Baby Girl

I can remember the day you were born.  I was only six and the memory is hazy to me, but I was excited, I know that much.  The memory warms my heart just like those big brown eyes of yours always do.  The feeling of wonder and happiness all mixed up comes back to me as I think of the first time I saw you.   You were so tiny and funny looking, kind of alien like, yet beautiful.  It was fourteen years ago today, the day I met my baby sister.  That was just the beginning, not even the good part.  I loved you from the first moment I saw you, but it was a love that could only keep growing.

My night has been spent in a photo album, like many other nights before it.  I miss you every day.  I especially miss you on this one.   You smile up at me from my computer screen and everything else disappears.  Picture after picture I watch you grow up all over again.  I watch the beautiful baby transform into the beautiful young woman and I am proud.  I can’t even describe how proud you make me.  You are as sweet and loving as you are strong and bold.  Your big heart brings happiness to everyone around you.  I am very blessed to have you in my life. 

 I wonder what kind of loony antics I missed out on today and I laugh.  You can always make me laugh.  That is something that hasn’t changed.  Don’t ever let yourself grow out of your sense of humor.  I look through fourteen years of goofy pictures and see the same crazy girl in all of them.  Thoughts of random dance parties and mustaches run through my head.  To be honest you’re kind of weird, but I love it, and I guess that means you fit in with the rest of us.     

Always remember that even when I’m gone I never stop thinking about you.  I love you with my whole heart and I pray for you daily.  Keep a smile on your face and know that you can do anything you set your mind to do.  Remember that no matter what I will always be there for you.   And know that no matter how many birthdays you have you will always be my baby girl. 

The Kids of Afghanistan

They are my favorite part of this country.  This war is a temporary job for me, I will leave here and go back home, they have known it their whole life.  They are surrounded by ugliness and hate yet their smiles never cease to brighten my day.  I watch them work all day in hot dusty fields.  I watch them herd their goats around obstacles of concertina wire and blown up cars.  They come running to wave at us as we drive by.  I like them all...even the rock throwers.   

    

   little rascal bastards that they are...

While I might cuss them every now and then, and sometimes maybe toss a rock back their way, they still make me laugh.  I can't take it too personal anyway.  I've thrown a few rocks in my day and our trucks are the closest things to trains these kids have.

While little American boys and girls sit in their air conditioned homes and watch cartoons they work from sunrise till sunset.  I respect them.  They are hard workers and their little calloused hands show it.

Despite all the hard work and grown up problems they have, kids are still kids.

And kids crack me up...

 

 

When they aren't workin they're hustling, usually us.  They try to sell us stuff we give them.  They steal food and water off of our moving trucks.  I don't get mad, I get impressed.  They are doing what they can to eat and I respect that.  Don't let their smiles fool you, they are starving. 

 

Notice the bright red color in their hands.  They haven't been fingerpainting, its a symptom of malnutrition.

 This little girl left with a piece of my heart, I'll never forget her.  She came up to my truck trying to get some water for her baby brother.  As soon as she put on the puppy dog eyes my heart melted, she was a pro.  I wanted to give her everything I had, but I knew as soon as I did my truck would be surrounded by a swarm of hungry children.  Thats how it works.  If any other kids saw the hand off they would be all over us.  They would probably fight each other for anything that got tossed out and a crowd around the truck wouldn't have been safe for them or us.   I had to wait.

I managed to sneak her a candy bar and she quickly stuffed it in her shirt, like I said, this girl was a pro.  I started snapping pictures and she was joined by a couple more.  They came and went as they realized I wasn't giving anything out.  Recognize the boy on the right?

Once the other kids came around she dropped the puppy dog eyes and switched to a different game.

We were making faces back and forth.  Like I said, kids are kids no matter where you're at.

While watching the group that came and went from around my truck I realized that this girl was top dog.  I didn't have to worry about anybody taking anything from her.  She ran things around here.  When she ran off the others and it was just her and her baby brother I handed her a bottle of water. I was sad that it was all I could give her.  As the little girl walked away I sat thinking about those little red hands reaching up for the bottle.  The look of thanks in her big brown puppy dog eyes will be with me forever. 

 They live poor and hungry in a war torn desert.  All they have is each other. 

The future of this country rests in their red calloused hands. 

I pray that they may build themselves a better life.  



It's not fair to them

I have a love-hate relationship with the Marine Corps, mostly hate.  There are a few things I will miss when this part of my life is over but for the most part I can’t wait for it to be done with.  Every time I go back home or speak to my family they want to talk about this job that I don’t like.  I realize that to them it is interesting, exciting even.  I understand that they have no idea what my life is like now and they want to be informed.  It frustrates me for so many reasons.  No matter how much anyone in my position tries to explain what our life is like nobody can ever really understand unless they have lived it.  It especially bothers me when I’m home.  Who wants to talk about their job on vacation?

 When conversation leads to my job, as I know it inevitably will, I prepare myself for the dreaded routine I have developed.  I usually humor them for a couple minutes with short, vague responses to be polite.  I then try to change the subject as gracefully as possible, which thanks to my notorious social skills is usually borderline rude.  Sadly, I don’t have much else to talk about these days so awkward silences are always present.  Sometimes I am so worn down and tired of being here my conversation is extremely negative.  Talking to my folks recently I basically described Afghanistan as a huge dump and its people as lower life forms. 

I have been thinking pretty heavily on this lately.   It’s not fair to the people back home to keep them in the dark, no matter how difficult it may be for me.  I decided I need to write about all the positive things I see.  Topics have been running through my mind all week.  Since I started this blog I have been surprised to see how easy it is for me to write about certain aspects of my job.  When something is deep in my heart, like The Answered Prayer or Ad Astra per Aspera, the words flow easily through my mind, soothing me as they hit the paper.

I going to try posting one tonight because theres no telling when I'll be able to get on here again.  I already have something in my head but I need to figure out how to put pictures up on here.  It's probably really simple but I am internet illiterate. 

The Answered Prayer

I watch as he cautiously walks through Death’s territoy and I begin to pray.

My eyes are fixed on his every action as I ask God to protect him.

A loud explosion makes my heart sink and he disapears into a cloud of dust.

My hand moves quickly to my door handle and then reluctantly back to the steering wheel.

There is anxious movement all around me, I am silent and still.

My eyes never leave the cloud.

I never stop praying.

Time slows down as my mind speeds up.

I see his wife.  I see his baby girl.  I force myself to put them out of my thoughts.

Eyes are wide, heart is pounding.

The man without fear is scared.

I swallow hard and steady my mind.

The dust slowly settles and I see him walking.

Thank you God.

He walks to my door and climbs up.

I want to laugh and I want to cry, I am silent.

I want to hug him, I want to shake his hand, I am still.

My eyes still haven’t left him, as if they haven’t caught on to the fact that he’s alive.

I look away and look back.

My eyes meet his and words are spoken without a single utterance.

I love you brother.

Visiting the Past

I’ve been taking a lot of trips down memory lane latley.  It takes a lot of work for me to get all the way back to my early childhood, but once I’m there the memories greet me with a smile.  They start to come back to me in brief  flashes until my mind puts everything together.  It always starts with a feeling, that’s how I remember anything.  I don’t know how else to explain it, but if I can remember how I felt I can bring the past back to life.  Sometimes it’s a strain, but I dig deeper until I have built a solid scene around the feeling. 

The bad is brought to the surface with the good but I don’t mind.  I used to allow myself to be sucked into  the bad because in remembering  it I felt it.  These days I don’t let anything in my past haunt me, I am free from it.  I have come to terms with the fact that every moment leading up to this one has made me who I am today.  I am even proud of some of it now, considering them conquered obstacles.    I have learned from them and grown.

My mind becomes a time machine that travels the continuum freely as it pleases.  I feel scalding asfault on my mulberry stained feet as I run across the street into a sprinkler.  I hear “daddy’s home!” from the kitchen window as we sneak to our ambush positions, squirt guns in hand.  I smell that familiar smell of concrete as we creep closer to him.  The memory shifts to another and I am lying awake in the still of the night, I can’t stop thinking.  I feel thick black hair as I pet the dog that keeps me company,  nobody knows but but he’s the best friend I have.  Flash forward again, I feel a fist hit the side of my face.  I like it, it wakes me up.  The  pain in my face is followed by a pain in my fists, which I like even more. 

Once I get started, the memories from  High Street  come flooding in.  I have to stop myself from writing before this gets out of hand.  So many memories and I haven’t even made it to 13 yet.  That’s when the plot thickens my friends.  That’s when the real nitty gritty of it begins.  I’ll save those for another time perhaps, I haven’t even got to the reason why I started writing this yet.  Maybe I never will get to it.  What I had in mind when I started writing has changed completley.   I find myself wanting to add more but I have to bring it to an end before this blog turns into a book. 

What got me thinking about writing this post was a memory trip I had last night.  I found out that a good friend of mine is signing with the Army against my very strong and persistant advice.  Not only that, but he is signing an eight year contract.  I wish him well in all his future endevours and I hope he enjoys slaving for the man more than I do.  It got me thinking about my hometown, the way I see it. 

My mind drifted into the past again and I was blunt cruisin down a country road, summer wind hitting my face.  I was wearing nothing but water as I watched a beautiful girl’s carefree smile.  I was sitting around a bonfire with the boys laughing and telling stories.  I was in the place I loved, I was home. 

I have to stop myself again because I have even more to write about Douglass than High Street but the point is this.  Cherish the memories you have and don’t ever let them leave your heart.  In thinking about my friend I fell into a bittersweet nostalgia because I know my hometown will never be quite the same as my memories depict it.  I left it and journeyed to a new world.  I had to do it, I had to write the next chapter of my life.  All I can do is continue writing out the pages of my life and know that whenever I miss those days I can always see them again down memory lane.         

Ad Astra per Aspera

The day had been long and hard.  After working well into the night I wanted nothing more than to relax and the opportunity had finally arrived.  I lumbered my way through the thick dust cursing it and the country it belonged to all the way back to my truck.  The frigid winter of the Afghanistan desert taunted my body as if it knew how much I hated the cold.  A river of negativity flooded my mind.  I was tired, hungry, and freezing cold.  I sat down in the thick moon dust and leaned back looking to the sky.  It was that small motion that changed my frustration into awe. 

I was mesmerized by the shining beauty of what I discovered up there.  An instant calm came over me and my mind shifted its gears, automatically thinking poetically.  “Thank you father, for giving me something so beautiful in a place so ugly.”  My irritation at the cold and the horrible food I was eating turned to gratefulness.  I thanked God that I had food to nourish my body and clothes to warm it.  My gaze never left those stars as I sat there talking to my Heavenly Father and praising him for all his goodness and the blessings in my life.  

It was late and the desert was quiet.  Faint bursts of gunfire accompanied by occasional explosions were the only sounds that broke the silence.  To me the contrast in itself was poetic.  People where dying violently not too far away, I could hear them.  I was listening to man’s hatred as I looked at God’s love.   The fighting silenced and suddenly my mind was home.  I was in a Kansas wheat field laying on the bed of my truck and staring at the summer sky.  The stars popped here just like they did there.  No bright city lights to chase them away.  No smog to cover them up.  The stars were free to do what they did best, shine like Kansas fireflies on a July night.  I thought of my state motto, Ad Astra per Aspera,  “To the stars through difficulty.”  It seemed as if those stars were placed in the sky just to ease my troubled mind.  I sat there watching them until the cold drove me to hide my face under my blanket.   Lying there in the dark I said it outload to myself, “to the stars through difficulty”, and in peace I went to sleep. 

The potato that broke the camels back

Writing has been a passion of mine since before I can clearly remember.  I have always been better at conveying my thoughts and emotions with writing than talking.  As a young kid I dreamed of one day being a journalist for National Geographic, an idea that still lives in the back of my mind today.  My love of reading literature and poetry runs as deep as my love for writing it.   Latley my mom, who inspires me to write and is a blogger has been insisting that I start my own blog.  Everytime the subject has been brought up it has been met with a big fat NO.  The thing about it is that I have always been very private about my writing.   Another thing that held me back was my perception of grown men blogging as…well…kinda gay.  I had a picture in my head of some softy complaining about his life on his online diary.  Obviously this was before I actually started reading blogs other than my mom’s.

In highschool I wrote “A” papers for my friends and helped them with their english homework.  If someone needed to know how to spell a word or who wrote the Canterbury Tales they would wake me up from my spot at the back of the classroom and ask me.  Since I have been in the Marine Corps the amount of writing I do has dramatically decreased.  I have been noticing a decline in my spelling and grammar abilities and its unnerving.  Sometimes I imagine that I can actually feel myself getting dummer.  I picture imagination and creative thoughts oozing out of my ears with vocabullary and intellect.

  The other day my good friend LeRoy was talking to his wife online and asked me if his spelling of potato was right.  My response was “nah man, its POTATOE”, which is definitley not how you spell potato.  I decided that night that I needed to get back into writing.  So here I am, after a week of finding potatos hidden in my stuff like easter eggs and a couple thousand potato jokes.  I’ve made up my mind, I’m going to blog.