Tattered Flags

After some unforecast snow overnight, the walk with the dog was quiet.  Down the street, a Village vehicle, someone marking gas lines as part of some upcoming work, based on the detailed markings, likely a needed excavation.  They'd been doing a lot of that in the last few months, so it wasn't a surprise.

What WAS a surprise was that the technician was spray painting the colored markings for the gas line work ON THE SNOW, which was already melting.

Yes, every Village has an idiot.  We just have more than one.

When did common sense go out the window?  Is it something I just noticed once I got to the "Get Off my Lawn" age, when it's so easy to forget the dreams and illusions of youth in the cynicism that creeps in as we pass 60?   I was reading a fairy tale to my youngest grandchild once, and I suddenly thought, "Look, A pumpkin turns into a fully-outfitted, gilded coach, and Cinderella just blindly gets in it and rides away.  Who in their right mind would DO that?  Apparently, Cinderella did and found her Prince and a happy ever after. The rest of us?  We usually get a sharp dose of reality and glass slippers that REALLY hurt to wear.  

Some of what might be considered common sense is innate intelligence, and that's all relative.  I always thought I was pretty clever, then one day I went to the U of Pennsylvania, where my former father-in-law, a robotics pioneer, was professor of computer information science in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. In his lab, there was a robotic arm that would play ping pong with you and win.  It was built by a freshman.  At that moment, I felt incredibly stupid. I muttered "beer, donut" and quietly left to liberally sprinkle some chicken and myself with some white wine as I made dinner with my mother-in-law.

Some of my aerial adventures certainly decry any semblance of good sense.  But even on my worst day, I didn't imagine some of the things I encountered over the course of my later career in the aviation equivalent of "hold my beer".  Most survived, and with a legal slap on the wrist or just a stern talking-to, never did such things again.  But there were just some fools who seemed to dare us to come out to be the witnesses and guarantors of the outcome of the very act we spent so much time trying to prevent. But some just didn't listen or learn, and the day inevitably came when I ended up at a front door. I know I'm supposed to start with “I'm sorry for your loss,” but I couldn't. I merely stood there as someone who had just aged before my eyes, grabbed onto me like a lifeline, breaking into tears. I remember one woman on a small drought-ravaged farm.  She couldn't have been much more than a hundred pounds and felt like a bundle of sticks against my muscled form as she cried, sticks that had weathered so much for many years, only to be tossed upon a fire, for which I could offer no healing rain. You don't forget that.

Somewhere in the Good Book it says know thyself, and though my interpretation of that was likely well out of context, I learned early on about limitations and tried not to exceed them, or red line.  Looking in the mirror this morning, I note the scar where I got whacked hard by the bungee cord of a CF700 engine cover standing out in relief on alabaster skin that shows every worry, every tear.  I realize that I, too, made mistakes that changed a life, often mine, in ways other than good, and that it was only through fate, luck, or a God who factored in my own stupidity when putting a calling on my life, that I am still here.

I do understand the lure of doing something without really thinking it through. As a child, I once used my dad's soldering gun to try to give Barbie a tattoo (to impress GI Joe), only to melt her whole arm off.  Another Barbie lost her leg being launched in a potato gun across the fence.  Then there was the time my brother got me to eat a dog treat shaped like a Hershey's kiss. When I bit into it and made a face, he said, "It's a dog treat, it's made out of sawdust and cow poop."  (Not true, VITAMIN FORTIFIED sawdust and cow poop).  Of course, I ran crying to my mother, who simply said, "If you're stupid enough to do something just because your brother tells you, don't come to me for sympathy."

I didn't learn immediately; there was something about the unknown, the unexplored, the "what if?" in life. I was the kid that even though I got straight A's, fidgeted in class, couldn't sit still, looking at the whole "classroom" aspect of life as a waste of time which drove me half-consciously, out into the world as soon as that bell rang away from a comfortable berth, from the menace of the mundane, to the wonders of a world beyond walls.  Even as a child, I understood the ancient human instinct of the chase, and I rushed out to claim what I thought was lacking in my structured upbringing: wisdom to acquire, adventures to behold, and fun to have.  

Which again was quickly quashed by my mom, who was a former Deputy Sheriff for Multnomah County in Oregon.  She had seen too many ways to end up in a body bag and passed on some of that wisdom.   The lessons took; I attempted to daydream less and listen more, and later in life, as airmen say, to keep the pointy end forward and the rubber side down.   

Like my mom, I later learned the ramifications of physics too well. I'd like to say I retired without ever having to burn my clothes at the end of the workday, but I can't.  I'd also like to think I could take in all that the world dished out at me like a trooper, but I can't.  Sometimes late in the night, I'll wake from a dream, one I have often of an actual event, a crash where the aircraft broke apart as it hit trees and terrain, a fireball erupting from a fuel tank.  Two were killed immediately, but another onboard wasn't at the scene.  A grid was walked; there were footsteps in the snow and pieces of soot and burned fabric.  The body was surprisingly far from the wreckage. He'd run clear, then walked, then crawled, already dead, just not realizing it yet as he strove to flee.  I stood there and cried so hard that I had to don new PPE.  It's an image I will take to my grave. 

I wake up today to my mortality in a world that's full of those still wandering in happy denial.  I can't change them; I can only change myself.  I gave up alcohol years ago, I eat extra veggies and apparently when I was a kid and said, "I can't wait to grow up so I can stay up as late as I want", as late as I want apparently is 9:30.  I can't undo past excesses, poor choices (never order the seafood at that restaurant in the terminal with little foot traffic at SFO International), and questionable taste in automobiles (seriously, I owned a Dodge Shadow??)  But I can live with where it brought me.  Moments of the loss of sense or self are nothing more than fate's little footnote, already fading, a scent, the sound of a voice, a flower pressed between pages, never to be opened again.  Those regrets don't drive my day; they are a shade, a shadow, a whispered warning, perhaps, but a quiet one.

Outside, there is snow. I'm going to go out in footwear that is not suitable, fueled by a bowl of Frosted Flakes and too much caffeine, and seize the day.  I have my lessons, years of patience, and extreme care that got me through broken clouds, turbulent air, and unforecast change, where the senses of my command brought me out to safety. How slow had been those flights of passage, and how quickly they were over.  

So, for today, I'm just going to explore, laugh, and wonder in the world. The snow is melting, and the laundry will hold. For what is one day? A short space before the light too soon, and the echo of an owl's wings brushes against the windowsill. Just a brief interlude in the sun's dance. 

My past may have brought high winds, bent trees, and fire; a helter-skelter of responsibility, fear, danger, and the occasional fractured heart.  Such is what I did, and such is what I am. But for today, I'll embrace what comes my way: the trees, a refuge of familiar order; the few remaining leaves; a brace of tattered flags against ancient wood, not knowing yet that they are dead.

I watch as a leaf flutters down from above, resting on the ground immobile, stilled forever, as it were, until the breeze picks it up and spins it aloft towards the sun which breaches the perimeter.  For now, I have the light, some of the sense my mom instilled in me, and a snowball the size of a small planet in my hand, just waiting for my husband to leave the house.    

A new day awaits.  

A Bit of Classic Prose and a Classic Firearm

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead. In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head Like the brass cannon;
let the brow o'erwhelm it.
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
-William Shakespeare - King Henry V

Learning to Walk on Broken Glass

"One day, some people came to the master and asked, 'How can you be happy in a world of such impermanence, where you cannot protect your loved ones from harm, illness, and death?' The master held up a glass and said 'Someone gave me this glass, and I really like this glass. It holds my water admirably, and it glistens in the sunlight. I touch it, and it rings! One day, the wind may blow it off the shelf, or my elbow may knock it from the table. I know this glass is already broken, so I enjoy it incredibly.'"  - Achaan Chah Subato  -  Theravandan meditation master

In my Facebook feed, I saw a snippet of a post from 10 years ago.  A photo of Barkley that had been posted in remembrance on that first Christmas after we lost him.  So many pictures from those happy times.  Happiness is still found, but the people and souls who made up our lives then have changed drastically. In the last few years, I've said goodbye to Barkley, Abby, and Lorelei Lab, my brother, my dad, and my stepbrother.  Now my little sister (biological) is fighting for her life with Stage IV cancer.

As children, we view the world as if it will always be as it is that day. Mom and Dad will always be there; the dog will live forever. There is little that cannot be fixed with glue, a bandage, and Mom's chocolate chip cookies. As we get older, those perceptions sometimes remain: that we will live happily ever after; that we will have children, who will have children, who will have children, the family living forever, in a defined order of aging and passing. We go into adulthood believing what is useful for us to believe, or rather what is intolerable for us NOT to believe.

After Barkley's death, we went out to see my Dad to laugh and remember much more than just the life of a dog.  While I was there, I took Dad and my new husband one day up to the cemetery on top of a hill, where we could watch our shadows upon two small graves. My brother did not go; still weary from both chemo and radiation, but helping us prepare flowers to take to those graves.

I remember standing there, shafts of sun hitting that small stone, listening to the short song of a hidden bird who sang four short notes, then ceased, as from a distance came the incurious, calm sound of bells. As my Dad did, I realized long ago that one must sometimes don that shirt of flame, which we do not have the power to remove but only to bear, without being devoured by the blaze.

There is no perfect order, there is no guarantee, but there still is, and always will be beauty. If we didn't learn that, we'd only move without living and grieve without weeping, neither worth the toll they take on that which remains.  For myself, I chose now to weep, and with that, remember.

I think again of those beliefs peculiar to childhood, namely those things we believe simply because we are too young not to believe. The first was Santa Claus.  I had my doubts the first year I sat on Santa's lap at the hardware store, and he was wearing black geek glasses. Santa should look like Santa, not a 30-year-old CPA. Still, I kept quiet, buying Mom's explanation that he was just Santa's stunt double, Santa being busy that day. Certainly, Santa was real; he had to be real. 

Then there was the Tooth Fairy. Dad still has this little note, written in my handwriting, an affidavit to the Tooth Fairy attesting that indeed I did lose my tooth, but I swallowed it with the piece of apple that pried it loose. It's wrapped around a little plastic box filled with baby teeth. Big Bro was a little less subtle. One night, long after I was asleep, Dad was alerted from the bathroom where he was preparing for bed with a "Dad, I caught the Tooth Fairy," and he had Mom by the arm and was tickling her, and they were BOTH laughing. 

The Easter bunny had just a slight role at Easter, being a tradition to bring sweets to celebrate the gift and the Sacrifice of Jesus, rather than being the reason for the whole holiday. Still, before church, we loved to find the little baskets outside the door, with candy eggs and a chocolate bunny.  Until one day, when we got up, and there was no basket.

 Mom and Dad announced we were too old for the Easter Bunny.  Instead, they were taking us on an outing tomorrow! To the State Capital! Yes, children getting to visit a government building instead of a basket of candy! You can only imagine our excitement. On the drive there, we whispered intricate conspiracies from the back seat to get out of this to no avail, not wanting to hurt our Mom's feelings. So we learned what a rotunda was. Dad finagled a tour at a local brewery on the way back, likely needing a drink after watching our tax dollars in action.

Watching the cans getting processed was a whole lot more fun than politicians in suits, and as we drove home, Mom did stop and get us some ice cream, realizing the day hadn't gone as she'd hoped but appreciating that we at least tried. I think deep down, we had known for some time the Easter Bunny was our Mom and Dad. But we were not yet openly willing to admit to another fractured fairy tale.

 Still, though, our parents let us hold on to the perception that the world was unbroken as long as they could. Some things, though, could not wait until adulthood. One was finding out we were adopted. So many people, then, and even now, ask me about biological parents, and I have no answers for them. But for the reason of the severing of that tie, which is not the concern of the world, neither of us sought to find them, outside the scope of our hurt or their harm, even if we refused to pass judgment for the reasons we ended up where we did. Or perhaps we did pass judgment, but were simply unwilling to pronounce sentence.

All I can truly say is my brother and I came into the best possible family.  Disciplined, loving, hard-working people who came from nothing by way of material means or privilege and still crafted a life of learning and beauty. Our clothes were handed down or handmade, our food from the garden, pasture, or forest behind the house, and our bikes were used.  But we had everything that was truly important, and that was a deep appreciation for every day, even those marked with illness or imperfection, easily forgotten when we were greeted upon returning home by our Mother's smile and the joyous bark of a dog.  

This was the beauty of family, simultaneously fragmented and undefeated, emboldened and afraid, yet still seeing the good in the world around us.  So we carried on, my brother and I, as we told our stories.  "Remember when Dad was told to give me the 'birds and the bees, boys and girls are different talk’ because Mom was sick?  It consisted of a photo of a boy from the Sears catalog in his underwear, a finger pointed to a critical area, and the admonishment "Don't kick your brother there!"  He would then laugh and remind me of something silly I had done in school, memories that shone in the sunlight on the telling, his laughter still ringing like a touch on glass. In our stories, we were children, and our favorite dog was always with us. We were not just immortal; we were invincible. We would run and run until our bones turned to water, and we fell in a puddle of arms and legs and barking dog, forever joyful.

On the den wall is a family tree my aunt drew with careful calligraphy, giving us each a copy. I note many branches, some ending abruptly as some died young, some were widowed, some childless, a lifelong bachelor or spinster among them. Now, on a branch, which had ended abruptly, is a name, next to mine, something I owe in part to a dog named Barkley.

For Barkley was indeed my family: his story, joining these others, each entwined into a family history of black sheep, white knights, the victors, the vanquished, each carrying with them loves and burdens and more than one four-legged companion with whom they shared the journey.  Each name, name by name and page by page, will be laid down until inevitably, only one name will remain, for that glass is indeed, inevitably broken. That person will, I hope, trace the names and whisper the stories that haunt the winds, even if no one is left to hear, but ghosts on the page, with no earthly house in which they wait for us.

As I start to weep, a hand reaches out to touch my face, in benediction, in blessing. That is the true beauty which sustains us; a birth and sacrifice on which the world was saved is re-enacted here in this world every day, in the saving grace of a small, imperfect family and the memory of a dog.

 - Brigid

Tree Watchers

From the nearest tree, a squirrel peers from the branches. I don't get too close, as rabies in the species is common, but there are a couple of the older red squirrels that are so used to me, they will come out of the shadows and greet me when they hear the rustling of the peanut bag. They're not pets, they are wild things, even if I've named a few that live among our 100-year-old Spruces, including Bubba, the world's fattest  Squirrel, who I can't see, though he is likely nearby. 

Such is the nature of wild things and wild dreams, which, when viewed, summon our wish for constancy, but when out of sight, seem so elusive and illusory that they appear less like dreams and more like ghosts that now live in another dimension. I scatter some peanuts and some sunflower seeds, making sure the feeders and suet corral are full, and return to the house. In my wake, small winged forms hop happily into the bounty even as I shut the door to the house, as the wind blows the snow into intricate patterns like some ancient hieroglyph that only God can read. - B.

Get a Dog - It Will be Fun They Said

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After 17 inches of snow, the rain began last night. The backyard is now a slushy mess, which Sunny loves. But drying her off with a beach towel requires 4 hands, so I got a "Chicken Stick" out ahead of time (her "let Mom write" bribe snack).  I then placed it on the counter before she came in from the fenced yard.

Coming inside, she gets a small, hard, round sweet potato treat for staying still while being dried off on the enclosed porch.

She gently takes the treat in her mouth, then spots the Chicken Stick as she enters the kitchen.

She SPEWS out the hard treat in a 60-degree arc towards my kneecaps at 1200 meters per second like a Canine Claymore. 

Sunny then stares at the chicken stick til I hand it over.

Then it's time for a zoomie in the living room before passing out to snore on the couch.

 I don't think I'm going to get any writing done today.

On Blogging

A young lady, daughter of a friend, wrote asking for advice on writing her first book. She had lots of journals, snippets of ideas, and didn't know if that would be enough to "make her a real writer". She said she had a blog, but "no one reads those; blogging is dead."

I had to tell her that anyone in this day and age who still writes in an old journal is indeed a writer. And that blogging was indeed not dead.

I look at the collection of my journals, gathered over the years. Just a few short years that stretched into twenty. So much can happen in that time. I started this blog in 2008. 2,289 posts ago. So much has happened in that time.

A well-tended grave, in a military cemetery surrounded by flags. One wooden box, bearing in cold air a warmth that can't be replaced, a well-loved dog toy resting on its lid. Two other small boxes on each side of it, one with a collar on top, another with a well-chewed yellow tennis ball. Some dried flowers from a wedding bouquet, placed between the leaves of a book of poetry.

On each page are short, simple words that do not begin to carry the weight or the sharpness of their past. But with time, those short flurries of words became long tales that are born from a soul that's an irrepressible retailer of words, a shopkeeper of phrase, an enabler of intent.

Book #1 was born out of a few blog posts and lots of journal entries that became chapters, then another, and another. It was born out of an internationally known author's belief that I was an author at heart and her encouragement to find my writer's voice. As I realized I am a writer and my world has too many words to be otherwise. 

I sit here now, no music playing, no noise---just the soft breathing of a rescue dog and my thoughts, words almost imperceptible to the senses, hanging in the air to be plucked by my fingers and laid upon this wooden desk. This computer is my accomplice, guarding me with its quiet accord, bearing with me the seclusion, the mystery. I should get up and do some chores before it gets dark, but while the words are still within reach, I am imprisoned by the very freedom of my hands.

I think of the classic writers - would Jane Austin have been a hit on Pinterest? Would Hemingway have been popular on Instagram? How many Twitters to win a Pulitzer Prize? Probably not, but I bet they had journals, too.

Creativity can be short bursts of color, forms, and words.

But not in the world that I like to live in.

Because I am a writer and I have too many words.

I am the run-on sentence. I am the "too many commas". I can't take a morning standing out among broken trees, red and blue lights flashing as words pass over the forest floor like the sound of big guns, and make it a quip. I can't look out upon the hills, the top of one wreathed in billowing smoke, as around me there are shouts and hollers, ringing out like war cries, yet spoken in hushed tones so as not to disturb the dead, and express it with a hashtag.

For words are my truth, immense, and they are my voice.

Those words are strings of thoughts that you would have to travel far ahead not to hear, before you outrun the reach of a voice. You can turn off your modem, but the words still exist. For they are my words, and though confined to a virtual reality, they are words that exist, in my head and my heart, their tone from the stillness and gloom of a life with a past where my words were my one truth in each passing day.

You can choose to turn away or turn off and not read. You can give me a 1-star review because the "author of this (biography) just talks about herself" (yes, seriously), but it doesn't mean I won't write. For I am a writer, and that is what we do, sharing the nature of that internal silence that follows us down into the depths of our soul and brings up a bucket from a well---one brimming with words that spill over, to quench the thirsty hearts of whispering men

I am a writer---that solitary person who stood in the corner of the schoolyard and just looked on at the popular kids. But I always had the words, even when I was too solitary to say them. The first journal was a way to capture in words,

I'm a writer, and there are so many words.

It is what it is, a way to capture in words on a screen instead of a page, pages that can be held close in or telegraphed to the world. It can be whimsy, it can be fun, it can be as disturbed as the mind behind it, or as calm as someone one can stare at in wonder, words that reach out like a consoling whisper. It can be as intimate as a kiss or as impersonal as the wind.

It can simply be a piece of bacon and a smile.

Blogging is not dead.

It is alive when the muse fails, and the hands stay still in the air with honest idiocy of objective, which made their fruitlessness both profound and poignant. It is alive when the fingers dance over the keyboard in a frenzy, grappling with ghosts in one final act of common courage.

It is alive when the keyboard is silent, and the house is still, and the one you treasure more than anything on earth looks up from the smartphone that you will never own and says, "I love what you just wrote".

It is alive because here my voice has no word count; it can be black-and-white or filled with color. It will be stories of battles fought and won, of great mysteries, and simple pleasures. It will be warnings that the younger self will not grasp until the older self breathes its last. It will be joys and sad caresses, tender words laid out upon the tongue like a wafer, a benediction, a blessing, a self-communion of one formed of two hands. If you do not read, I will still write, as I do not write, so you can claim some part of me. But if you come out from beneath that place---that conception of existence we hide under like a tortoise in his shell and listen---the words will draw breath, even after I am gone.

Blogging is not dead.

It breathes as long as I do. Whether you read or even comment,

I'm a writer, and there are so many words.

- Brigid