All's well that ends well.

The long of it is logged in days and months and thousands of miles, and the short of it can be summed up in a mere two words:

he's home!

Deployment concluded.

universal truth

Sometimes I feel the great weight of this whole thing--being apart, knowing it isn't the last time, and knowing I still have to perform, [all] at once.

Mine is an act of blind compulsion. At 7am the squealing pulse of my cell phone goes off. I have nowhere to be, most likely, but anything later than that hour feels wasteful and lazy. I sit up in bed bed, fumbling for my glasses and make my way to the bathroom. Everything following this routine is the result of the necessity to hurl myself toward darkness, another day's end. If I don't think about the "great weight" or if I simply move forward faster than I think it can keep up, or if I tell myself that the inconvenience is almost over, not a pattern in the cycle that will soon form our life together, then the hours feel normal, like my friends', like the lives of conventional people.

No one spells out the phases of separation. No one has so kindly written What to Expect When You're Expecting Him to Return. Maybe I wouldn't have liked knowing that the last weeks would split my personality into multiples, none of which perform independently. Instead they vie for the spotlight hungrily, without reservation. I am angry and broken hearted and giddy with excitement, and overflowing-happy, while tears pool in dark spots on my clothes and vainly shouted curses ricochet from wall to wall, unheard. I have embraced the control that lies in day-long check lists and home projects and rendezvous with friends that have become my family. There are time-spots left open for washing dishes and ceremonies put into play for scrubbing sinks and the tub. This autonomy makes sense, this is what had to happen.

Now I am asked to hang in waiting for a coded word, then the next one and the next until he finally steps from the magic vessel that will bring him home. I'm no good for these terms, and what about after, when my lists are disrupted and my support group is pushed into second place, and the Army has control again of more than just an arrival date. How does the switch flip smoothly? How is it possibly fair to be expected to bounce from one existence to the other without suffering an inevitable and utter breakdown?

Day 6: Hwy 1 pit stop

NoCal. Jealous?

i saw a modest dream, the kind that can't speak up

There is a story to tell, though it hasn't found its way through me yet. It hasn't formed the words clearly enough. They are still unfolding and forming into cohesive groups as I type. I work in phases like my father - life becoming a series of desperate love affairs quickly burning down the wicks that bore them until there is no more fuel. Maybe that's all this is too, a thing to keep me warm at night, an exciting idea whose end is deliciously unknown. Or worse perhaps, this is my True North.

I am a product of a swarm of things, but as my dad reminded me the other day, "I guess you can't take the country out of the girl." Part of me cringes and withdraws from those words, the part that still lusts after a tiny, 1000 flight walk-up in Manhattan, the bustle, the peace-like-waves of hurried traffic, the need for human life tucked closely around me. And yet time and time again, no matter what my heart is most currently fixed on, I arrive at the question: Why are my loves and inclinations unprofitable desires? Ah, the prompt.

[and as I proof what's written so far, I can see a difference in my headspace, that I like very much]

Let me tell you about the limbs that grew before me. My mother. One of my earliest memories is picking peaches with her before I tortured the tree with my need to climb it, and it died and rotted. Making cobbler in the kitchen with brown perpendicular linoleum rectangles and her hair, curly. She would spend what seemed like days in her gardens, always in that lavender terry-cloth get-up, shorts and tube top connected, slender work gloves and sun visor. In those memories her hair is also curly. Her bounty would be bright roses and okra, bell peppers, tomatoes, summer squash. Cooking the harvest promoted such blissful Southern staples as fried green tomatoes and fried squash, and fried okra for that matter. And when it wasn't gardening season I would still watch her move in the kitchen. No matter how many hours in the week she worked, dinner was always relatively homemade. As I got older she developed an affinity for figs, and soon we had numerous fruit bearing trees growing along the chimney side of the house. She made preserves, although I can't recall this being an intensive process, so there may not have been bundles of them. Nevertheless, this was very normal in my existence, not critical or praised like faith from the stem or from the hands, but performed like rituals with great reverence and joy.

My late great aunt, Mom's side. Influenced by The Depression, she developed a need to horde, cultivate and feed. Another dated memory is being put in a highchair hooked to a diner table in her self-named restaurant. She manned the register and the kitchen simultaneously, along with several acres of row gardens heavy with everything: grapevines, cherry trees, vegetable plants, nuts, fruits, leafy greens, etc., etc. And canning was an event, a near daily event. I still have jars in my pantry waiting for the right rainy day to make peach pie with her filling, and green beans that rival anything store bought. She did it all even until the end. After a partially paralyzing stroke the walker accompanied her garden work, and the kitchen was never empty of something earthy and quaint in its conception, but radiantly and perfectly full of Home. She served humanity from the ground and from humble hands.

These are the only ones that I know or have known. I hear that my mom's mom was quite thrifty as well, and my dad's mom had the chickens that I want now. Maybe he's right. Maybe some things are so vital to a person's make up that they can't be denied. This somehow seems to edge up awfully close to a vast pondering of the meaning of life. My "mother in law" asked if I expected the economy to get bad enough to warrant all of this simplifying, which caused to me to look at my motives. The economy was never behind it. I answered that part quickly and with ease. That explanation is a part of the story that hasn't quite formulated. There is something crucial feeling in watching a seed grow or kneading dough that will become the foundation of sandwiches, and in knowing that if all the world fell down around us, I would, in some small capacity, be able. And besides, it's in my blood. This, whatever it is becoming, feels like faith and purpose, like joy.

25 of 31: a breath of fresh air

Now that Spring seems to be less hesitant in its arrival, I am full-swing into Spring Cleaning! I'm also a whore for Amazon, and books in general, really. These are the latest purchases. I'm all about detoxing the house and my body and my lifestyle. I tend to be fickle in things like this so I just hope that it sticks this time. There was once upon a time that I wanted a little coop with chickens in my backyard and fresh eggs mere steps from my kitchen door, a big veggie garden, self-sustainability, and that was a little bit before it was cool. I had the garden and the bounty and the drive until about mid-July, when I decided that I liked air conditioning more than home-grown tomatoes. That was a classic example of running out of steam. I threw up my hands and let the sun scorch the rows of cucumbers and squash and eggplant and peppers. It was a beautiful patch. I was 20.

So I'm biting off something a bit less ambitious with what I hope will be an equally beautiful container garden. The chem-free stuff just seems to follow suit with taking better care of myself, and eventually The Staff Sergeant, too. I'm also developing a slightly obsessive addiction to the idea of urban homesteading, a more ambitious version of the aforementioned goals that does include my lost-dream-chickens. It probably won't be in this house, but if the vision holds, maybe at the next one.

Full of non-toxic cleaning recipes and tips on how to be more eco-friendly with the less replaceable cleaners

Notes on food, home cleaners, personal care recipes

Hailed as the best of the best in vegetable container gardening. I'll let you know how it turns out, that is unless my seeds rot in their little starter homes and never sprout...

4 of 31: giving (myself a break)

I have never in all my life been so excited about spring break.  

Never.  

I'm pretty sure we all felt the same way in class tonight with the windows open to filter in the optimism of changing weather.  There were a number of laugh-till-we-cried moments, specifically during a sloppy reenactment of Arthur Miller's The Crucible.  

Thursdays nights were marked for gut-busting episodes last Fall and sadly they don't occur nearly as much as of late.  It was refreshing, though, to feel young and loopy and to laugh and laugh without reserve...at jokes that only us English nerds find funny.

It's been a while since I've felt entitled to double over, silly with joy, glad to just be alive.  My skin and my bones are voracious with a craving for sunshine and breezes that don't make your limbs scream with pain before going numb.  

It isn't all in the air.  I'm also glad to feel grateful again for a good man and a community of army wives ready to stand-in for my backbone when I don't have the wherewithal to hold a steady posture.  I feel like this week's low spot, while it was dim, allowed me to get to know a few ladies better.  I'm grateful to be building stronger relationships with The Staff Sergeant's family, as we are all stretched by the sacrifices he has to make for his convictions.  But there is something to be said for the bleak outlook cast by dreary Winter, and the new vision that is brightened by Spring.  

my REAL Valentine's gift(s):

I've been meaning to write about Valentine's Day.  The last post featured a little self indulgence, but the real surprise was these gorgeous roses that came on Friday.  He wanted me to get them a day early so I'd have them all day on Saturday and to maintain the element of surprise.  Saturday I got to talk to him for ALMOST AN HOUR!  It was the best 47 minutes in the last two months because it felt like we got to be ourselves.  An even bigger surprise was his nonchalance regarding the ring info I sent. I was absolutely certain that he would 1) panic and 2) never, never bring it up.  He did.  A reenactment is as follows - 

The SS: "I got the latest package - with a sack of potatoes and the jewelry quote."

Me:  "...I'm sorry, what?"

The SS: "I got the jewelry quote.  I thought that kind of thing was supposed to be a surprise."

Me:  "...I'm sorry, what?"

The SS:  "That stuff doesn't freak me out anymore."

Me:  "Oh...yeah...nobigdeal..."

It was one of those moments when the tables suddenly turned, I panicked having been caught completely off guard and I really didn't think that this was an appropriate time for shrieking-with-overwhelming-joy into the phone.  That we'll save for something more official with sparkly deal-sealers and whatnot.  It was a GOOD day!

Then I went shopping.  My way-too-expensive jeans will be ready at the tailor tomorrow.

I hate the phone [but I wish you'd call]

...or IM.

And then he did, rousing me from a Sunday morning slumber. I've never been more happily woken, except, well, there were some mornings when he was here... We christened our webcams with funny faces and smiles and then mimed along with the text. There was a problem with the sound so we made do with written words and motions, though they were lagging on a typical delay.

Now it's finally time for coffee. Oh, sweet caffeine!

And the rest of Bye Bye Birdie - Oh, sweet mid-century culture!

[One day you find out

This is what life is all about,
You need someone who
Is living just for you.
One guy,
One special guy,
One guy to live for,
To care for,
Be there for...]

Dear Birthday Fairy:

To mark my 25th year I would like a bottle of this - 

For this to come early - 

A little more of this -

A LOT of this -

And maybe one of these?

(that last one was for the kittens whose lives I save by loving this ring.  Don't sweat, Sweetheart, it has nothing to do with you!  It's all for the kittens...)

Snow Day

Yesterday the ice came as predicted, though the worst of it was north of here [thankfully].  The skeletal limbs looked sugar-dipped and enchanted, and I can say that because I didn't lose power.  Paducah stole the spotlight on this morning's Today Show.  That's what I mean by "just north of here" - not so far North.  Driving into Nashville was incredible with the glimmering tree lines on either side and the frosted fields and rock walls adorned with icicles as tall as them.  For part of the day I didn't have cable or internet, but that's small in comparison to some others' inconveniences.  A friend of mine spent the night in a hotel after an outage at her home, making a memorable first birthday for her daughter.  

Today the weather softened with snow, weightless wafting snow that fell momentarily so thick that it was hard to see down the block.  It makes me wish that he was here instead of cooking in the desert.  It does this so rarely in Tennessee that even as an adult, it makes me giddy and excited, and I put on boots early in the morning to go out to snap photos and stomp around in the whiteness.  Unfortunately, I can't find the cord to upload my pictures from today, but trust that they look similar to that one up top and less like the ice-encased berries that I stole from a local news website to illustrate yesterday's conditions.  

I'm making snowball cookies to commemorate the snow day he's missing, thus increasing the cheese factor but I care not.  I care package with no shame.

someone's in the kitchen...

Our sense of seasons in the South is different than in other regions. We only sort of have four of them: 6 months of summer, 4 months of mild-winter, 1 week of spring, 1 week of fall and at least 6 weeks of wild-card weather amid the hinges of definite change. So it was strange and luxurious when Summer tapered off many weeks earlier than expected and spared us August's usual heat advisories and 300% humidity. An eerie cool graced September long before the trees became rusty and the days became notably abbreviated. Only now the mornings and evenings are marked with a reliable chill and I've pulled out my lazy hoodies and I've started craving apples and steamy drinks and comfort food and NYC. Something about Autumn feels like home and it brings about a force that I cannot fight, drawing me to the kitchen, making my fingers ten tireless little chefs.

Tonight I'm paying homage to my roots with black-eyed pea stew and cornbread (and Woodchuck draft cider). I have wild hopes that it will indeed make you wanna slap your grandma!  Cheers to Autumn and southern de-liciousness!

*kudos cookinglight.com

Presidential Debate [no. 2]

Welcome to my alma mater, Belmont University.  We may be a small, private school you haven't ever heard of, but who cares?  You know us now.

The audience begins to arrive via Gray Line tour buses. 

(This is the same building where I graduated!)

One of several viewing parties.  

We are live from Bongo Java, home of the Nun Bun.

Before our mesmerized gazes is a giant screen and all around our hungry ears is the booming volume of arguing politics.  We are pretending we aren't mere yards away from the Great Hoorah, but that we are there as well.  

Even more impressive was the crowd watching the outside screen in the 60 degree, pouring rain.  They are the true rockstars of the evening, and their numbers are many, many times those of us sheltered by the coffee house.

photo credits owed to tennessean.com

Debate '08

I've tried to keep the concrete details of my small existence a secret for reasons I won't go into now. This just seems too big not to brag about, though. Part of me wishes that I was still a student, to witness the historic madness ensuing on campus - news vans and national attention, etc. There are events all over town scheduled for Tuesday's town hall debate and I feel that I will be doing myself and the wide-eyes of my future children a grave injustice if I'm not a part of something so monumental. In recent history there have only been a few elections so exciting the American people.

If you know me, it's no secret that I was born 40 years late, missing the 60's (when my soul was conceived). The Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam and critical social progressivism created a tone that I have always envied. How powerful would it have been to hang in the electricity of so much needed change? After the first and second plane struck the World Trade Center towers, life as Generation-Unmoved knew it took a swift turn for the unknown. So here we are squashing under a system of drying Social Security, a diving DOW, a sky-rocketing inflationary situation, fuel dependency, failing medical-care, a struggle for gay rights, attempts to seize my right to choose what to do with my own body, and a 7 year war that threatens more for me than world peace. I so wish that I could attend the debate. Even as an alum, the tickets were few and snatched up by everyone else who has been swept away in the importance of this election. I will however, have to make time for one or two block parties!

highways and bye-ways

On Friday I met with my non-fiction professor to discuss an idea for an independent study next summer. I'm not sure how it came to me, but on my way to class the thought congealed: travel writing; a month long road trip. She loved it!

I'm thinking, roughly, 6000 miles on $5000.

The answer to a quarter-life crisis?

A liberation from responsibility and sense?

For what and why?

To find my true self.

To stumble upon Home in pure form.

It doesn't sound crazy in my head, though the money will be a trial. They say, "if there's a will, there's a way." And there's time to consider logistics and funding. I'm not going to mask my lust for it nor will I deny how mesmerizing the day dreams have been. Thirty days to see and taste and smell half of America, or more if I wanted. Thirty days to reinvent my purpose, my place, my routine. Thirty days of distraction from all that is "fair" [in love and war]. And to write it, for credit no less? This is why I can't give up higher education. The Man would never allow such a blatant severing of strings. Ah!, freedom and The Road...

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.

detour

After talking for almost two years about graduate school, I've scrapped the lukewarm chatter. Last week I succumbed to impulse and applied for the Fall 2008 semester. Surprisingly, I got in! Mentally ready or not, I begin the newest new chapter in about two weeks and I can't wait! Soon I will be embarking upon an MA journey in English creative writing.

show's over

Ah!, the sweet relief of life returned to it's eccentric and unconventional Normal. I feel like I've trekked the earth, lived lifetimes upon lifetimes, over-driven my mental driver, and I've had it easy. I could explain the last four days from my perspective, but it would truly be unjust. You'll never meet another man comparable to my soldier. Never. And I'm not just being biased. To do the things that he does, to simply be capable of enduring his Army is plainly out of [my] reach.

Now subjects flow to me like rivers after rain - I could use my blank space to expound on an array of thoughts. Choice being one that comes to mind. I could choose the self aggrandizing road and boast of newfound strength, pride, and tenacity. But my heart is humbled tonight by him alone. I feel sad that most of you will never know him as more than a character of this blog, an anonymous Staff Sergeant in a vast sea of camouflage. You have no idea of the man that he is. You have no idea how much respect he commands, how much admiration he summons and reserve he carries. He is the epitome of greatness and I am gifted each day to stand beside him. To this praise, he would arm himself with a snarkish remark and tell me that he's glad he has me fooled, but every word is truth.

Come and stay with me.

There's a crackle in the distance. Something is moving, brewing, ready for birth. Love does things to you that you cannot anticipate and when they are in full force, arguing with their direction becomes futile. There is a pull westward then north, southbound and to the East. Each mile is a minute lived slower than others, each day lost together is simply lost. It is a challenge to recount moments passed as they have become mere shadows and echoes. Too many prequels have been archived and the threading of continuity has been removed. We are less and more. We are estranged but kindred, restless yet content. Footing is temporary, for the earth always shakes again.

Too long, too vacant, too far apart. It isn't only good things that eventually must end. Somewhere there is a white knight awaiting his damsel.

while we wait

It was the same juvenile giddiness that follows that first call to your home line, asking for you - that first taste of what "love" must be like. Remember when you were certain that it was, in whole, the prepubescent boy-child who fancied you enough to chase you down on the playground until you were rosy-cheeked and out of breath?

There I dawdled in the retail lull of early morning, catching up on an order that needed processing, filing some paperwork from the day before. I neatened up my corner of the shop and was grabbing for my keys to retrieve something from my car when my phone began to dance across the glass counter top. I haphazardly reached for it expecting a wrong number [or my mother]. Instead, it was my surfacing soldier two weeks later! Stomach spinning and heart startling into a feverish pulse, I fumbled to find a simple construct of "hello." It's awfully hard to push words through the strain of a grin like that, but I managed to partake in 15 blissful minutes of conversation before his calling beckoned his return.

The strangest phenomenon in this process is the way that perspective is so slyly rearranged. Before him, a quarter of an hour would have been an insufficient pinprick of time. I never would have settled for something so slight to sustain such an unbalanced proportion of time apart. He melts and reconfigures me before I am even aware and I hang happily on those sparse words exchanged in the otherwise barren wait for his return.

As I battled a bought of usual frustration one night, I joked with him that he should have handed over a manual when he finally confessed his profession. I heard his smirk convey through the sound waves of yet another phone call as he explained that he was under the impression I was writing it. In rare moments like today, I feel that I have proven maybe an ounce of compliance to the military life. I feel a hair closer to being malleable in the way that the army needs its wives and girlfriends to be. If we never become able to bend, the nature of this would be crushing. Looking back it seems not that I am writing a definitive how-to, but that I am in some manner, recording my slow and awkward success.

Long time coming.

I can't believe it's over! Finally! No more lectures or power points, no more papers or all-nighters pulled to write them! No more tests or finals! I graduate on Saturday.

[Hello, Adulthood. I'm not sure we've become fully acquainted.]