On Recollection

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny 

and obliterate their own understanding of their history.
George Orwell

He notices them in the city, old vacant houses, bearing the form of the formerly beautiful.  He notices them in the country, old empty barns, the houses of which watched over them, also long abandoned. The barns drew him the most, some mystery there in their silent lofts, where among the beams and rough-hewn boards, life from venerable times was lived according to venerable ways, never to be seen again.

There are many reasons such places are abandoned, foreclosure, death, yet they remain vacant, remain fallow, someone's dreams perhaps tied up in probate or simply discarded, no one wishing to assume the burden of that which will take some care to make whole. He only stops to look, then drives down the road to home, an older place but kept in meticulous repair, the house warm, the walls adorned with only a few photos of the past, framed copies of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

A young woman walks out to the curb, where renters moving out next door left a few bags of trash.  Laying next to them were two large pieces of cast iron cookware.  She takes a closer look, both were high-end brands, and neither was purchased cheaply.  Both looked unused but for the thick rust covering both.  The house is empty and staying that way, she picks them up and takes them home to examine and clean. Once the rust is removed, the pans oiled, and properly seasoned, they look as if new,  these pieces that should last a lifetime. Someone simply did not know how to care for what they had and casually discarded them.

Out at the rural airfield, a man who still wears his youth in his eyes arrives for a local flight. He notices, off in the distance, tires flat, grass growing up into the wheel pants, there sits an old tailwheel airplane.  The paint hasn't seen a wash or polish in years, the once bright hues that flaunted their color against the sky like a cry of challenge, now laying mute upon the grass  The engine, which once fired up with life, growing louder and louder as the entire aircraft trembled like a racehorse waiting to run, lay quiet, but for the rustle of birds who have built a nest in the intake.  He wonders what it would cost to buy it, to get it flying again.

So many things that go unnoticed until they are gone.  Some lie barren, covered in days until they no longer shine, forgotten.  Other things, capture the eye of someone, be it a house, a piece of machinery, a person, or an entire manner of living, which for that one individual, possesses a life all of its own.  It is that missing piece of our history, that forbidden apple whose taste could open up the pathway to heaven, or cast one from all that is accepted.  Yet, they can not resist, like the fruit of the Tree in the Garden of Good and Evil, such things being fraught with the possibility of the undiscovered.

A man sits alone in a house that still shows the remains of the recent past amongst the modern updates, the 70's retro hunters blaze of orange touching some things like a flame, shag carpeting stamped flat there in the trails of silent children. It is quiet now, two children and two wives preceding him in death, his remaining child flying in as often as she can, calling every night before he goes to sleep.  The TV is off, the windows open, the curtains breathing in and out with the soft exhalation of the evening.  It is a night for memories or passages, those moments within us, that by our history, our remembrances, release us from the shadows, our soul freed there at that moment that makes certain silences more clear than any words that can be uttered.

In another home, that's seen a hundred years come and go, a young man in a blue button-down shirt sits in a chair, surrounded by books and antiques. Each piece was carefully picked from the flotsam and jetsam of estate sales, carefully cleaned, and placed in the room alone but for muscle and sweat.  The room looks no different than if the time was a hundred years ago but for a small flat screen TV, dusty in the corner.  The safe holds a small collection of rare and unique firearms, some dating back to the Civil War.

Some people are born out of their due place, fate casting them too soon or too late, but they only look ahead, even as they bear a yearning for a place they knew not.  On the shelf is a picture of a woman, not a young woman, except for the eyes, the blaze of her hair.  He looks at the photo, tracing the leather of the spine of his book, with hands that remember. 

A woman works in a basement, putting up boxes away from the moisture, water had crept in during recent storms.  In watching her work, you would think her a young girl.  Only in the harsh light from the window, do you know she is not. She look down at her hands and her forearms, the scar on her palm where she took a fall out of a tree, the rough-edged dimple on her arm, where bone forced its way through, her form no match for someone that outweighed her by a hundred pounds, someone who felt that since he possessed something, it was his right to break it.

There are other scars you can't see, the small bite-shaped mark of a biopsy, the small shiny serrations on belly flesh, proud marks of the skin's burden as it carries another to live.  Would she erase or airbrush them away if she could?  No, she's descended from immigrants and warriors; for her, life is simply a battle fought, the scars simply marking the skirmishes won.

She is moving some boxes and hanging bags, military uniforms and gear, worn by grandfathers and beyond, men who are now only dust and courage. There is a new box to add to these, for which she must make room. She opens the box, carefully packed up just a week ago to be shipped, the uniform items carefully shrouded and laid to rest within. She touches the items, and even in their stillness, comes a moment of real and profound intimacy with the one who once wore them, unexpected and lasting, as is often our glimpse of truth. They will be carefully packed again to protect them and stored with those uniforms of generations past. She leaves space on the shelf for another future box, for there will be one more, and probably soon.

At the bottom of the package, carefully wrapped in bubble wrap, in a lone toy soldier, that had been unearthed in the garden one Spring, years after the battle for world dominion with two flame hair children and their troops had ceased. The touch of its small battered form brought back the scent of the earth in their backyard, the shade of the apple tree that sheltered them, the warmth of the sun, times when they could ask Mom and Dad most anything and they'd tell them the truth.

Was this little figurine simply a forgotten toy or was he buried in some forgotten childhood military honor?  She could not remember, but like anything long lost, he spoke to her, of why we remember things and why they are important.

With that remembrance, with the lessons of the past, we can live safer and smarter. We can make decisions based on what we learned the hard way, about the truth, about individuals, about intentions, those deceits and traps that lay like spider webs for the naive or the unwary.

So she continues to look, sometimes seeing the past in front of her, in pieces found years after they were laid there, the answers beneath her hands, under a mantle of dirt and time. She sees them sometimes late at night, out of the corner of her eye. Perhaps it's just fatigue, perhaps an awareness of more than these moments here, now but there at the edge of her vision, she senses those moving moments of lives that went before. People who valued freedom over power, truth over political correctness, people unafraid to ask "why" or "how". People just like her, full of fear and pride and arrogance, courage, and love, the knowledge of suffering and foreshadowing of their own death, saying no to death, for generation after generation, knowing that can't stop it, but damned if they won't go out trying.

She sometimes look into unseeing eyes, wondering if at that moment of their passing, the questions were answered, or if perhaps more compassionately, they had forgotten the asking of them. But there is only scent and whispers, there in that cold landscape, speaking, murmuring across time, the questions they can no longer seek, but she can give voice to, with a simple but solemn, signature at the bottom of a page.

The items put away, she returns to a table of tools, a place to work and repair, form and craft, as she finds something soothing in fixing and finding answers in that which is broken, even as she restores its use.

The young man in the button-down shirt picks up an old violin, worth more than all of his other possessions combined, even as appearance alone might label it, in unknowing eyes, as yard sale material.  The notes reach out to the depths of the dwelling, penetrating the darkness, laden with the awe and enigma that can be borne on the strings of remembering men. From the shadows, a woman smiles.

These people may all be strangers or they may be bound by blood, bond, or friendship.  But they do share one thing; an understanding that life bears with it the remnants of the past.  They can call it baggage or call it wisdom. They can cover it, shed it, walk away from it, forget it ever happened, and forget its lessons.  But as they destroy that history, they destroy themselves.

Better they can preserve it, for what it was, those moments, those things that made them what they are. They can treat it all as something shameful, or they can speak or write of it, in a tone that would be a shout of triumph were the words on a keyboard capable of speech.  They can live their lives, old before their time, for the burden of the past, or they can live sufficient, complete, desiring as the young do, not to be bound, but only to love, to query and scrutinize uncontested, left alone with their freedoms. 

It is the future.  It is the past.  An elderly man sits in a chair, surrounded by books and antiques.  The room has not changed in the last fifty years.  On the shelf is a picture of a flame-haired woman. He slowly rises and walks towards it, joints stiff with pain, his form cleaving the space she once passed through.  He passes a shelf, a book bound with leather, an old revolver, and a small vase, his glance touching what her eyes had lost. He picks up the photo and realizes that some things, even if not present, are never truly gone, fixed and held in the annealing ash that is our history.

As the night descends upon him unchecked, he stands and looks hard at everything.
 - Brigid

On Mondays

Hey, Lorelei - isn't it a GREAT day!

You know what day it is don't you?

It's MONDAY!

Into the Night

When going into battle soldiers know who has their back. In Law Enforcement,  as with First Responders, it is much the same. But in the day to day life, we often find out who is around us that would take that literal bullet for us.

Growing up my big brother was my protector. If you've read my first two books you know our story well. He was my best friend and guide despite the age difference  I still thank him for when he sent the "live toad in a gift box" to the snooty girl down the block that made fun of me for wearing hand-me-downs and home-sewed clothes because my Mom chose to be a full-time mom rather than return to the workforce as a Deputy Sheriff when they adopted the two of us late in life.

When Mom died, and Dad briefly checked out emotionally, my beloved brother off in Submarine Service, I left home young, having started college at age 14, fleeing not simply because I was fleeing, but because the absence was the only argument I had at 14 to employ against the losses in my life. I was alone until I was not, then a pregnancy in college and my daughter's subsequent adoption made me realize I needed family around me again, even if not related by blood. So there were friends, and there were toasts and tears and healing as I got past the sound that goodbyes made.

When I graduated and was accepted into flight training to become a pilot I had much the same support system. Our Crew Chief, who often looked at us like something on the bottom of his shoe, honestly was our biggest fan, but using Crew Chief etiquette wasn't allowed to show it. Crew Chiefs were like that, finding the occupation of keeping their emotion steeled against the worst so captivating, that they had no other emotion available. He wasn't scared, but thinking everyone under his charge was such an idiot that we would never see another sunrise, he remained firm in his resolve that what was to be was predestined.   The ground crew was won over by homemade chocolate chip cookies even if they weren't quite sure what to make of the first female Commander in the unit.  My copilots became family, even the one that used to spray the whole cockpit down with Lysol because he was a germaphobe which was followed by me puking into his flight bag due to a late night out and one too many Irish Coffees before the cut-off for the night.

We'd launch, whether we were ready or not, listening to the sounds of the ground crew (clear on 2) with that listening attention that meant we were ready to go out and confront whatever those words meant. In the distance, a knot of men, moving with deliberate movement, offering a wave as we taxied out, their roles unclear as the wind amped up a slow vibration in the air, but their support unwavering,

But later in life, when my flying was behind me except for the occasional inverted romp in an 8KCAB, my support system was not so structured. There were friends I thought I could rely on that disappeared like smoke when there were clouds on the horizon. There were those that wanted to be friends simply to build their social media fan base. And there were those that were like the walls of my house - quiet, not always saying anything, but always there to keep me warm and safe.

My team at work has always been a constant. I've worked with gruff curmudgeons who hold evidence in their giant paws of hands like the most tender of playthings even as we are busied with matters of life and death that brook no delay. And I've worked with the young probies, so bursting with ambition and testosterone that they always upheld a state of lively satisfaction no matter the amount of deeply questioned bloodshed.

I've been covered in gore, and I've been shot at, ending my day wet, tired, and stiff in every joint, with that momentary hallucination of vision that comes to the insanely exhausted where like a drowning man reviewing his life, I realized that not only did I not find the smoking gun, I left the coffee pot on this morning.

But I always had my support system.

Today, I'm management- more likely to be felled by a paper cut than mayhem. My team still visits, but in doing so I'm "Ma'am" or "Doctor"  not "L.B." as I'm the boss. Times change, and time slows. But I do know that there are those around me I can count on, both personally and professionally, in that enlightened compressions that dwell upon the approach of a storm.

Yet, on those nights I'm stuck in a hotel room, the bed linen cold and soundless under my hand, clinging softly to that hand in the quiet air as breathing vaporizes in the faint light as I wait for the phone to ring, I'm aware of something.

I still have those that watch my back, even if they are only friends and family, strong in my life, even if their numbers are as a shadow is larger than the object that casts it. They are there in those mornings where the red dawn crests in the sharp light as if beyond the horizon lay hell, not heaven. They are there on those soft nights when ice cubes tinkle and the air carries on it only the scent of mint and soft lemon verbena perfume as small children chase fireflies in the yard as I sip my sweet tea.

As I return from my travels, the taxi taking me from the airport, the old bungalows of Chicago pass by the window in grays and browns, lighter than dust and laid lightly upon the earth, as if one good hard rain would wash them away, I smile. I am simply another suit and a laptop, trying to make a little difference in an insane world, where those that work with me, risk their lives for what is right and good. This is not the life I planned, and it is not the life I imagined, but it is the only life I want, here with those who would walk into the night with me. - L.B.

Beauty or Character?

Several of us own things, in our shop, in our homes, that strangers would only politely say if they saw them, "well that has character", even as they went on to exclaim as to the beauty of some other trinket without real use or function.

It's man's nature. Beauty awakens the souls natural response to living. Man acts on it as we know it is rare, and yet , it is usually a fleeting gift, sometimes with no other value.

Beauty may coexist with character, even as it can be absent of it, blinding us to that fact with its promise.


Character, as well, may be totally bereft of beauty, possessing no more than what is necessary for dependability, its light hidden.

Beauty is uplifting, but when cunning and wisdom is betrayed by evil and ice, gravity and fire, beauty may be as empty as a promise.

Character is calm, the ability to function and endure even with the foreknowing of defeat.

Beauty is the promise of satisfaction, character is the affirmation.

When faced with hard choices, evil thundering towards you to crash loudly into your world, what would you reach for?

Would you reach for the beautiful firearm that sits on the shelf to be admired or the one on your hip. The one unmarked, polished and perfect from its protective possession or the plain and well traveled one with a few scuffs and dings. The one pristine or the one with marks of your courage, etched into the very wood and steel, not to instill envy, but for the hurt and pride and liberty for which men long ago gave their lives for.

I know which one I'd reach for.

-Brigid

On Relevance

Since my 15th-year blog anniversary passed by quietly (thanks to you who commented), I simply leave you with bacon.  :-)

On Recollection - Fifteen Years of Blogging

The rain is forecast for later in the evening, We'd not had any appreciable rain in weeks.  Showers came through this part of the state, moisture-heavy cells migrating north or south of our home, leaving the ground parched.  The air was still smokey from the wildfires up north, those setting off fireworks all week seemingly unknowing or uncaring that they weren't helping matters any.  The elderly were staying inside, and outside of watering the flowers, and filling up the bird feeders, birdbath, and little water dish for the rabbits and chipmunks I was staying indoors.

As I got the watering done in the cooling air, as much as my eyes burned, my heart still felt as pristine as a Spring day, a feeling I hope I never lose, that of the newness and discovery of each new day, and a chance to live it healthy and well.

I' 've watched with sorrow the last couple of years as people I know close to my age, left this world, some through things they had no control over, and some through things they did.  I remember my Dad telling me from his assisted living home, "You notice there are no smokers in this place". He had a point, those his age were as fit as they could be, still moving, still mentally and physically active. It made me think of the disregard many of us had for our health and mortality in our 20s and 30s, wherein a "fighter pilot's breakfast" (cup of coffee and a puke) was not unheard of.  It's not something you can maintain indefinitely without its own risk. Dad worked out five days a week his whole life, even doing Nautilus at the YMCA in his 80s and early 90s. He saw his 101st birthday before he left us.

Myself,  I gave up swept-wing jets and alcohol and I have learned to curse in two languages thanks to my personal trainer (who is Welsh) who set up a program for me post-ICU to get me back on my feet.  But I feel really good with my 65th birthday weeks away (and that "we have important news about Medicare" that came in the mail today will make a nifty target at the conservation club later on)

Despite Sepsis trying its best to kill me 2 years ago (from a cut on the leg that went all rogue MRSA on me, of all things), I feel the same as I did 40 years ago, though my knees let me know of impending weather with greater accuracy than WGN and "contents may have settled".  Maybe it's the Scottish blood. I'm half Scot/English and, half Ashkenazi Jew, one half of that bloodline surviving for hundreds of years through cold and battles and war, and the other half wiped out but for 1 or 2 members, my biological father being one of them, in the death camps. Not knowing my history for sixty years, I was impervious to my blood, but in knowing, I'm not indifferent. With those bloodlines, I'm probably a DNA battlefield and perhaps some would say a DNA victim, but I refuse to be either. I'm simply in possession of the strengths of people that lived and loved, survived, and died, not knowing the legacies that would live on in their departure.

Today, I am just going to tend to the hard ground as I look to the sky, hoping for rain.  I'm on my own, Partner in Grime on the road, though now he's stateside and I don't have to worry about him renting a car in Johannesburg or trying to "blend in" with blond hair and blue eyes in Saudi Arabia or Central Mexico.  He is nearly the only family I still have, Dad being the last of our line, and my stepbrother of 30+ years, David,  passing suddenly this Spring.  Still, in their absence I still recall the many evenings spent with those I loved, talking of histories and old times, until such times became the present, their presence still as real to me in those recollections; as if their shadows walked beside me on this earth that they had not yet quitted.

It's moments like this that take me back to not just those conversations but those lands out West where I grew up, where silent deer drifted in pale bands through the trees like unwinded smoke. The noise of the city fades away and I'm back to where log trains would lull me to sleep at night and the echo of an elk's bugle would stir me from my dreams in the morning.  I learned to fly in the mountains out there, where storms came in off the ocean like a wanderer returning to his people, marked by the desolation of time and the fury of the depths.  We learned to watch closely those storms, those that would bring a gentle coolness to the air and fog to the mornings, and those that had a cantankerous temper of one who cared little for your defiant mortality, happy to trample on your finest of plans.

The rains followed me as I wandered in from the West myself, ending up in the Midwest, and finally here, the Land of Lincoln (better known as the land of high taxes).  Fifteen years have gone by since I made my home in Indiana, then Illinois when I married 10 years ago.  15 years of blogging, of peaceful days and storms of often my own doing.  I wouldn't trade it for anything, even the really darkest days of it.

I put out a couple 'seen better days" apples for Petey the Possum II, and look up through the smoke to the skies, Lorelei our rescue Lab snoozing inside in better air.  The sun is setting, enormous and red through the haze, bending low into the horizon as if looking into my face.  The clouds are gathering, the wind cutting through the smoke, through wisps of hair that's both fire and smoke now, grey with the salt of the sea and of tears.  In the gathering silver of twilight, the first raindrop strikes my face, a rumble of thunder a portent of more gifts from the heavens to come.

The night is falling quickly, the stars strewn upon flecks of foamy storm clouds, flashing with an intense brightness born from the dark turmoil of their waves.  Remote within skies that have watched over me and all whom I have come from, they flash bright above the hardness of this land, watching over the vanquished and the survivors who trod its ground, even if as unapproachable as the hearts of man.

As I hurry inside, those memories remain, even if the sound of traffic breaks my thoughts.  It's the city, and here I am home until I too quit this earth, leaving only my stories behind, the thin, durable, continuity of my life, born out of suffering and persecution, survival and triumph, the cleansing rains that wash us anew. 

---Brigid

July 4, 2023. On Brothers, Burgers, and Briquettes.

The picture was in the local newspaper.  They came to take a picture of him in his little chef hat, transferring a "baked potato" wrapped in foil with his official barbecue tongs to a little paper plate I was holding onto for dear life. In actuality, he wasn't old enough to grill by himself and it was spitting rain, the potato was raw, stone cold from the pantry. But the photo turned out great and I managed to look as happy and surprised as I think my brother truly was. What I remember most was his seriousness in holding those tongs, just like Dad, in his pride in wearing that hat. It radiated off of him, despite the cold, the wet, and the really lousy potato.

That old blue barbecue grill soon made its place at home and many a summer evening was spent around it. There was just something about cooking out. Whether it was perfect, burnt, or dried out, it was just good, because it was made on the grill. It was made by Dad and we got to eat it outside if we wanted. I guess it was that "willing suspension of disbelief" that you have as a child, that no matter what happens, your Dad will somehow ensure the end result is just fine, that dinner will be saved from the flame, and all would be well in your world.

How well you remember those days, when the air is burning hot, the whiff of lighter fluid in the air, the dark nuggets of briquettes, overhead a badminton bird flying over, the only sign of motion in the still summer air. Laughter as your brothers and cousins play. Shadows on the grass as you ran and played under branches from which smoke drifted like a soft touch. Shadows that got to those trees before you did, then faltered, so you could stomp them into the grass under your bare feet. Summer has just one date when you're a kid and that's the first day after school lets out when the barbecue is officially fired up by the man of the house.
But there was more than smoke in the air that first night of summer, something I was too young to understand, but I could sense. There was a war, and one of the boys in our extended family was going. A country I had never heard of. I didn't understand the details. I only sensed those urgent conversations in the kitchen among the adults as they prepared the food for the fire.

I knew my Dad had been to war and that he came home safe. Yet why were the women so worried? But I had watched enough reruns of Combat and old John Wayne movies to know more than I should. What I didn't know, I asked, though I did not get the answers I sought. Sometimes you have to work out your own answers, taking a small piece of the puzzle and turning it and turning it, til you see where it fits.

Although it was 20 years before I learned the true scientific methods of investigation, I read, I gathered up every little newspaper clipping I saw, and I watched the news surreptitiously out of my eye while playing with my toys. When a war movie was on TV, I'd watch the adults' faces out of the corner of my eye to see if something showed through, fear, worry, skepticism, waiting for a "that's not the way it was, it wasn't that dangerous, see, I came home!" But no one said anything. All that was in the room was the sound of gunfire and rockets on the TV, and a clock ticking in a long undiminished parade of time we pretended not to hear.

All we could do was continue on with our family traditions, our faith. The barbecue was there in rain, cold, and wind, on nights when we quietly gathered in the house around the table for meatloaf or pot roast. Nights when I'd politely ask to be excused as soon as I was done, so I could go back outside, to where I wanted to be, despite the rain, a mist that had dampened that night's attempt to cook out.

As the rain let up, I'd walk on down the back alleyway, to a neighbor's little pond.  There I'd stop to stare down into the water, its surface as placid as a priest's face,  hearing all my fears and sins, its surface still and nonjudgmental, a watery veil laid over the mystery of my distress. I looked down where I could see almost to the bottom, the last rays of sunlight playing like orange fire on the surface. There on the surface, a leaf. After a long time in the water, the tissues of the leaf decay, leaving only the fiber, swirling in the surface like soft bones, light from the last of the day's sunlight playing on them like a flame.
Another summer passed, the badminton set forgotten for lawn darts, one less place at one family table. And with my growing, came understanding. I think we spent so many nights out at the picnic table thinking that if we were out back and someone in uniform we didn't know came to the front door, we would not have to answer it. For my Dad and my Uncles had all served in the Great War, and they knew too well that age and time do little to remedy the pain of knowing.

For that night we had the barbecue, a communion of family shared with bread and lighter fluid. I would sit in quiet, as we all would, in prayer, for the bacon-wrapped salmon, for unintentionally extra crispy beef, for extra pickles, for another day of safety for those we loved. As we said Grace, I turned towards the coals, looking deep and hard so they wouldn't see a tear, watching the blackness turning to red and light and fire.

Then my Dad would look at me, put his hand under my chin and say "It's going to be OK, we have hamburgers that I didn't burn." I would nod, knowing what he was trying to say, as he watched his children realize that life wasn't all sunlight and playtime, that it also had another side, one of approaching darkness on which faint ashes of light would only appear at the perimeter. But his words made me feel better. My brother was my friend and playmate, but my Dad was my protector, and I found comfort in that.

There in that simple meal, in those rituals we could maintain, there was solace. We couldn't change the outcome of what was happening worlds away but we could hold on to each other, in prayer, in squabbles over the last cheese slice. We couldn't change fate, but we could fight with it, in the form of a cantankerous piece of controlled fire, with tools, tongs and curses, and sweat. We could at least conquer the grill and put dinner on the table. Dinner together as family.
My cousin came home from overseas safe and sound and summers went back to simple evenings of fireflies and lighter fluid.  But times were changing, as they say. My brother, growing like a weed, took more responsibility for helping around the house, especially as Mom was fighting cancer again. The war was over, the one where hundreds of young men, with their hopes and dreams, and aspirations, were released by that invisible hand of honor to come home to their loved ones.  But at our home, the war was still on, raging there behind the lines around my mother's eyes.

I wondered what happened to that old blue barbecue. I can't recall. But I do so well remember the night so many years ago that Dad handed my brother the lighter fluid, the big tongs, and the meat patties, ready for grilling, all by himself. I can picture him there, as if it was today, under that dark sky with such bright stars, whose distant glitter lured one's gaze into the expanse of immense darkness. And yet the light from our table illuminated his boyish face, his countenance claiming the alliance with those things that I had only trusted my Father to possess, the child in him fading away, to reveal the growing man. My brother simply nodded and took his place, his smile just visible in the fading swirl of spinning fire, the glow that for a moment, drives the darkness away.