younger brother called me for the sole reason of telling me how awesome the Ceallach story was. He said he couldn't just write it on my facebook wall, he had to tell me over the phone. I was so thrilled I could hardly string two words together.

He said he stayed up for two and a half hours the night before, reading it, and then read for another hour that morning and that his eyes hurt from the computer screen. He said that at certain points, he actually got goosebumps, that at points the dialogue between Ceallach and Phillipa made him laugh out loud and that the battle scene was epic.

He said he enjoyed how I mixed in a little Irish mythology but sort of did my own thing with it. At first, he said, he wondered if it was just going to be a love story, but no; it got totally awesome.

These were the words of my youngest brother. I had a real hard time trying to concentrate after that. My whole family are avid readers. They know good writing. He would not have called me up if he didn't actually think it was really good. Besides, his praise was too specific; it was not the damned-with-faint-praise experience that writers so dread.

He has yet to read the fourth section, which is nothing like the middle two. I'm very interested to have some feedback on that part. I have a feeling it needs major revision. It certainly doesn't have the suspense and action of the middle two; it's just Phillipa managing to put her life together in Ceallach's absence.

But anyway, after that I started thinking more and more about how it would feel if I actually do get published. I thought about how it would feel if I could see my book, all bound, with the title (whatever that will be) in the front and my name, and all my words printed out neatly inside on the pages; reams and reams of my own words, poured out and captured.

I kind of want to be a slightly obscure author. I want my thick, paperback books to be sort of floating around, at garage sales and in summer cabins. And unlikely people will pick them up out of boredom and be suddenly entranced and transported. I want it to feel as though my book were speaking just to them, as though it had been sort of lying in wait for them.

Between worrying about Keith and elation over my feedback, I didn't settle into really writing until later in the afternoon. I've been crawling along fairly slowly at this part, which shouldn't be happening, because it's just the first part of their journey and it should just be flowing.

But I was stuck, and that usually means one of three things:

I'm going in the wrong direction, thematically, or with character development or because I mismanaged a transition.

I have to go back and fix something in the first part of the story that I've been putting off.

I need to stop and hammer out more plot so I have a better idea of where I'm going.

It happened to be the middle one. I've been putting off adding in the nastier parts of the story, not without reason, naturally. So I spent yesterday afternoon adding in the sickness and dark to the story.

I have a feeling that's the way this story will progress: I'll write it out describing the good and then go back and layer in the bad. It's easier that way.