Moments of Memory

12 years ago. It was a night much like this one, an evening out after work with people with whom I shared a lot of history and stories. After saying good night to Partner in Grime, out saving the day on the other side of the planet, I got as dressed up as much as is "dressed up" for me, in blue jeans and a brand-new white silk T-shirt.  I managed to look quite elegant, I thought, seated at a nice quiet table in the corner of the pub.  I have back up and a designated driver.  I don't have to be on duty tomorrow.  I'm simply an adult, awaiting an adult beverage. As always, I had my eyes towards the doorway, backup available.  But like anything we never imagine, it came at me when I least expected it, my six foot two, 240 pounds of muscled and well-armed backup unable to do anything but look on . . . as the world's biggest glass of red wine flew off the approaching waitresses' tray.

Merlot Missile lock-on aimed right at the center of my new blouse.  

SPLOSH! I looked like someone on the losing side on Game of Thrones. Our friend PA State Cop commandeered some extra towels and club soda, as I attempted to clean up, while half the restaurant suddenly seemed to gather round. Many apologies and some semblance of order later, our friend Tam arrived to be asked by the waitress "what would you like to drink?" She couldn't help but mutter, like a ventriloquist, "I'll have what she's wearing".

But you know, it wasn't going to ruin my dinner, as wine stains notwithstanding, it was going to be an evening of good food and firearm tales.  It was the trinity of three friends, much history, together, safe, and intact; something so special because it is never guaranteed.  We look at photos of our younger selves with an "I was in Bosnia when you took that", or "I was in Iraq".  The stories, then told, reminding us just how many thousands of weathered doors we've passed through, some a little more forcefully than others, and all of the rain and ice and deserts harsh heat our skin witnessed to get here, tonight, the flesh in one piece. 

But too soon, it was time to go home, helping house guests get packed to head back east in the morning.  I bustled around, trying to forestall that moment when they said goodbye, taking in that big gulp of air as I looked at their gear, at the orange dog collar on the dresser, so still, so silent. One last breath, to hold me in the airless days ahead.

Still, with moments of laughter, embarrassment and sometimes tears, I wouldn't trade such moments for anything.

Look at what is precious to you, those people, those things that you trust your life and your heart with.  Is it something new and perfect? Is it something cheap and fleeting? No, it is likely to have a bit of wear and perhaps a small ding, there because it had the strength to withstand such things. If you are smart, you look past the dust and the scars as you gather that which is important to you around you. It's that giving over to our gut feeling as to the validity of something or someone, that often reaps the most reward. Look in your gun safe. Is what you treasure the newest or the shiniest? That which you prize the most may be that firearm for which the number of deer that had fallen before it were legion. Your most treasured possession, a weapon in which you knew that the fierce heat of its holding, there in the blaze of new autumn, would renew you better than that plastic fake camo looking one.

Look at the world around you, to that which has withstood time, things carefully tended. Stop at the gun show and talk to that 80-year-old veteran about something more than the price of his brass. Chances are he won't just regale you with stories of the war, no riposte of sweaty storytelling of gunfire and noise which all war stories are composed of, no ragged lines of gaunt infantry beneath the tattered flags of courage. No, what he will tell you quietly, is simple This was my gun, it served me well, but I'm willing to sell it. Let me tell you about it. And what stories it can tell.

It was there in the case at the gun store, so many years ago, an old Belgium Browning 20 gauge. My first hunting firearm. I'd trained on the Daisy and up, under my LEO parents’ watchful eyes, but I was ready for something with more weight, more depth, something that was mine. It was older than me, older than my parents, perhaps, lovingly cared for and then up for sale, sitting forlornly in a locked case. Why? A death in the family, a household strapped and the only source of food the giving up of things carefully tended?

The gun had a long history of care; you could see it in the fine veneered finish the carefully tended and lubricated workings. Somebody deeply cared for this piece for more than one generation. But the gun could not answer from its prison of glass, the ghost of its presence simply asking "why?"

It was a cold fall morning, a few months later. Across the ditch line came a young whitetail buck.  He moved slowly, without the inborn caution yet tested by a fading gout of black powder smoke. I watched the Browning elongate, rising to become a round spot against the light brown spot of a heart’s location, a period on a page soon to be red.

To an outside observer, I would have appeared almost motionless.  But there is a great activity in being the observer from above, standing in a stillness that smells of grass, breathing in so many scents in damp warm air. Sweat, blood and a flower that only blooms in the dark, the wind so scant it's like breath on a mirror. Each smell blended yet distinct, always overlaid with the copper tang of life spilled. The air hums along to the earth's quiet as all I see, smell, and feel forms into a substance I can almost feel on my flesh, capturing it, recording it there in the stillness. 

The truth is often still, inarticulate, not knowing it is the truth. As my finger bent towards firing, he looked up for just a moment. It was a moment that passed with the semblance of a sparrow and a hawk in divine immobility in mid-air, an apparition of death's hesitation. It is a moment between heartbeats.  Hesitation cannot live there, nor fear or any other question of the spirit. It's a time for sure and certain knowledge, somewhere deep within you, outside of rational thought, that by your hand, the deer will drop to a forested plain, the bird will fall from the sky. My finger stopped. Then he was gone, like a small lightning bolt on earth muddled hoof, striking through the underbrush with a crash.

He was just a yearling, and though for that moment I was tempted to fire, he had not lived long enough to fight for that life, and I was not ready to take that from him. For another time, perhaps, there would be that road.  For today, there is only the proof in the eyes and heart of a living woman of what happened that did not, but only for a touch of a finger and a word, which is our honor.

In the years since this hunt, I have learned that there is an unspoken conversation with death between the hunter and their prey. Mors ultima linea rerum est, death is every thing's final limit. Just as it is with the wolf and the rabbit, the outcome of my hunt is settled there, in that first moment of eye contact between two adversaries. In that micro spasm of the moment, there is an exchange of information regarding the propriety of the chase, of the worthiness of the kill. A conversation, of not just history, but of mortality.

So it is, outside of those pistols I have for self-defense, most of my firearms are antiques, guns with history, soldiers’ guns, police officers’ guns.  Go to the gun show and tables of new AR15's are interesting, like a 20-year-old in shorts is interesting. But give me the tables of Mausers, of Colts, of wood and flint and powder, the galloping thunder of guns which have fired through the fading fury of smoke into the night as somewhere a sparrow falls from the sky.

I don't care if my safe is full of plastic and shiny and new. Our lives are sublets anyway and too quickly gone. Give me something with history, something of strength and purpose and years, that will give as much back as I can possibly give it in return. Not everyone understands.

How do you explain to someone whose life is driven by "what will the neighbor's think", that there are just some things essential to you, that when you see them, you not only recognize them, you wish to experience? But I think it's probably the same thing I think when I see a woman's closet with a hundred pairs of shoes and think "why on earth would someone want a closet full of shoes?" If I won't ever understand that frame of reference, why would they grasp mine?

Of course, not everything that is used is useful, not everything of weight has measure. There will be things you find that end up costing you more than money. But you still seek those treasures that remain. You may find them on a table in a hall; you may find them in a house where they've been locked for far too long. You may find them just breathing, at that same moment in time where you are, two being on a small place on a planet spinning in space, destined to meet.

  

You realize then; that what you truly value, what truly makes you happy, is in such small moments, those places where the Trinity is intact as if it had never been otherwise, simply tested by the bold fragility of youth and the passion of yearning. God lost and then found, postulated here in the open arms of our faith and need.re blind to such moments, or we deliberately avoid them, with a deer in the crosshairs look, caught in that moment of life and motion, where if you do not do something, you will cease to live in that very moment between splendor and speed and the piercing of a heart.  And you choose to click on the safety and walk away, to thoughts of how it could have ended but for your inaction.

You choose and time passes. Days become weeks, becoming months and years. You think back to those places, where those choices remained, looking up at trees that grew and bore leaves, while others vanished, burned for warmth, and need. But you don't go back there.  It was just a place along your journey that exists only in the corner of your eye, as you try not and look.  Towards.  Always.

Then one day, you see something and your mind goes there again.  It may be on a table at a gun show, on the floor of a dealer, or simply there, viewed through an open door.  You look and remember. And like that moment in Jaws, where the camera zooms in on Sheriff Brody, and the whole world focuses, it does. For just a moment. And you suddenly notice every little detail around you, the sun running straight and empty, like gash down the corridor, a tiny spider web there at the corner of the room, the sun piercing it, illuminating the empty spaces there between heartbeats. And you see what it is you desire, held at that moment with conviction, that sense, that feeling of home. And you know, you were meant to hold it, for just one moment, that small piece of your history, that large piece of yourself you never knew you needed. And you reach for it, one of those impulses, inscrutable yet unassailable which occurs at intervals in all of us, driving us to set down the known and the safe, and seek the possession of something rare, blind to everything but hope and fate.

Or you can just push it away, leave it behind, common sense taking over, and go home quietly to die.

You won't do that a second time.

For you are like I am, and some night when you are old, you will lay in that tent, that old firearm by your side, unable to sleep, but quiet and peaceful, listening to the night's whisper. The past was your future, but you couldn't taste it until it too was past. Anything else was an illusion. You lay there without regret, for seeking that which you needed, that moment of time, when history and fate were held in your hand and you knew what you wanted. Perhaps it was just a moment before you set it aside, perhaps you made it yours for a lifetime, but at that moment in which you were joined, it was grace. A need so necessary, part of the history that remains.
 - Brigid 

Monday Departures

As you most know, Partner in Grims is a Mechanical Engineer.  His job regularly takes him to manufacturing facilities in other states (and countries)  The last big project has been in a state just 5 hours away so he's been driving, leaving early Monday morning.  To help him on his way, I get up early, make him  a hot breakfast, pack a lunch and snacks and see him off.  He has a little canvas tool bag he carries owith tool essentials.  I "doctored it up" with some patches.  

Monday is NOT a day for a bowl of rice crispies. 

This one I had made by a T shirt print company.  Perfect for Monday

I shouldn't talk, I married someone 24 years younger because he knew how to navigate Windows 8.

If you need an extra little tote bag, this one is fine. 

Because there are just SOME days. . . . . 

Imprints of Life

Seeing the house renovation unfold here over the last 15 years has been a pleasure, though I’m sure burglars will look through the front window, see all of the antiques, the sconces on the wall, no big flat-screen TV, and they’d probably walk away thinking a pair of 80-year-old luddites live here.  Though the kitchen cabinets were completely rebuilt, the walls re-plastered and painted, it still looks like a 40s kitchen. The only newer decorative bits are my mom’s Swedish horses and a jar of marbles I found in my brother’s childhood bedroom, the ones we played with for years as children, crouched down like small gargoyles perched on the edge of the earth. My brother and I were quietly and fiercely competitive, and a game of marbles, like any game, was approached like an act of war, though not as intensely, with the only fire being friendly. 

I can still recall his pale hands gently grasping the larger marble, poised for movement, while I watched like a hawk, to see if I could discern by draw of breath, by the pace of breath, by the dart of an eye, his intention. There were times he was so intent on the task; it seemed as if he ceased to breathe; only the sun is glinting on the marble in his hand, letting me know that time had not stopped. The sun still glints on those marbles as you walk through the kitchen into the living room. As I look around, I note that the time could be the current year or it could be 1935. I like that sense of timelessness as I spent my work years dealing with the machining of lives and law. 

By the time I would get home on some days, I would be breathing slow and labored, like a man with a large weight on his chest. I walked into the house, made some tea, put on some music, and lit a lamp, and the air would go out of my chest in a gentle whoosh. In that instant, I cared nothing for politics, for work, or what was outside, only the slow dance of my evening with my husband.  

Still, at times like those, I missed my brother. He was family, and I loved him as deeply as he loved and defended me. I remembered back to when my brother’s home was readied for sale, and his things were organized after he died, as we sorted through those mementos we wished to keep and those things that could go to charity. His home had no home computer and no TV. The furniture was old and much of it was hand restored. The house was in need of updating, but he preferred to do that himself, on his schedule, rather than pay someone with the fruits of his labor for tasks he could easily learn how to do himself. There, beneath a stopped clock, responsive now only to the last stroke of eternity, sat some tools for yet another project he’d never be able to wield them for to finish.

But despite the lack of modern conveniences, there was one large 80s tape player and a stereo, with both vinyl and tapes to go with it that he bought at a yard sale. In the last year of his life, he played music almost all day, everything from big band to 70s rock. All of those tapes were bundled up in the boxes and boxes to be sorted through after he was gone. Some of it made me cry, some of it made me smile, and the first thing I am going to ask him when I see him in Heaven is why he had a live flare gun on his nightstand.

That last night as we gathered up his things, I realized, that as different as we were in some ways, he being the fellow that always had a hundred friends, I being the one that only allowed a handful in close, we were very much alike, strong-willed and sometimes stubborn. I could almost smell the white smoke of the cigarettes he refused to quit smoking, even as cancer ate at him, watching it burning in the ashtray by his fingers, the smoke trailing out the window into the tattered, tumbling midnight. 

My brother spent his brief adult years in service to his country, something he was very proud to do even as he sometimes disagreed with its leadership. He was quiet in his public opinions on such matters, but in private, with one another, he would discuss with a great passion those fails and omissions of those we as a country put in power, as well as our staunch support of those rights that would keep us from forced servitude. For he knew that with enough power, this carefully built world still contains within it the command to be seized, and we’d make sure we did all we could to lawfully keep that from happening.

His car bore an emblem of the US flag, and his shelf the Bible, and he refused to apologize for either. He had little interest in promotions to higher command, as he realized that although command was sometimes magic, it often contained an atmosphere of officialdom that seemed to staunch human endeavor and he was happier as a simple machinist mate, preferring his hands bloodied or dirtied to the false supremacy of paper and ink. 

 I’m glad I had those days and those memories; for my brother left an imprint of his life behind, one that’s so similar to mine, that in the recognition of, I sometimes feel closer to him in death than our deep bond in life. As my tools were put down as darkness was long  upon us, I looked up at the heavens before heading to bed. What captured my gaze were the unsteady stars, that if blown upon would tumble like large marbles in the sky and then brighten to small specks of light in a wet sheen, that I realized was the view through my tears. With each small thing of his that are now part of my house, I realize that for all of us, midnight will come.

 However, I’m not going to let midnight be flung down upon me. I’m going to drag midnight along with me for the ride, as hammers are swung, and boards are bent, and God is our only salvation. In the end, it may not be done, but it will be started, and that, with the rest and the little death of sleep will be my escape and my reward. Then, when my body is finally free of sweat and the house is quiet, I’ll sleep. It will be sleep without regret, in a slightly worse for wear home in which my God watches over me, and my defender lies quietly in the nightstand, a round in the chamber. 

The Storm Before the Calm

Honey was her rescue name. A purebred puppy with bowed legs, left at a rescue as she wasn’t “perfect". After we brought her home, it hit me. What was I thinking? I’m 66; she’s a PUPPY, with no socialization, and the urgent energy of a furry Velociraptor.  There were moments I wanted to say, "wait, I change my mind", but like that moment when that first labor pain starts, there's no calling it off.

Her first night was great; she cuddled with our senior rescue Lorelei, and she napped. As my younger husband left for another 5-day business trip, I waved goodbye and thought, "I can do this!"

It was the calm before the storm. I likened it to those long, late flights over the ocean when I was an airline captain - storms forecast but not yet visible, the engines humming in a drowsy sky, senses alert to what could be a sudden change in the weather.  When the first spray of rain hit the windscreen as lightning flashed in the distance, you knew it was too late to turn back.

So, I well remember the first expression of small puppy teeth in my flank.  Sunny had discovered that people have bottoms, and she could bite them. If I showed surprise, she thought it was a game. The next thing I knew, she was running and jumping off the recliner, launching herself at the couch like one of the Flying Wallendas, knocking over a plant in the process, while Lorelei looked on, taking notes.

The typhoon had arrived, and we renamed her "Sunny".

The coming months were marked by continued mayhem, including stolen tools and shoes, shredded rolls of paper towels taken from the counter, as well as one late-night trip to the Vet when a dew claw was torn in the Zoomie to end all Zoomies. There was laughter and later tears as we said goodbye to Lorelei.  There were many days I would have gladly dispensed myself of the regrettable opportunity of "guess what I have in my mouth, Mom?"

In the mornings I’d approach her crate like it was the den of some wild beast, with bravery but some bluster. I'd open the door while singing the notes of "Ride of the Valkyries", and our day would commence, measured not in hours but by the kinetic energy of flying fur.

But, as with any storm, the skies clear, the winds calm, at least in the land of Puppy-Ville.

Even as storms occasionally blew through our lives, I took comfort as the shadows gathered again, with the little things of joy I had around me. I learned to appreciate the simple pleasure of a young dog. She did not know loss; she did not know the word "cancer".  She was once as I was, living in advance of an end she will not fear coming, because she doesn't conceive of its existence, that beautiful continuity of joy that knows no limits and no introspection.

 I wouldn't have traded this decision for anything.

 

Goodbye for Now, Sunny

Sunny left us yesterday after a short battle with a very aggressive T-Cell Lymphoma.  She had just turned 3.  We adopted her as a puppy when she was released to a shelter with bowed legs that made her "unwanted" in some's eyes.

A Vet from Indy, where Barkley got his care for years, had moved to the Chicago area as her husband got a position with a big hospital here as a doctor.   She took care of Lorelei and Abby Lab at home at the end for us and did the same for Sunny.  In a moment that reminded me that even with this pain, God's watching over me - she told me her husband's new job is at one of the biggest hospitals in Chicago, one known world-wide for it's transplant services.

He's on my Transplant team.

In Memory

Sunny D. Lab

May 11, 2023 - July 29, 2026

Words from my husband:

"Back when we hadn't had her very long, I was just getting her past the overstimulation phase so I could walk her all the way to the tracks and back.  On one of these trips, I ran across a neighbor from the next block.  He and I had spoken before when Lorelei was still happily begging for pets up and down the street.  He liked dogs; he used to have great Danes, and he had fitted his little shoebox SUV with a bulldog hood ornament from a Mack truck.  

That day he was walking with his wife.  They stopped and waited patiently for Sunny to go through the cautious sniffing phase.  After a few minutes Sunny decided they were her new best friends and was happily getting pets and doing little jumps when she wanted more attention.  The wife was particularly enthralled with Sunny and praised her, saying she loved how, "She looks you right in the eye!"  After more pets and wags we went on our way.

You wouldn't notice it from a distance, but if you watched carefully, you could tell the lady was a bit frail.  It was several months later when I saw them both again.  They were going up the steps to their bungalow and she was leaning heavily on her husband.  They apologized for not being able to stop and pet Sunny, but I told them Sunny was just happy to see her friends and she wagged and gave a little woof.

Back in the spring I bumped into the husband on the street.  He stopped me to let me know that his wife had passed.  He didn't say what the illness was, but it had been a long journey.  He said that she had her favorite comfortable chair next to the front window of the house and that she would always smile and remark when she saw Sunny on the street.  It was always a moment of happiness for her.

That's how I would like to remember Sunny the most.  The dog who always brought a smile to a neighbor's face in her dying days."

Smoke on the Water

They showed up on the lake one night, visible in the morning, silent in the mist, their shapes nothing at all like what we'd seen before on this small body of water.  A few miles away was a large and swiftly flowing river, bringing with it goods from afar.  But this little lake was what we, as children, knew.  The water had seen canoes, and the occasional raft kids made out of a sheet of plywood and inner tubes, but these little paddle wheel boats were something new.

Dad, of course, wants to go for a ride on one, there at that park at the end of our block where he ran three miles every day after work. I didn’t want to go but I loved my dad.  He and Mom adopted my brother and me late in life and he went out of his way to make life normal, now that Mom had cancer.

So, I went with him, like most teenagers, secretly hoping that invisibility was an option but it was not to be. It was Fall, wood smoke from burning leaves drifts out over the little man-made lake in the city park, as people took advantage of the day to be out on the bike paths and walking trails. To make matters worse, he was waving at EVERYONE including other kids my age (invisibility now!) I pretended to be looking up at the birds in the trees, hoping the kids wouldn't notice me, but they did and pointed (forget invisibility, let's go for obliterating lightning bolt).  The ride couldn't end soon enough for me.

Had I been acting less like a teenager I would have noticed the stillness of the water before us, our legs propelling us forward as if in flight. I would have noticed how people reacted to my father, the love, and respect he got even as he gave it out.  I would have noticed  how he looked with an owner's eye upon the water passing behind us like spent memory, the peace of the water ahead, at the simple of joy of muscle and motion powering past those things that weighed us down, disappearing in the joy of a simple evening with his child, like smoke on the water.

We were both quiet on the walk home, me because I wanted to be anywhere else, Dad for reasons I didn't understand quite yet. When we got back to the house, Mom was in bed, tears on her face.  I'd not seen her cry before and I don't think she expected me to, our arriving home early.  The tears encompassed more than pity or pain but rather that inarticulate recognition and despair of that cancer that blazed onto her inescapable earth, its fire, her ashes. I closed the door as he sat down next to her, the whisper of my bare feet on the floor, the only sound I could make

Years passed; the paddle boats disappeared as quietly as they came, with no mention of their passing.

Now, a lifetime later, I am the only family member remaining. As I leave to run an errand, I realize that little has changed, but for me. Dad remained the same man he was when I was a teen and so embarrassed to hang out with him, just as his home remained the same, but for the ghosts that remained.

But I have changed, as I realize that his wishing to watch closely and guide, was not based on control.  Rather, it was his realizing that I was still light in the burden of the years, not yet possessing the weight of the wisdom that keeps one surefooted on an inescapable path.  It was pushing me past the mundane and the limiting, if only briefly, out of that shelter we make for ourselves in times of self-doubt or danger, hiding underneath it as if it's some armor we don without knowing the full extent of what it's protecting us from.

It was his simply wanting me to know joy, while he spent more time with me, even as time ticked its final moments for his first great love.

In those last days before he passed at age 101, I entered the house and he woke, I asked him if he wanted to go for a drive.  He did, as always, hoping for a stop at Five Guys, but we don't go our usual route.  We drive on down to the lake where the paddle boats were docked long ago, walking carefully, he with his cane, down to a bench where we can see the water.

I looked at him and said, “do you remember those paddle boats?” and he hugged me and we laughed.  From the trees the chirps of birds erupted into music, the steady staccato of their sound ticking down the hours of one more precious evening with Dad.

On Brothers, Briquettes, and Barbecue.

The picture was in the local newspaper.  My brother had won a fancy barbecue in a contest to encourage kids to open a savings account at the local Credit Union.  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. - Brigid

Sometimes the Edge Breaks Away

 As they say - life "get lifey" sometimes and the plans to finish the book are on hold for now.  Not to go in great detail (if you are friends with me on FB you know the story that started with a month in the hospital during COVID for Septic shock), but I'm dealing with a life threatening issue (NOT cognitive) that flared badly during Acute Type A flu in Feb.  4 months, 3 hospital stays, a bone marrow biopsy (just say "no"), one surgery and more tests than should be allowed by law, the news isn't great, but  there's hope.  But editing is not sometime I wish to spend prescious hours on.  

My health and medical status is personal but I wanted to let ou know that blogging for the next  months will be sporadic, at best.  My friends know the story and I have a lot of people I know both in and away from the blogging community as well as my church family around me, praying, and offering their strength.

Until later, a little story,

My Stepmom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in her seventies. Dad steadfastly refused to put her in a home, caring for her at home, even in his declining years with a part time nurse’s aide I arrange for them and my helping as I could.

Initially, she had her little moments of forgetfulness, like any person her age, but she was such a bundle of energy, still active in church and volunteering, taking dance classes, working in the garden. Then one morning, out of the blue, she came into the kitchen and sat down, looked at me and I realized she did not have a clue as to who I was.

What struck me was not that but the look on her face as she realized this, realized she should know. I obviously wasn’t a bugler or a neighbor over for coffee, I was a girl with red hair like everyone else in the family, wearing a fuzzy robe that she had washed and put in my closet the night before. I will never forget the look of her at that moment. It was the most starkly exposed face I’d ever seen, a face in which unknown terrors haunted the edges; the face of a fledgling dove about to tumble from the nest.

It came into our lives quickly, one moment she was laughing, engaging in board games and puns with us, her face bright, and her wit, razor sharp. Then came those moments where everything just went sort of dim. The doctor only confirmed what Dad had suspected and kept from me for some months until he knew for sure. Alzheimer’s.

It’s a terrible disease for all involved. We read what we could about it, we planned as a family, and we prayed. There wasn’t more we could do.

As the next two years passed, there were a few moments she was quite lucid and happy. Those moments were the hardest for all of us. In those brief minutes, she was fully aware that her mind was going, what was happening to her and how helpless she was to do anything about it.

 The disease’s progression was as predictable as its course was certain. Mood swings and aggression, words that made no sense, dropping to the floor like marbles, tears as she tried to mentally gather them up, anger at the very air around her. She always was gentle with my dad, though. Only with him would she remain calm, the reasoning that was blind and deaf somehow responding to something in him that her mind could still see.

Dad cared for her patiently, no matter how bad it got. Friends couldn’t visit, for they were strangers to her, and she’d go into a furious rage if anyone but us tried to enter the home. Dad was her calm and her constant. I was able to help with the housework and the cooking, but he refused to let anyone else care for “his girl” or to send her to skilled nursing care. When she passed, it was quite sudden, after she contracted pneumonia. From her sudden coughing to her collapse, it was just days.

 Sometimes when you get to the far edge, the edge just breaks away.

We laid her to rest on a tree-covered hilltop in a little cemetery. My brother and my dad are on either side of her along with my Mom who died when I was quite young. I visit; I bring flowers. Sometimes a friend would go with me, and we would hug and shed some tears, neither of us immune to having our hearts broken. Then we smile through the tears, sharing our stories as we make the long trip home to photos and a small stuffed bear that Mom had sewn.

One of those photos is one of her and Dad on their first date, and you could see something in their smiles that would be lost on so many people. Not many people could have cared for her by themselves as my dad did, for so long, but I understand. Love is a story that tells itself.

Would she have lived her life differently had she known her fate ahead of time? Perhaps not. Perhaps, in essence, she did, her mother dying of the same disease, as she and my Dad courted.

She lived life to the hilt, a wheel in motion, racing downhill, a light against the darkness, the whir of a needle into the soft fabric.

I remember one of the last crashes I was assigned to, waking abrupty in a strange city, the glaring ringtone of the bat phone waking me with a message just after I'd fallen asleep. For a moment, I did not know where I was at. The small room was cold, with no sound of a dog checking on me as I came awake. I was in a hotel room, traveling in the previous day when duty called. My heart was pounding as that particular ring will do that to me, the surge of adrenalin. There would be no going back to sleep.

But I was aware, of every tick of the clock, of the feel of my skin, missing the soft panting of doggie breath waiting to see if I was going to get up and leave or go back to sleep. I was so blissfully aware, of these moments, these sounds. It was a new day, and even if tired and cranky, I'd leap right in, like a deer into the brush, feeling no thorns.

So I would go, and so I watched, finding sense in the senseless, finding my purpose even as sparrows fall to earth. People watching from a distance would think me too quiet, too still, shouldn't this activity be a frenzy of lights and motion, like on TV? I was there for closure for someone, retribution or reconcilliation often bearing the same weight. I didn't cry, but the tears were there, feeding those promises I made to the dead, not for the world and the news crew to see.

But there is a great activity in being the quiet observer, standing in a stillness that smells of silence, breathing in so many scents in damp cold air. Sweat, blood, and a flower that only blooms in the dark, the wind so scant it's like breath on a mirror. Each smell blended yet distinct, always overlayed with the copper tang of life spilled. The air hums along to the night's quiet as all I see, smell, and feel, forms into a substance I can almost feel on my flesh, capturing it, recording it there in the stillness. The truth is often still, inarticulate, not knowing it is the truth.

On the shelf is a picture of my last black Lab rescue.  I do not know why Abby was a stray. She responded with great plaintive urgency to the sound of small children laughing, looking around for them as to say “my kids, my kids,” only to get this look of pure sadness when he saw they are strangers. The first time I witnessed it, I cried.

I was so happy to get her, and two special needs rescue dogs since that day, a saving grace in a house that had a gaping hole in it after the sudden loss of Barkley. What we hold close to us and what we let go is as telling as the words we say. It took me years to understand it, but the words of Henry David Thoreau make perfect sense to me now.

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

I realized that there were certain things, and in the past even certain people, that simply violated my sense of thrift, exacting things out of me well beyond their worth. That concept was lost to me when I was a teen, but as I got older with truth stripped of its cloak of immortality, it was clear.

As I take out some things to be picked up by a charitable group, I look around me. Shadows move like ghosts over the sun, deepening the grass to the color of jewels. The snow is long gone, the dark earth trembling to release spring’s flowers. At the side of the house is an old trellis that needs repair work before new life grabs onto it yet again. I gather it close to my chest to take it inside to be mended, rather than tossed away. This is my home; I think as I bend my face down to it, breathing in the scent of old wood, holding the weight securely as I move inside. I could bury my face in it, this small thing to be salvaged from this place that I had always been seeking.

As I type these final words this morning, all I can think is that hope and love, love and desire, can be what propels us silently onward. Hope and love, love and desire, can also be merely sound that people who have never hoped or loved or desired have for what they never possessed and will not until they forget the words. - Brigid

Memorial Day 2026

 

Draw your Chair Up Close

I'm going to take a few weeks off to start editing the new book which is written, but in rough draft, I've just been putting it off. Thanks for those of you still sticking around after all these years - Brigid

Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I’ll tell you a story.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

The World Briefly Muted

The city wakes slowly. I can tell from the quality of the light it's not yet six. My alarm is set for 7 since Partner in Grime is traveling for work. When he's home, I'm up much earlier.

A sound from the neighbor across the driveway; the elderly resident taking out his recycling, He wakes early, his wife in a nursing home, and finding himself in a large house on his own. His step is very slow and measured as if he is carrying something fragile and precious, perhaps some glass, or simply his dreams for this day. When it is warmer out, he will get out his wheelbarrow and supplies to tend to his garden, often having to lay on the ground, to tend to the flowers while prone, his knees not supporting him to do so otherwise. It can't be comfortable but he finds joy in it, nurturing the inexhaustible joy that lives in beauty.

In the distance, the bark of a dog as it hears the neighborhood awaken. That's Winston the Goldendoodle, who lives behind us, out as his "Dad" feeds the chickens, and readies the house for the day. That's something I had to get used to, the sound of chickens in the middle of a city of millions. No rooster, but you hear the contented clucks when outside. The sound of traffic is light. A freight train rumbles down at the other end of the block, the mounful sound of the whistle as it nears the crossing carried on the windless chill that is memory's heat.

I don't have to open the curtains to see it. Despite warm days, it's been down near freezing at night and I've woken to frost on the ground recently.  Another neighbor will have their woodstove lit for warmth, the smoke from the chimney wrapping itself like shimmering ribbon in the boughs of the budding trees, a pale silvered gray of silk or sword blade. Once it's fully light, dogs will be out being walked, everyone on the block aware of the unwritten schedule of who walks when and in what direction, to avoid the great canine commotion of barking that will ensure if two dogs meet in opposite directions, or heaven forbid, someone encounters the "great mongrel horde" which is 5 dogs of tiny size and enormous ego that are walked by one teen every morning. If you think you will sleep in through that, you are mistaken.

But for now, it's quiet, and I'm tempted to turn off the alarm and go back to sleep. The rustle of cotton, the panting whisper of breath, the predation of the night assuming a hundred avatars of dreams. No bread to bake, no housework to do, simply the house still and quiet as if marooned in space by the dwindling of time. The neighbors back inside, the sounds outside fall to a low fragmentary pitch. In the distance, from the metropark, a coyote’s howl at the indignation of clouds that covered the waning moon; no other sound made. Prey gone into hiding, insects dormant from the cold; everything else assuming their own mantle of hiding or hunt.

I love this time of day. Though it's been years since I've had to hunt to put food on the table I still recall those early mornings during whitetail season. I remember the eastern sky turning to primrose, then red with the firing of that first weapon; two of us walking in, whispers no louder than the silent dawn itself. The darkness seemed alive, God’s breath biting at the back of my neck, raising goosebumps under the weight of my clothing. The blood surged, ran hotter, Pentecostal flames licking up my legs as we chased the sound of our blood into the tree line.

That night we donned stiff jeans and shirts softened by the hands of a hundred washes, and we prepared a drink, an amber hallelujah pouring from a shot glass while out on the railing the coveralls hung waiting for another season of need. It's been years since I've had a sip of whisky, and I don't know what happened to those well-worn coveralls, but I'm sure somewhere they still smell faintly of woodsmoke.

My own house this morning is quiet. There's a click click from the ductwork as the heat comes on. Sunny stirs in her crate, not ready to awaken either. In other houses, the TV would be on already, sound, even if senseless, filling up the quiet spaces. I've known people like that, they can't bear the quiet, and from the moment they get up until they try and go to sleep at night, sound is in the air; news, tic tok videos, internet memes, anything to fill up the silence that might actually make them stop and think "why is this all so important that it takes up my whole day?" 

We get some strange looks when people realize we don't own a TV. There's a little TV in the basement with an antenna on the roof where we can get the weather if we're hunkered down during a tornado warning and the phone connectivity to the internet is lost. There's lots of CDs of favorite old shows and movies, but the big flatscreen was given away to AmVets. I don't miss it, the space now occupied by stacks of books.

As I sit in the quiet, a small sparrow blows onto the sill like a bright scrap of paper, his heart pumping in his throat faster than any pulse. He looks into the house, then away, then into the glass again as if listening, only to dart away as the clock chimes on the hour, then ceases. The chime fills the whole house. Perhaps it’s just sound or perhaps it’s all time, grievance, and grief manifesting as sound for just one instant as planets and gears align. It’s a moment wherein time seems to stop, the sparrow frozen on the sill. Only when that sound stops does time come to life, and by then the bird is gone. Had I been glued to the TV, or my Smartphone (oh look, another cat meme!) I would have missed that.

The only sound now is that of breath and the tick of the old clock. I don’t deliberately listen to it, the ticks seemingly beyond the realm of hearing; then in a moment, with that one tick your ears respond to, you are acutely aware of the long diminishing train of time you did not hear. How many ticks in this house in a hundred years? How many after I am long gone? Yet I feel the presence of others that have lived here, for they perhaps aren’t truly dead but simply were worn down by the minute clicking of small gears. The echo of those who sat in this room do not disturb me; they are part of this house. Just like the sound of wood, its creak one of murmuring bones; and the air that taps on ancient glass speaks of deep winds that witnessed more than time.

Later, I will briefly check the news, the weather, send my husband a note that we're doing fine, then pour the last of the coffee. I'm not unaware of what is beyond my insular world; there is a war ongoing somewhere, there is crime, there is evil. It’s all out there somewhere, like all darkness pressing against the house like water does a dam. Not with obvious movement, just that steady pressure that is the desire to break through. But inside, fur me at this moment, I chose to concentrate on the light that seeps outward through the cracks between the curtains. So much of it here that it could be shared with the darkness.

I grab a book, Sunny having settled down for a little nap after yard time, dog food and 15 minutes of warfare with "Claude the Nylabone Lobster".

As the afternoon progresses, the sounds will pick up, the sirens of both police and ambulance, the of traffic in and out of the city, the 4-lane road a half block from us a key route to both the Tollway and Expressway. The garbage trucks will make their way down the alley to collect what's left in the Racoon Bento Boxes the village provides for trash and recycling. I'll make my own trek out, to drop a meal made for a shut-in, clothing and cozy sleepwear for a homeless shelter, a stop at Trader Joe's to do battle with moms stocking up on cheap wine reinforced by kids with mini shopping carts while I try to fend for myself in the roasted nut aisle.

When I get home, the only kids on our block will be out, as yesterday was a day of rain. I don't mind the sometimes-loud sounds of their play. The family is of modest means and the kids don't have tablets and phones, they have bikes and old scooters and balls and bats, numerous small dogs, and a dad that plays ball with them when he gets home in his work van. I smile, knowing they can't comprehend how precious this time will be to them some day.

My parents raised me that way; we were allowed to be kids as long as our minds embraced the world with the wonder of childhood. As the world contemplated old disasters and future hopes, we were simply set free to be children. We wore no bicycle helmets; we drank from the garden hose; our mothers never organized a “play date,” yet we made enough friends that we rarely came inside until the light had bled out of the sky. We’d run and we’d ride, calling loudly into the wind until the shouts of those years mounted toward a final crescendo, passing beyond the reach of hearing.

So, the sound brings me joy, and I put on some music as I put this morning's sourdough bread into the oven to bake. One loaf will go to a neighbor, another to a friend with a husband recovering from a stroke, and the other saved for sandwiches. Vivaldi's The Four Season fills the kitchen as I bustle around, happy that my day does not involve meetings, hazmat suits, politicians blathering, or the whirring noise of a Stryker 810 autopsy saw (only slightly more annoying than the sound politicians make). What noise is in my life is only what I allow in. I will likely be buried someday still owning a Flip Phone and never having seen an episode of The View and for that I am eternally grateful.

As I pull the bread from the oven, I notice  some cars slowly coming up the street, looking for parking. Likely a wedding or baptism at the Catholic church around the corner. Soon there would be the sound of church bells; a sound that does more than note another hour, one more increment of time and grief that’s ticked since Genesis. It’s the sound of hope and faith, one that leaves the air with a sharp instrument of promise as a dog joyously barks and children play.

I'm not missing my TV at all.

Miles Beneath our Wings

The hum of the airplane tires on the pavement is soothing, the running edge lights going past me like years. I’ve already been awake a few hours as living in the middle of a large city the country airport I fly out of is not close. I don’t mind as during those years I commuted to work as a pilot I got used to a long drive to work. 

 Many pilots commuted, finding homes where housing was much cheaper and making the trek each week to work. I did enjoy when I didn’t have to drive to “work” every day. Normally with airline schedules, I would fly out and be gone for days. But I enjoyed the drives in when I made them, often in the dark, before the roads are busy.

I've made most of my long drives by myself but before I got married, a female friend from college and I drove across several states together to visit our families who lived in the same area. I remember when we pulled into the subdivision where one of my relatives had moved. I'd only been there once, and I got lost in all the streets, each bearing the same name, but with a different ending. Magnolia Lane, Magnolia Drive, Magnolia Trail (that's not confusing), and so on. I had a map printed from MapQuest out, but it lay unwanted on the back seat. My friend said “Uh, you want to grab that map” and I said, “No. I've got this; this street looks familiar” as we got further lost. She said again, “Say, how about that map behind you” and I responded, “Nope, I'm sure this is it.” She started laughing and said “Oh my. You're a GUY! You don't want to ask for directions.” 

If I'm alone, sometimes I watch other drivers. People often drive as they think, modestly, slowly, recklessly. Some move in and out of traffic with the brisk efficiency of a surgeon, others, shyly and with hesitation, invite themselves out to dinner with the Reaper. Myself, I just roll along, not faster than anyone, not slower than anyone, not wanting to stand out, simply watching the centerline break underneath of the vehicle. 

 When I tell people that I sometimes drive or fly in a small Cessna to visit family in another state they look at me like I'm daft. “You can fly commercial airlines there in an hour.” Yes, I can. But I like that time to myself, no schedule, no commitments. When I get hungry, I stop and eat. When I get tired, I find a quiet, clean place to sleep. If I want to land at a small rural airport and go visit the site of the world's largest ball of yarn, no one is going to tell me “Sorry, that flight has already left the gate.” Though, I still wonder about some gas station bathrooms. Why do they lock them? Are they afraid someone might break in and clean them? 

I'm not sure why I enjoy the slow and hard look at things. Perhaps it's just the process of becoming slowly born that is those years leading up to middle age. Perhaps it's what I do for a paycheck. Maybe it was all the hours hiking up into mountains of the West as I grew up. You really learn to appreciate the slowness, the detail, the stillness of a day in the outdoors. The ascent may be hours or it may be days, but with a compass and a few tools, you simply gather your wits around you and head uphill. What you expect to greet you is up ahead of you, even when you can't see it. It's there in the blue, and it only remains for your body to reach it. Patience, one blister, one tear, at a time.

The wilderness gives you time, for the wild, though changing, is still eternal. That's what long road trips are like for me. I keep the horizon in my window but still look back, savoring the journey. It's time, my time, filled with the immaculate sameness of hours bathed in the sun's warm honey. Anything that requires detailed thought, the engine setting, a scan for traffic, occurs in brief, unhurried intervals. The miles roll by with the thoughts, miles of tears, of laughter I've not known since youth, of love, of mechanical, rhythmic memories of the past that I carried with me as I started this journey. 

Those memories are not always happy ones, which is part of the trip you will make. As the miles flow past, you realize that when you are young, no one tells you the truth about love, about life. About coming into your heart and your strength and what it means when you realize what you have beneath you.

Talking frankly about past relationships and lost friends seemed banal, like proving a right angle or finding the equal distance between two lines but it felt good  on that drive with my friend to share our joys and our griefs as we headed into our future. The two-lane highway rose slowly out of the Plains as I tried to navigate through words that carried with them both joy and pain, holding me back like the weight of a dead end. So, we talked, not in a great gush of words, but as friends do, in small bits of ourselves spread out on the table like a show and tell of things that troubled us, those hurts that built up over years of living. The miles and hours flew past, fields clutching onto the skeletons of flowers that long ago died, of bare, windswept trees, and clusters of burrs that stick to everything with a tiny pinprick of pain. Things that were sticking to us both.

All that was left were the words; and they flowed, like the laughter and the tears, until I opened the window to let the wind dry my face. The wind that would carry those old hurts to where they would simply bounce off the landscape as if they were a piece of discarded trash, delicate, crumpled tissue best left to be disintegrated by time. Better left behind as the sun began to relax on what would be a renewed journey; the road pulling away from discarded thought, the highway lines breaking up like Morse Code as we moved forward and moved away from that painful past, those roads best not traveled, till it was just a speck in the rearview mirror. 

I sit here tonight so many years later thinking back to that long drive. My friend has found her happiness, and I found mine, nothing left but the memories that I'm making now, moving into new skies, open roads. Time ticks past. The diorama of life unfolds in the window up ahead, the rush of the world, fast food, and fast life, suspended for a few hours. The truck still moves on, this time to find a place to rest for the night and I do, cleansing myself of the grime of the day. The hotel room has all the warmth of a doctor’s waiting room, and I can't help but wish I was instead at hunting camp, sleeping under a fluttering tent, canvas murmuring to the whispers of the rain. As I lay there, I think of Heraclitus, of whose writings are now just fragmentary remains, who said it better than I, expressing the nature of reality as a flux in words, the way I'd express them in motion today. 

The rule that makes

Its subject weary 

is a sentence

of hard labor. 

For this reason 

change gives rest.

Sometime it's time for a change of landscape, of thinking, a journey forward. No agenda but to see the day unfold before you up ahead. You need those moments alone, those miles of open road, and miles of open sky.

Mark Twain wrote in Huckleberry Finn, “We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lie on our backs and look up at them and discuss whether they was made or just happened.”  But I know they were made.  Made to serve as tiny points of light to guide a distant traveler back home.

 - Brigid