soakin' up some rays

...in hopes of some natural bleach action. These beauties were the $3 deal of the century at a little antique shop nearby. They are each cross stitched, by hand I'm sure, with the brightest and cheeriest colors. The only problem is typical vintage yellowing, which I'm trying to take care of with last night's 24 hour water and vinegar bath and now the first glimpse of sun in days.

Sundays

...are our "thing." Some couples travel or participate in extreme sports together but the thing that we most love to do is wring every drop of rest and relaxation out of Sundays. I used to sleep in with him but as deployment got nearer, I started not being able to stay in bed past 8am. And since PT calls him into work really early every other day, save Saturdays, he doesn't want to budge before mid-morning and I'm okay with that. So if I get up early I do my thing until the day draws him out from under the covers, and if we both sleep in...well, you know.

We almost always make breakfast together, which is one of the most critical elements of our Sunday experience. Before he moved to The House of a Thousand Males, he would wow me with the most incredible omelets filled with whatever was left over from our week of dinners. Omelets being one of my culinary weaknesses, I am always fascinated by the taste and presentation he can produce, and yet he always thinks I'm humoring him when I tell him that he'll forever be the omelet maker of this couple. We brew up some coffee, sit leg-to-leg on the couch and find something mindlessly entertaining to watch until we're finished. My coffee is always hardly touched because I'm one of those one-task-at-a-time eaters but it will wait for me on the corner of the coffee table until later.

Later comes when we decide it's time for lunch or errands or both. I will heat up the morning's brew to take along and without fail I will spill it in his truck. There is an ill enforced ban issued on open containers in The Monster (truck). He will grab whatever is in the back - a dirty t-shirt, sweats, the occasional paper towel - to treat my havoc and he will roll his eyes and comment in a humorously exasperating tone. Then we leave down his street for an army supply store or the book store or Walgreens or the range. Maybe we'll see a movie or rent one, and eventually we find our way back [home is a relative term]. I'll make dinner, he'll tell me it's amazing, then we do homework or watch a movie or he packs for the next thing.

There isn't a thing that makes this routine special except that it taps into a kind of normal that only shows itself on rare occasions. The Army keeps life in a perpetual spin. Sundays are anchors in a constant barrage of anything-goes.

21 of 30: giving (some ideas and reflections)

• I went back by Borders to re-browse the Gaiam section while DVDs and cds are still 50% off - this is one of the ways that the digression of corporations makes me happy (even though I really love Borders in particular). I picked up cardio burn sculpt, cardio burn dance for weight loss, and cardio burn kickbox. After last night's cardio burn yoga success, I opted to give dance a try. I really like Patricia Moreno, who happens to lead both videos. I had a blast reliving my many years in tap, and when I finished I dabbled in the strength plan listed in this month's Health magazine. My arms feel that kind of tired sensation that means they will ache all day tomorrow and then more so the next, but it's wonderful to think that I might be able to obtain Madonna-arms one day. [a girl can dream]

• I made it another day within my caloric goals and that even included the Ben & Jerry's chocolate-brownie-fro-yo-heaven-in-a-carton this time, and a beer. I've been a little tired of pre-packaged food so I searched for something yummy I could make and landed on Cooking Light's blackened chicken and grilled avocado tacos. Quite tasty!

• Band of Brothers totally captivated me today. The History Channel was airing a marathon, so I sat in the living room floor researching Middle Eastern food after stumbling across a recipe for Za'atar flatbread in my artisan bread book last night. I was hours into this before I realized how funny it was considering the army-ness my life is so steeped in these days. I wrote The Staff Sergeant [another] e-mail to tell him how blatantly on my mind he was.

• Tomorrow I've got tentative plans to hunt down some herb seeds so I can get some sprouts growing for the plant stand on my side porch. I'm thinking Basil, Cilantro, Mint, Lavender, and I've been toying with thoughts of upside down tomato plants, although I'm not sure where I can hang them. I may have to settle for the normal growing method, right-side-up with cages.

• My interest has been piqued by the idea of homemade cleaners and skin care. I'm not completely sold on the commitment of that kind of self-sustenance but I like it in theory. I added several books to my Amazon wish list this afternoon just to keep the titles handy while I mull it over.

• I'm thinking about sending dinner to my soldier - making and canning a yummy tomato sauce and a batch of homemade pasta. I can't send prime rib or anything, but that would just be a matter of boiling noodles and heating up the sauce and it's still all home cooked. (Now he'll start reading my blog and the surprise will be lost...)

It started as an exercise in growth, and then ironically it become a blatant instance of mockery and self-loathing.

Dear year-ago-self,

You are the bane of my existence. Hope it was good back then, that you were having lots of sex, being treated to hot dates, and that you appreciated it for what it was worth!  And that concludes the very brief and futile walk down memory lane.  I should probably stick to the here-and-now to avoid any further jolts to my fragile state of sanity.  Was the dimple thing necessary?  [super gross.]

Your older, embittered present self,

SP

1 of 31: giving (up)

I'm giving nablopomo[.com] a try for March.  The theme is "giving (up)," however if I stuck with it, this would be a mighty depressing month, and I can tell you that the Forever Winter we are experiencing in these parts and deployment are doing a damn fine job of setting a forlorn tone.

For the kick-off, I'll do my best to throw on my rosey glasses and grace you with a little optimism.

[clears throat]

I wish that I had something profound and gracious to write.  And while I know that all the good outweighs the sacrifices (or I wouldn't be doing this) it's hard to be quiet enough to hear the meek, whispering reminders of choice.  The Staff Sergeant told me he was in the Army after luring me to coffee.  I considered walking out the door, giving him my best wishes and telling him to be safe but never to call.  However (entranced by his good looks and good shoes), I took my coffee from the counter and followed him back to our table.  He talked about literature and family and his smile, so perfectly perfect was hypnotizing.  By closing time my bones had dissolved and my limbs were tingly and beyond my body's physical acknowledgment that something was different, I couldn't stop what would happen in the months and months to follow.  

I was living the urban-dreamer life.  I had dibs on a loft in downtown Nashville, hopes to study sociology at Vanderbilt or to earn an MFA in writing, plans that snaked ten-times around the earth's circumference that did, in no way include or tolerate the Army.  Needless to say, I'm not in the loft of my dreams nor am I in a masters program at Vanderbilt, but I can say without a shadow of doubt that I am better for the altered plans (think space and money).  A year and a half ago I couldn't have told you that I'd be living it up in army-ville, working may way through a deployment.  In fact, I might have told you that a deployment was impossible.

I remember sobbing over the scene in The Interpreter when an African terrorist blows up the bus.  I thought to myself, I can't do this.  I thought that phrase a hundred times before looking around and realizing that I am doing it, regardless of how hard and heavy some days are.  At some point the thought became a question of how to be not whether or not I was strong enough.  

I hesitate to categorize any choices that I've made or changes to choices as "things I have given up", rather my perspective has changed and what I want out of life has taken a detour once again.  What I have [temporarily] given up is time and proximity.  He's not the first thing I see in the mornings or the last that I see before bed.  I've given up kisses and running inside jokes and dinner for two and the luxury of speed dial and an answer.  I've given up a lot of control that I probably never had anyway but let myself believe that I did.  

As I tell him almost daily, in emails that I'm not sure he really has time to read: I wouldn't change anything about where I live, who I love, and what that means about the person I have to be.  I don't like this leg of it but it will make the time that he's home so much better and so much more appreciated.

One Year: an elaboration

Happy you're-surviving-the-unceremonious-Suck. Happy I-can't-believe-he's-really-real. Happy how-the-hell-were-you-always-this-unknowingly-strong?

It's already been a year and though there have been opportunities aplenty for a dramatic exit, I have plowed through what seems like one hundred heavy trials of will. On paper, the ratio of time apart exponentially outweighs our time together, and yet I have never been more happy and in love than this.

I wish that I were in the position to grab you by your theoretical hand and carry you off on a sickening retelling of the celebratory event. Reality, however, would so quickly snatch us back to earth and serve us the cold reminder that, "this is The Army!" So far Murphy's Law rules the land. Instead of wining and dining, tonight he is playing in sand and I am staring down this unfamiliar window of blog space. The circumstances are unfavorable but reliable and tolerable and unwavering. And the good news: it only took a year to wrap my head around these simple truths.

August 16, 2007 - He has picked the date location around my demand for coffee. I have either forgotten or disregarded his unfamiliarity with the area, and I haven't yet learned that he doesn't really entertain the fluffy coffee-house scene. The only thing I have offered is my new found disdain for a specific establishment in town that has readily decided to evolve from espresso and pastries to dinner and alcohol. My art studio sits across the street and they have recently begun refusing to cater to my late night hankering for bagels, AND they have ruthlessly covered up their laptop friendly outlets. Once a haven, this place is now on my lengthy Summer of '07 Shit List. His suggestion, Portland Brew. Why? Because he has already called to confirm the 'round the clock bagel service and ample plug access.

I am careless in my clothing selection and off-beat in the way I style my hair. I honestly don't care after a roller coaster summer of shit-for-first dates, mental masochism, and the final split of family. But what's the harm in coffee? Does it matter that my heart's not really in it or that I've already written him off for his pride in unemployment? He's a[n out of work] writer. I want to be a writer, maybe he's got something to offer in the way of quality brain picking. My roommate thinks I'm untamed, ridiculous. You can see Disapproving in her eyes, but I pull on that billowy babydoll top anyhow, and I push the unlikely headband through unnatural, brunette hair. I am meeting him for coffee at nine on 12th even if he's on welfare and writing books on scraps of grocery bags because at this point in my life, I feel like the world is sorely indebted to me.

I arrive before him to make use of free internet. I stake out a table for two away from the front door where we hug the corner a little cozy-like, an invite for conversation. It seems that I would be watching the clock, but his arrival is unanticipated. He steps around a wall to face me and I cease to breathe. He asks my name just in case I'm not who he thinks I am. The way the syllables roll from his perfect lips and his amber-chocolate eyes catching mine and the Heaven smell of roasting beans and his immaculate tall-dark-and-handsomeness are all almost too much for one body to contain. From memory, I can't quite wrangle the moment my lungs unfreeze. I never pass out so I can only assume that they do. In my head I'm moving at Mach speeds, tallying all of the outward flaws and assessing which inner ones to mask. I am like a duck, attempting Calm while beneath the surface I have surrendered to a chaos of stark, raving panic.

Shortly, he suggests that we make our way to the counter to order and dumbfounded, I follow while trying to appear effortless and cool. Somewhere between our table and the register he unloads the truth. The whole Writer bit turns out to be mostly a sham and The Army makes its debut like a sucker punch I never saw coming. I figure myself to be only a few paces from the swinging glass door, but at this juncture I am in thought overdrive and operating on obligation. I have suffered this guy enough with my bitchy antics. The least I can do is sit down, sip the coveted coffee owed by the Universe, and redeem some bloody Karma. We open with the usual niceties and still I cannot believe how struck I am by the gentleman sitting across the table. Maybe just for the duration of coffee I can discard my certainty that The Army just isn't for me. We talk about where we have come from, shallow specifics of his profession, favorite bands, then Kerouac. On the Road weaves its way into our introductions like a flawless thread. We are both strangely privy to the beatnik travels of Dean and Sal. It's somewhere among these pivotal streets and the, "yeah, man's," and the trippy meditations between an East and West coast that I begin to know defeat is near. I am already falling for this man no matter my anger with life or his pact with Uncle Sam.

At eleven, they ask us to leave. My skin is on fire. I am aware of each echoing pulse as we stand and he guides me to the door. He opens it and escorts me to my car in back of the building before asking if he can take me on a second date on Saturday. As the moment to part hangs between us like an obvious fog, he breaks it with, "good night" and a hug. His long arms wrap around me ten times and I melt and I'm giddy like school girls and Army or not, he'll be picking me up for dinner in 48 hours.

Homesick.

The raw beams beneath my feet squeak after eras of wear, and the old warehouse is scattered with oscillating fans, having slept through the HVAC movement. I wander and weave between the labyrinth of booths if only to prod along the conversational ache of hardwood and to eavesdrop on the murmur of fan blades. I am home here among the rusted, paint-chipped, vintage silhouettes and the stories they would tell if words were theirs.

My mother likes to kid that she raised me in the back-roads antique shops of the South. Her "therapy", she called such pit-stops on these desolate highways. I used to loathe being dragged along the eternally winding aisles of cluttered shelves and ancient furniture. I couldn't understand why anyone would want to venture forth into the world of relics left over, but mostly my priorities were more child-like than antiques could entertain. Regardless, she would park her car, unbuckle me, and lead me inside. Those owners were just as humble as their shops, older and prone to the liberal use of Honey and Baby. I imagine they held their breath as I scampered in behind my mother's steps. None of these external factors would deter her, though, this was her salvation in a world of self-made chaos.

It's no wonder that my heart aged much more rapidly than it's vessel. Just as she reflects on my raising, I would swear I got lost in the mix of time. Even though I've long since moved out of my nest and away from her, some roots are too deep to shake loose. At the end of another work day, with the sour of homesick in my core, I set out in search of a refuge.

I found myself in the wondrous cave of this antique mall. I stood quiet before its floor-to-ceiling windows, open wide to swallow gulps of sunshine and breeze. To my right a big, white fan purred affections, smoothing back my hair in a maternal charade. I thought of summer days spent in my childhood home and the smell of Dad's fresh-cut grass slipping in between the honeycomb mesh of window screens. Then, there was a feeling of peace when nothing had yet hooked me, when I was still virginal and naive. I miss not worrying what I'm going to do with my life or how I will learn to survive the military staple of separation. It's strange how Home manifests itself in the old trinkets of other's pasts and in a man who wears camouflage and smells distinctly like Kenneth Cole.

don't get me wrong, dear, in general I'm doing quite fine

I can remember when it was all about MoonPies and doll babies, when entire chapters of time were measured by hours sold to that blue-rimmed trampoline, and being completely barefooted. That was before I knew of the intoxicating relief that would later make sense of my gagging confusion. It came long after I had washed the black from my soles and the idea of MoonPies had become something far more sinister.

The eighteenth summer changed it all. It altered the seasonal orbit of my center, yet kept me in rhythm with my alternative manner. Perhaps everything I knew had always been working toward the speed that defies gravity, that broken centrifugal force. If I had only known what clues to look for maybe I could have beaten the surprise, or at least been prepared. I wasn't, and so instead my methods fell into the palms of instinctive of reaction. Prideful highs became trend and trends turned to habit. The more I tried to push all of the pieces back into place, the further they fell away from assignment. The rest is unnerving and I'd rather not wander into those depths tonight.

It's coming. I can smell it and I feel its lightness breaching winter's stale death. It lifts the cold fingers of its foe one by one until it eventually has no grip left by which to linger.

Bikini Season. Unraveling. Restless Nights Hot With Familiar Fury.

[I'm not yet ready.]

Today, standing between two customers I felt the crawling twitch of contorting muscles. Like an old break now healed that aches when a storm is near, there it was. I felt the anxious pang for the first time in months, synonymous with the bursting blooms of overachieving buttercups.

I can do nothing to prolong the inevitable[s].

"Nothing is certain except everything you know can change."

I have found my way back to that eighteenth spring and again I realize that I could have chosen to follow a different fork - and that I can now. But naturally, I'm roping in a tighter grip on the untamable, working to misguide the unchangable. With each forward step it seems that I slide a little closer to that alluring place hidden among damnation...

...and I really don't know how to do it differently.

The beginning [of something bigger?]

I was little more than a bystander, just another leggy girl dancing drunk in the southern heat. If I recall correctly, and it's possible that I won't, my evening's accomplice and I were "bringing sexy back", playing off one another's staged advances. I think it was the beading sweat on our brows that eventually broke the rhythm, and we tore ourselves away from the nucleus of the crowd. She and I stood for a moment at the outskirts of the bar's back patio, fluttering our flashy tops to circulate air beneath them, our conversation revolving around another drink and the inconvenience of July's inferno.

I never saw them coming, the two casual fellows who lumbered up from behind. I couldn't see the one-of-them's face who asked if we were models until, stunned at the lunacy in the question, I turned to face the mad man. He was the tall, dark-haired talker who prompted my stifled guffaw. The adamant "out-of-work writer" who both enticed and repelled me. The subject who, in my inebriated state, I demanded would take my number as she peeled me away from my over zealous midnight oration. It was too hot to care that the conversation was brief, and the prognosis of unemployment was all too familiar a disappointment. As Mid-Summer closed in like a plastic bag around the head of an unknowing child, we shed what articles could be spared and then faded from the festivities earlier than usual, having found no night's relief.

On porches. [newly edited]

In the south, a home’s porch is a respected, sacred thing often attached to tales of tall glasses of iced tea or eras before air conditioning, when there was still such a thing as community. My parents have mostly been the vessels of this verbal legacy, instilling the value of a deep, wrap-around front porch.

I moved out of their house when I was 18, when it was still theirs and not yet his. Then, it was sky blue with a meager aggregate stoop at the front door. It wasn’t until their marriage had truly come unglued, every stitch pulled from its seam, and nothing but a shaky façade remaining, that my mother decided the house needed revamping. Blue was no longer sufficient and it needed a porch. Some people acquire a new pet, take up a hobby, or actually go through with the divorce. None of these options seemed quite as fitting to her as a complete overhaul of the worn vinyl siding and outer structure of my childhood home. She commissioned not one, but two levels of hopeful architecture. Much like the grandeur of a church lady’s hat or the carat weight of a woman’s rock, my mother must have believed that her stately double porches would somehow declare a picture of greatness.

I can remember going home in the last year of their matrimonial tolerance. I would usually arrive on a Friday evening and wake to the upstairs door as it wooshed open around eight or nine on Saturday morning. Before cracking open my eyes I could already imagine my mother in her gauzy pajamas rocking slowly in the wicker porch swing, and my father sitting stoically in the chair against the wall, now a golden yellow. They would both be sipping black coffee, probably not speaking, but somehow finding solace in the silence of the waking world. Once I joined them, one would inevitably suggest that I grab a cup of my own from downstairs. I would be assured that the pot was still warm and that my fancy creamer was somewhere, although I’d have to dig a little in the fridge to find it.

I could not have known that those would be the last meaningful memories of the three of us as a family, after all, their undulating threats of leaving and staying had been a part of my life for just as long as the two of them, together, had. I sometimes wonder how much success, if any, those sweeping porches gained in her mind and heart, or if instead they played a simple role in my mother’s big scheme of gilding the truth. No matter their purpose or how they did or didn’t serve it, the presence of porches wasn’t enough to perpetuate the game of husband and wife.

The Annual Occurrance

21 minutes and I'll have another year down, one more unit marked off in the pursuit of life's meaning, to making my mark, to living, growing, surviving, and learning.

[and I'm not who I thought I was...]

It is in these transitional periods that I am reminded of myself at this time year ago - different, sad, defeated, lost. It's refreshing to be where I am right now.

[...twenty-four hours ago...]

23 was less than a cake-walk. There was a lot of heartbreak, and not just the conventional type, and not just the kind that's inflicted strictly by others. I learned that I'm a lot stronger than I ever thought I was. There were innumerable moments that I wanted to give up, that I really felt I had nothing to offer, that I had no motivation to move forward. It makes my heart ache to remember me last January...

[Twenty-four voices...]

Now 24 looms on the 8 minute horizon. It's coming and I'm ready - for whatever lies ahead. This year I become eligible for FAFSA grants that only consider my [meager] income. I graduate from business school. I inch closer to what I want to do when I grow up. This first really healthy relationship will [hopefully] continue to flourish. I'm gradually accepting the divorce. I'm thinking about real estate, relocation, careers, graduate school...

[...with twenty-four hearts]

...and good ole' fashioned snail mail [which, I know has no real place in that initial train of though, but is so definitely worth mentioning]. It started with Saturday and the sweetest card from The Staff Sergeant's Mom, then today I heard back for the first time from one of my adopted solders! And a friend of mine told me that she had sent me a letter, too. How long has it been since I got ONE letter in the mail, much less THREE? It's maybe one of my most favorite [circumstantial] birthday presents.

[All of my symphonies...]

It's midnight now, so I guess I made it. My fellow Army girlfriend just wished me a happy birthday :) She's making sure I don't spend Tuesday moping around wishing I could spend it with my soldier.

[...in twenty-four parts]

I'm done now. My old age is taking it's toll. Midnight is all I can handle. I'm so sleepy.

Goodnight 23. Chapter finished. Door closed.

new shoes, old friends, and all the middle parts, too.

I don't have anything really eloquent to log tonight, just some catching up, I guess. I've been sick...with some delightful bug I was awarded for demanding kisses even when The Staff Sergeant was feeling under the weather. "I never get colds," I assured him, "only sinus infections!" Famous last words, my friends, famous last words.

It really hit me about 2 days ago and was swiftly accompanied by an indisguisable hacking cough that wore my throat raw and kept everyone awake. The peak of distress arrived last night when my boss told me to go home and the thermometer declared a low-grade fever. I don't do sick so well so I regressed, like all pitiful princesses do when germs plague their bodies, to a mental age of about 5 - the please-hold-me stage of life. Thankfully, today was my day off so I didn't need to report to anyone, anywhere and I rested and slowly moved through morning glory muffins with Republic of Tea, and tried to watch the Today show [but was thwarted by Bush's speech]. I ran some errands and started cleaning house, did some much needed laundry, and eventually met The Staff Sergeant for some quality shoe shopping [an interactive Christmas gift]. My new kicks are Asics, pink and gray ones at that. They're to hopefully make working out less painful on my feet, and less dreaded of an activity...and they are pink!

Also today, I bought my first pair of skinny jeans. I feel that they constrict my ankles, but I'm told I'll get used to it...

On a more meaningful note, I saw an old high school friend as she is in town to take care of an aunt who isn't well. We had coffee and time to catch up, and tomorrow another of my long-lost comrades from days gone by will be passing through on her way to see family. She's an army wife and we haven't seen each other since the wedding [2 years ago]. It mystifies and fascinates me to think back almost 10 years when both of these girls crossed my path, and to observe how wholly different we are from that freshman year in high school. It's good to know they're there, those bonds that survive.

With that, as my roommate urges the consumption of wine and the dryer's buzzer notes the end of another cycle, I'm finished.

Good night all.

Dear Self,

Today I took the time to write a letter. It will be sent to myself on my 26th birthday. I thought about copying and pasting the words here, awkwardly written in first person to me about me, but really to whom I will become. I reminded my future self of who I am in this moment today...struggling to keep it all together, whose family has unfurled, whose idea of Home is lost, lost, lost...wearing long, falsely-colored hair and bangs that I will probably look back on and question, "why?!" Intoxicated by new love and burned out on collegiate business studies, who has found a compulsive drive to write on anything about everything and wants nothing more than to find the niche of happiness that certainly must exist. I told my 26 year old self what I hope she has remedied. I told her about the dreams kept only in my head because, while I do tell almost anything, some prayers are too delicate, too sacred to expose. She will probably look back and laugh, being taken off guard by a composition she forgot she wrote on a bad day in her 23rd year. At least I hope, on some levels, that she does. I left her with the little-girls dreams, the "when I grow up" bulleted list, the idealistic goals that I hope she will have accomplished, while knowing that life rarely goes as planned.

Naturally this train of thought led me to reflect on the past year and all of the irony and craziness that carried me through these 11 months. Now, as 2007 dwindles to a wintry close, I am entertained by last year's hopes for this one. I am so very far from the person I was last December. I grew substantially this year, which, in general terms, is exactly what I predicted. On a micro level, though, wow...it's really astonishing sometimes to look back at the outline you planned and then veered from, but I learned from the short-cuts and scenic routes, and even the idle hours spent waiting in traffic. I learned specifically what I would never again settle for, and what I could and couldn't live with, and that I can survive on my own, but I don't like it. I swore to learn 25 new things...I'm assessing this goal and will have an accurate report of progress by December 31st.

I said I was coming back to Nashville, and I packed my car and did it. I said that I wouldn't date for 365 days, but I did, and I even fell in love, an event I was sure would be impossible for a very long time. I said I would graduate in December, and as it approaches I've known since August that it wasn't possible, and frankly, I wonder if I will even pass all of my Fall classes this semester. I've had four jobs, two roommates, one new bedroom wall color, finished one book, completed two pieces of art, written one commercial composition, started a blog, and been introduced to the lifestyle of the Army. I've lost and made friends, I've seen beauty in pure form and ugliness too. I've done a lot of aching, but haven't found reason enough to throw in the towel. I've left and returned. I've stumbled a lot with intermittent glimpses of grace. Although marked by scars, I now know how to avoid tripping sometimes. I'm better because of the falls and stronger because I eventually shake them off.

No, no one promised me a rose garden. In fact, my Mother always made it a point to assure me that life isn't fair. Keeping all of that in mind and where I've been and where I hope I'm going, maybe sooner than later I'll at least have a bed of tulips or daisy's.

CHECK THIS SITE: FutureMe.org

story time

He chuckles wildly from somewhere deep within himself. I pause my chatter to verify that I've heard this rare laughter, and I have.

"Man, I hated the military! In fact, I could have slugged the guy who called me into his office when my time was up...they call that...something other than re-enlisting, but that's what it was," he rants behind the belly rumble.

One of many really fantastic things about dating The Staff Sergeant is that it has awakened another grand avenue of my father's story telling.

He continues, "I had the meanest DI, man he was mean, but he could tell a great one liner. I think that if he had ever given up The Navy, he should have been a comedian...he had some great one liners..."

He's as bad as I am at staying on track.

"When you stand at attention, you can't laugh. You can't do anything, but you can't laugh, and that DI, some great jokes. So anyway, there was this one day that he dropped one into his talk [I can't remember what it was], and this 'ole boy couldn't help but laugh," he says with another diluted rumble, himself.

"'DO YOU THINK SOMETHING'S FUNNY?!' hollered the DI, 'I'LL SHOW YOU SOMETHING FUNNY! GET UP HERE AND LAUGH - FOR 20 MINUTES!' And that poor guy did. He stood in front of us and laughed for 20 whole minutes." my father finishes.

"They would do anything to embarrass you...I'll tell you what, I don't know if it made me a better man for being in the service, but I never once thought, 'I don't want to leave The Navy.'"

And that was just one of about 10 that found their way into last night's hour long "test of his new phone." My dad's a trip.

...I still miss my current man of the military.

6:09am: Have a good day, soldier :)

Ground Zero 9/2004

-----From-----
[###-###-####]
----Message----
You just made my day :)
Have a good day yourself
----End----
Sep 11, 07 (Tue)
6:11am

This is the first realization that today is in fact an anniversary of something harboring so much momentum that six years later it finally touches me. The ripple moves outward from disaster and six layers later I feel the first personal pangs of what followed. Six ringlets after the rock pierced water's surface it dumbly occurs to me to look around and ask what happened. Vested interest does that, I guess, heightens your concern.

I won't attempt to point fingers toward reason or connection of events. The temperment of the world is chaos no matter why, no matter who paid for flight school or who funded training or oil fields or notoriously coined phrases regarding weaponry. These things are not my motive today, as I take one more reckoning step in the direction of acceptance and the knowledge of what lies ahead if this particular course holds steady.

Over the last month I've all but beaten my head against the wall for not knowing more about this War, for shutting myself off, allowing numbness to set in, for choosing to be blissfully ignorant. And today I recall trembling as my 3rd period graphic design class was disturbed by news reports in a teacher's lounge of planes wrecking buildings and trying to understand...a draft?...gas prices?...God?...war, on my figurative doorsteps? The rest of the day was spent swapping glances of confusion with fellow youngsters, finding refuge in a place that no longer makes sense, seeing the cyclical replay of something so foreign that it couldn't possibly be swallowed in its visionary capacity. As a kid, it moved me, it shook me, it molded me like the rest of my generation to value family and friends and time. It was the end of peace and the institution of chronic discourse.

Eventually the news coverage waned. The buzz hushed. I saw the rubble pit almost exactly a year to date - still ashes and tarps and remembrance. As time passed, we forgot, those of us untouched, we moved on in this wide world of violence and we were able to coexist with it, without thought. I became apathetic. The void was cleared and my last visit to Ground Zero yielded surprise as the subways had already been reopened, building band-aids removed, and Burger King was back in working order.

This is how we move away from a wound and toward the eruption of battle, this is also how we forgot [and by we, I only speak for myself]. And so life is ironic and it would seem fitting that a text message reply would remind me. That it would remind me to value relationships, to value the moments of connection, the moments full of heart, to log the laughter and freeze pieces of invaluable living into still shots, to make the most of the hours we have, and to never take for granted a man who walks in the shadows of aftermath - it is all so much to comprehend, but this is the world as we know it.

I sift through the news these days against better advice, and I read the blogs of women who love men living lives in The Sandbox. I bite off morsels so as not to choke while chewing, and I slowly digest the actuality. I realize that I am the most unexpected candidate for such a position, but also that I'm here and willing and I'm all heart [even when it scares me].

[and it does]

...All this rambling of nothing to say that in the sixth year, the eleventh of September means something different. I am six years older, and six years altered, and six years numb no longer.

The Clarity of Hindsight

OK, ok, ok...I know you are all thinking that I am the most compulsive blogger known to man, but I couldn't pass this up. I really just couldn't. Have you ever wished that you could rewind to some other part of life and watch it again as it replayed knowing now what you could only hope to know then? I got to do that tonight, er, this early morning. I did a Google search for my name and "blog" to see if anything was found as a result, and to my dismay, my old LiveJournal appeared from three years ago...wow. WOW!

Reading over my thoughts and ideas, and the lies that I told myself was...well, funny mostly. And that time in my life seems so very far from right now, to the point that I was reading about people I couldn't recall. "I said hello to Patrick." - who? I was still calling The Future Californian, something equivalent to "Cali," I was 2 years into the 5 year drama of The Musician, and I had just decided to take actions geared toward transferring schools, was about to move from Suburban Sprawl to Metro Nashville, I had just applied for the Hotel as an alternative to "hell" as I described my previous employment - ::laughing:: Oh, man, had I only known how horrific the hotel gig would be! No tolerance or desire for drinking - was I even reading about myself???

It's hard to believe that was me just 3 years ago at the ripe age of...20 - thinking I had it all figured out. It's crazy - CRAZY - to relive those days through my own words at the time but to feel like a stranger looking in on my own life...well, maybe not a total stranger:

"The day camp I work for took a field trip to this awesome cave in "Middle-of-Nowhere", TN and one of the things the guide did was show us how dark it was inside when all of the lights were turned out. One minute I'm standing there counting campers and in control and then the lights go out and it's just me and the darkness."

...somedays I still feel like that (p.s., I actually remember the trip to the cave). Although I feel estranged from the person I was then, I am infinitely grateful for the lessons I have learned and for where I am because of them. There are parts of me that I miss: I did yoga pretty regularly at the Y, I grew veggies in my back yard, I had the luxury of TiVo and a cheap house payment, BUT I wouldn't trade this life for the world because eventually it got too hot to garden, I learned to live without television, and everything I could ever need became reachable in 10 minutes or less.

It all happens for a reason.