Where it started for me. Where did it start for you?

From June blog 2005
Long Phone Call
Last night I think we spoke for almost an hour if you include all the silences. There is still tension between the men, and although morale was recently down, it sounded better over there after the group found some bombs. Two days of bomb hunting, it sure is best to find them before they find you. It was so great to hear his voice, even through the Hadji technology, which is crappy. The phones are cheap. The sound is hollow; the volume is unpredictable, and it cuts out like a strobe light.

Waiting for his call was so strange for me, mainly because it is impossible for me to sit still. I have run my life as a one-act show inviting chance equations and spontaneity to rule the scenes. I can hold down a regular job, but after that, it's like rolling the dice for cats. But there I was, waiting. I had missed two calls a couple of weeks ago, and it really made me feel stupid. How could I not be there for him! What could possibly be happening in The World that is so damn important? I'll tell you, raising kids is unpredictable and a valid reason, but I still felt awful for missing the calls.

I was so excited waiting for this phone call that I couldn't keep still. I had to fidget, talk, get a beer, fidget, check the phone to see if it was working, pick at my cuticles, snap off my longer nails. On the windowsill in the living room I found the pink Alice in Wonderland Tea Cup I made some years ago of coiled clay. Inside it was filled with sand dollars. I took one out, a perfect one, and instantly it transported me to the beach where he and I walked and picked up shells. I started to weep, and wanted to be back there again. That was the morning he had to show me something important, something that really meant a lot to him. He sat me down and told me the story of almost losing his foot, how it had 40 fractures, that it was missing part, that it wasn't nice to look at, and that it didn't work like a normal foot. He told me about the skin grafts and the horrible pain. I thought of Lord Byron, whose feet were badly deformed and painful, but he wrote some of the best poetry ever written. I thought of Shakespeare, "what's in a word... it is not a hand or foot or any other part belonging to a man." I thought of this beautiful man in front of me wondering if I would judge him or think less of him because of his suffering. It's just a foot, the foot of a survivor, the foot of a man, who was told he might not walk again, yet he found a way to handle the pain and return to his unit in a combat zone. He showed me how the deep half circle of the graft can be made into a happy face by simply painting on eyes. I told him Chicks like scars and he's got a nice pimp swagger.

After making peace with his foot, we walked down to the beach and picked up shells: the shells of sand dollars, the shells of clams, and the shells that housed life for some creatures of the sea. It was a stretch of expansive blue with puffy clouds and the smooth waves of a flat, shallow beach. We walked a long time holding hands and getting comfortable with closeness and vulnerability. As we walked he told me about his friend who was blown up in the turret by an IED. He told me about how it is to lose so many friends, to have so many roommates and to learn to let go. "Jesse, tell your family that you love them as often as you can, because you never know when you might not see them again." As we walked he told me about the tracers around the Blackhawk as he left Baghdad. He and his friend (both blessed with names from the beginning of the alphabet) were first to be sent out, and they were sent in separate Blackhawks. They were parallel in the sky with tracers all around, but his friend's ride got hit. The Blackhawk had to turn around. He didn't know how his friend was, if just the Blackhawk was lightly damaged or if it went down, he wouldn't know until he returned. As we lifted shells looking for the perfect ones, a ladybug struggled in the water. I lifted her little red bubble-body and placed her on my shirt to dry. He got a few more shells. As he bent down he found another ladybug, then another, then another. "What are you doing out here ladies... Is there a ladybug convention at the beach? Come here and dry out. You'll be alright” He made a dry perch with a pile of sand and a sand dollar. He went back and forth to the surf and found more. He found every ladybug in that stretch and moved them all to safety, talking to each one, assuring each one that they would make it."You're gonna make it!" I fell in love with him and stood there dumbfounded by emotion. If it could be traced to a moment, there it was. This is a man that hunts insurgents, a man that has to kill in order to live. This is a man that has learned the humility of love for all things great and small through the horror of war. He chose to go back out there even when he was medically excused. There is no greater love than that of a man who would lay down his life for a friend.

When the phone finally rang I could hardly find any words to say. I miss you is enough, but it is hardly pleasant conversation.
posted by Jes at 8:44 AM
Saturday, June 18, 2005

Where did it start for YOU