This week's offering for One Single Impression. If you're not a frequent reader of the marvelous ku the participants write each week, you are so missing out on something good!
I am 46 years old, the "military brat" of a colonel in the Air Force who has been dead for nearly 21 years. He was not a fighter, although he had once had dreams of being a pilot. He never took up a weapon in defense of our country. He was a money man. I'm not entirely sure what he did during the Vietnam War, but he was TDY (temporary duty) many times in Southeast Asia.
At the time, it all sounded so exotic, and he would bring back marvelous gifts for his wife and children upon his return from wherever he was, doing whatever he was. My awareness of the war going on "over there" was limited, really. The impact it had on the airmen and officers I encountered every day of my life on base was a mystery to me. Was I sheltered at 9? At 10? At 11?
I was. Until early 1973 and into the spring, when the call of duty came to me and mine. Operation Homecoming brought hundreds of P.O.W.s home, and their first step on true American soil was at Hickam Air Force Base. I was one of many there to greet them. No matter what time of the day or night the planes arrived, people were there to meet them, to thank them, to welcome them home.
One homecoming sticks with me. I was with my friend Nancy Hayes and her father, a major. We were both 11 years old, sixth graders at the elementary school on base. Maj. Hayes was buddies with one of the P.O.W.s coming home, and he took Nancy and me with him to talk with the returning airman. I remember little about him at all. I shook his hand. I stood up straight. I listened while Maj. Hayes and he spoke. He was gaunt. All the others in the room were as gaunt. They were not boisterous in any way, although there was noise in the cavernous room as the few people who personally knew the returning vets were able to meet with them.
I remember that encounter. I remember being on the airstrip at other times, in the middle of the night, really, watching the planes land, shouting welcomes and thanks, clapping, waving flags, honoring them. It is something I am immensely proud and privileged to have been a part of.
It is Memorial Day. Many of those P.O.W.s we greeted as they returned home are old, perhaps dead. [Yes, I know one is running for President of the United States.] So many more of their comrades didn't make it home to grow old or die on American soil. Their comrades in that war, in previous wars, in today's wars. Or they returned horribly injured. Or they returned mentally harmed. Returned and return. Never returned or never will return.
I remember. I will remember. I pray we all will.
My first reaction to the prompt, of course, was "I'm no quitter. I never quit anything."
Oh, that's a rich one! Let's see, there's the job I quit two years ago to stay home with the kids. There's the job I quit before I was at The Chronicle because of the bitter fight I got in with one of the owners.
There's the marriage I quit. There's the smoking I quit. There's the calculus class my senior year of high school. There are the countless friendships I've quit as circumstances or distance dictated an end.
I've quit breastfeeding. I've quit changing diapers. Not that far into the future, I'll quit being a mother to a house filled with children. I'll quit having to chauffer kids this way and that way. [And this way and that way. Did you ever see a lassie...Did that tune come into your head? It did mine.]
I've quit caring how people look at me. I've quit reading and seeing movies that are too filled with horror in a world already filled with horror. I've quit reading news stories that reinforce my belief that the world is already filled with horror.
Soon enough, I'll quit this life I have. Believer that I am, I'm planning on having an afterlife of joy. I'm guessing it'll match the joy I experience many days. [But some of the torments of everyday life, I'm hoping I'll quit in the afterlife.]
1. When I saw the headline for this article, I thought it was way more interesting than it actually was. Now, if they had been on a plane in flight, that might have been a story worth reading.
2. Is it a universal truth that smoke detectors only die out in the middle of the night?
3. I'm whinging about back pain again. Usually someone who falls asleep in moments, it took me a long while to get to sleep Tuesday night. At 1:18, a smoke detector blared. Twice. Our detective skills in the dead of the night need much to be desired. Back to bed, finally. At 5:18, dumb-ass dog is ready to romp.
4. People, people, people. How many times do you actually have to be told to check out snopes.com before you fall prey to the latest virus hoax? It's not enough that you receive an email from someone you know saying the virus alert is on snopes. Take 14 seconds out of your busy day and check.
5. Frankly, I'm thinking I'll ask to be removed from the contact list of any sender who "warns" me about such things.
6. Sadly, Youngest's illness was ever so brief. By Friday night, he was back at his normal job: tormenting Daughter.
7. The other day, I happened upon a blog by someone I actually knew in a previous life. What are the chances of that?
8. Oh, right, 82 million blogs out there. I must know at least a few of the bloggers.
9. You know you're really old when you're unable to pick out more than a handful of celebrities gracing the pages of the soft-porn magazines I read to pass the time in the dentist's office.
10. Saying I find them in the dentist's office probably rings as true as a guy's statement that he only reads Playboy for the interviews.
We've got a crazy neighbor. I type those words, and I realize I likely offend everyone with "crazy" relatives. Oh, well, good thing I don't have comments on very often, eh? [Can I soften the blow by pointing out that I have had crazy people in my life, too? No?]
So, yeah, Ed -- or Crazy Ed as I refer to him whenever I have the car windows rolled up as I drive by his house -- is definitely mentally ill and a likely alcoholic as well. He is well known in our town. If you have lived here longer than a year or two, you have likely heard of Crazy Ed.
He's the guy in the house worth about a million bucks who has at least nine cars in various disarray on his lot. He's the guy who installed a security light and placed it so it shines into another neighbor's house. He's the guy who threatens to shoot an injured deer with his shotgun if Animal Control doesn't come and put it out of its misery. He's the guy who faux paints tile and stone on the sidewalk in front of his house. He's the guy who points at you when you pass him while out and about around town. [The finger he is pointing varies in digit and degree of intensity depending on your relationship with him.] He's the guy who punished his teen-age son years ago for some misdeed by making the kid saw up and throw away an entire car, piece by piece. He's the guy who's been banned from Starbucks everywhere because of his behavior at one of their stores. He's the guy whose wife, no surprise, up and left him years and years and years ago because of these and countless other acts.
You know it's toward the end of the month around here because he's acts increasingly bizarre as his meds run out.
We get very little traffic around these here streets. Just we locals use the street we're on, really. And we all know Crazy Ed. So when a sofa bed made its way from the inside of his house to the faux stone sidewalk in front of his house, even I did a double-take. Sure, it said "free" on it. But we all know him. None of us, even the family with the twins heading off to college in the fall who will surely be in need of furnishings, would take something that had been in his house. I mean, come on, if it's not been outfitted with a tracking device by the paranoid guy, it has surely picked up too many bad vibes from him to ever make a house guest comfortable. [Well, hey, there's a market: the folks who don't want house guests to stay.]
I'll give the guy credit though. He tried. No takers. The couch now sits in the bed of his pick-up truck, one of two running vehicles in his stable of many. Perhaps he intends to attach seat belts onto them to be able to provide comfort to the owners of the voices he likely hears. Or maybe he genuinely intends to take it to Goodwill. I'm sure it's on his list, right after "clean out the car carcasses littering my property."
I saw the prompt for One Single Impression this morning and my thoughts toyed with the word, sometimes whimsically and sometimes tragically. In the end, the whimsical thoughts were easily trumped by the tragic. Without further ado:
It always started around this time of year. I'd be 8 or 12 or 16, and I'd be so done with school. The summer beckoned me. Early heat waves and weekend trips to the beach or the lake or Ocean City would just underscore the feeling. Monday mornings would be spent bemoaning that school was still in session. Classes at 2:05 would take much longer. Heck, classes at any time seemed to enter suspended animation. The stupid classroom clocks' hands wouldn't move no matter how long I stared at them.
Working life put the kibosh on the annual fevers. After only a couple of years of working, I lost the ability to recognize that summer was looming. Who cared? I'd be working regardless. Even after spawning, as I continued to work, the summer meant nothing to me, especially when the kids were little.
It's going on two years now that I've been among the gratefully unemployed. This will be my second full summer of hanging with the kids. And, people, I got the fever. Oh, I got the fever.
Time is at a standstill. There's still four weeks of the kids being in school, and we've been officially struck with the fever for three excruciatingly long weeks already. It's little help that Youngest's kindergarten class keeps track of the days left of school. According to him, there are now 18 days left of school. That many?! Aw, man!
I never would have guessed that I'd feel the fever again. I thought the fever was gone forever from my life. Gone the way of a skinny body and perky...you know. [No need in getting blog hits for people searching that term.]
But it's back, and it's back in full force. Maybe I'll run to the beach today while the kids are in school. Hee hee hee.
1. Awakening at 5:40 a.m. Thursday, I noticed the temperature was 78 degrees. In my house! They're not kidding when they say we're having a hell of a heat wave.
2. It must be global warming, right?
3. I love wearing flip-flops, and I'm especially fond of how black the space between my big toes and second toes get. A sure sign of summer, that black is.
4. My mom called Wednesday night to tell me it was 90-odd degrees in Florida. That's not the real reason she called. The real reason was to tell me of how much she scored at the slot machines on the gambling boat.
5. I only wish she would rake that kind of cash in when I'm with her and we have the "let's-split-our-winnings" agreement in place.
6. With much anticipation, Youngest was looking forward to watching E.T. last night on Nick. He kept noting that it started at 8 o'clock, and that he would be able to watch the whole thing because "Saturday is a day off." Asleep on the floor by 9:10, he was.
7. Eldest made it until the bitter end at 10:30. Daughter? Not interested, thanks, as HSM2 was on the Disney Channel. Besides, "E.T. is too ugly."
8. I decided to start drying clothes outside rather than wasting electricity and carbon (and money) on the dryer.
9. I made the mistake of looking up how much each dryer load costs. 38 cents. That's it. 38 cents.
10. At this rate, I won't break even on the clothespins and rope I bought for the makeshift clothesline until load number 37. It had better be a long, hot summer.
