Insomnia = Memories

I can't sleep. So I'm going to tell you a story. And because I could really use it right now, it's going to be a funny story. See how this works? This is another excerpt from my Papa James' autobiography. It's a tale he told on his father, who we all called Big Daddy.

Again, I've corrected bits where it was important to make the meaning clear.

I remember well something funny about Big Daddy: Once in Crowley, LA, Big Daddy went to a bait dealer that a lady ran out of her home. She also sold goldfish & puppies from her female dogs. After counting out our gold fish, Big Daddy gave her a $20.00 bill. She told him to come into the house so she could get his change. He followed her in and she went in the bedroom to get her purse for change. She had a mama chihuahua with young puppies in her bedroom. She asked Daddy if he would like to come into the bedroom and see her little chewawa [sic]. Big Daddy had never heard of a Chihuahua and thought she was offering him sexual concessions! He declined the offer! Later he found out what a chihuahua was. Ha. I can still hear him laughing and telling this on himself, even years later.

And because turnabout is fair play, a memory of me being unsophisticated...

I was about 7 years old the first time I stayed by myself at my grandparents' house. I hadn't really gotten to play like I was an only child since my middle sister was born when I was 13 months old. So, like, never. About that time in my life, I was fighting with my mom about my hair a lot. Maybe all the time, because I seem to recall that by the next school year old ladies at church were telling my mom what a fine priest I would make some day. I knew all the words and had the clean-cut look! Anyway, at this point, my mom was still trying to let me wear my hair long, but it was a daily war zone with crying, wailing, chemical weaponry, blood, entrenched positions, the works. Mom kept us on a pretty tight schedule as kids, mostly for her own sanity, but suddenly I found myself in the bizarre position of being the (extremely spoiled) grandchild in a house by myself with my grandparents' undivided attention. I lapped it up like a cat does cream, and was slinking into the kitchen about 3 days into my visit in my pajamas to see if anybody wanted to make me pancakes. I was only 7, I was entitled to that level of self-centeredness and, in fact, my grandmother DID want to make me pancakes. She had gotten a jar of sourdough starter going pretty good and wanted to use some of it, so logically, pancakes ensued. And as I sidled into the kitchen all barefoot and rumpled and bedheaded, Granny Jessalyn looked up from where she was reading in the green morning light of her kitchen window, and she laughed a deep happy laugh and remarked to Papa James, "Yes, sir! When you're at grandmother's house you can really let your hair down!" Serious and literal and 100% sincere, I responded, "That's right! You don't even have to brush it if you don't want to!" She laughed so hard, and then hugged me so tight, the memory is chipped into the rock of my soul the way it smelled and felt and sounded. She explained about women having to wear their hair put up all the time, back in the old days, and how it was a real treat to be where you could relax and let it down. And ever since, I've associated the Gibson girl with my Granny Jessalyn's kitchen. Then she pulled out the sourdough starter from her icebox and we got down to some pancakes.

The Infamous New Orleans Incident

I posted a meme a couple of days ago listing 25 random facts about me. Item 11 was a blithe statement, lightly made, about where I fall on The Kinsey Scale. Its breeziness belies the deep, awkward, messy journey that led to that clear pool of conclusion. But fear not, gentle readers, I'm not going to drag you down that winding, muddy, thorny path today. Instead, I'm going to tell you one of my favorite stories about that time; one that stands as a bright shaft of light on an otherwise dim path. This is a story of an event so fabulous, so infamous, it wound up on a t-shirt exemplifying "Drama Queen" behavior. This is the story of list item #18: I got an infamous haircut on the porch of an apartment over a fish market in New Orleans at Mardi Gras one year.

I was 24 years old, and had been pretty sure I was gay or bi for about 3 years. I had parlayed that faint thread of attraction I have for men into a string of monogamous, monotonous, and completely mediocre relationships since I was 14. Accordingly, for the first couple years after I acknowledged to myself that I was not straight I was in the middle of being in twoo wuv with a boy from my high school and we were SOOO SRSLY getting married. Right. So that fell apart and I got into what I expected would be a fling with a hot guy from the rugby team just for the sake of a rebound. Well, a year later, he and I were making plans to get married, because I'm kinda dense like that.

That's where I was personally. A few more details to finish the setting: I had this long curly hair that I'd been growing out ever since I got out of the Air Force Academy six years before. I was playing rugby, and there was an annual tournament in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. It was always a good party, and occasionally some good rugby, and definitely a learning experience. I got out of school late on a Friday, picked up my buddies, and we drove all night in my awesome little silver Saturn to get to New Orleans; we stayed with a friend who I think was named Nina. One of my rugby buddies was Betsy, this awesome pre-med dyke who had learned how to cut hair in the dorm at her all-girls college. She had the truest sense of herself of any person I've ever met... deep self-knowledge and confidence that really glowed right out her pores.

Well, Betsy and me and my Saturn-load of people ended up at Nina's apartment, which was on the second story over a small, independent fish market in a turn-of-the-century building with those cool, deep, sleeping porches all the way around. The fish market had a sign out front that consisted of a realistic, life sized marlin leaping out of the building like it was making a break for the freedom of the canal and then the open sea beyond. In other words, it was weird, slightly smelly, and thoroughly, typically New Orleanian.

We got there at 2 AM, I think, because of the late start. And just as we were settling in to our mattresses on the floor, some voices called from the street below... it was some of Nina's friends with beer in milk jugs that they'd brought from a keg party that got broken up by the cops. So they came up and we sat around sharing beer out of milk jugs and socializing. Around 4 they left and we fell into a dead sleep, but by 9 we were at the fields, a little weird, slightly smelly... you know how it goes. Even if you've never been there, and I commend you if you haven't, you've mocked somebody who was hurting on The Morning After.

We played 3 games of rugby that day, and I jumped in with another team for at least one more game, maybe 2. My hair was long, so I had to braid it to play, but it would get messed up during the game. And by "messed up" I mean so disheveled that I could pass for a transient and so full of grass and burrs and roots that if I had been my own horse, I'd have just cut the tangles out with a pocket knife. I had to re-braid it several times during the day to keep it out of my eyes and other people's fists. So we got back to Nina's that night and I was lying, totally exhausted, on a mattress on the floor waiting my turn in the shower. And I started thinking: I'm going to have to stand in the shower for 30 minutes with my arms over my head, picking burrs out of my hair, just so I can go to the bar tonight where it will absorb every whiff of cigarette smoke, so I can get up tomorrow and do this ALL. OVER. AGAIN. The thought just knocked me flat, and my arms would have screamed if they had mouths. That would be weirder than even New Orleans, so I'm glad they don't.

I looked at Betsy, lying exhausted on the couch near me and sporting a blissfully low-maintenance buzz cut, and asked, "Hey, Betsy, wanna cut my hair?"

She perked right up, said, "Hell, yeah! Short?!" I nodded, and she went scurrying for Nina's clippers and shears. We couldn't find them, but she found Nina's 5-year-old's safety scissors (with the rounded tips!) and went out on the porch and got started. The next time the bathroom was free, we found the clippers and hair-cutting shears, so she finished the job up properly. The other girls took my fluffy pile of hair, caught it up in a rubber band and tossed it out on top of the marlin's head. For one night, the fish market marlin had a Rastafarian-looking afro, while I had a more permanent installation of Lesbian Haircut #2.

We went to a bar in New Orleans called The Rubyfruit Jungle and I came home with short hair and Pride Beads. I suddenly understood why grownups were so down on kids making out, because when you're making out with the right people, it could totally turn into the sorts of things grownups don't want kids to do. The aftershocks of that weekend, those realizations, the books I looked to for answers, the people who helped me find them, they all agglomerate in a weird, slightly smelly, and thoroughly, typically New Orleanian gumbo that is my life. And it is thanks to all of them that I kept my balance, made it a few more steps up the path, and came to be able to blithely say "Oh, yeah. I'm a 4 on the Kinsey scale," like it's no big deal.

how does your garden grow?

I was chatting with one of my aunts tonight about gardening. It's not something I do right now, but I've been edging progressively closer to it over the last several years. I've managed to keep alive an iris that I dug up from the front yard of my house in Manchaca when I sold the place. And I grew an avocado tree and an onion plant in my compost pots. I guess that's got me feeling confident in my horticultural skills.

Confident enough that I'd decided to plant a tomato and some strawberries, anyway. I'd like to see how it goes. My aunt was telling me that this is just the time of year for planting... well, lots of things. And I asked her how I would go about finding out when to plant stuff.

She said she just learned from Miss Vannie, but she could pass along the basics. And then she told me a little more about Miss Vannie. She's sorta the stuff of legends in our family... a strong, brilliant, generous matriarch. I've never heard anyone speak ill of Miss Vannie, and if you know how Southern folk do, that's quite a statement. In The South, you can pretty much slander someone from head to toe, flay them, fillet them, and string their bones up for a scarecrow, so long as you say "Bless her heart" or "No disrespect to her memory, but..." before you spit your poison.

My mom wanted to name me for Miss Vannie, at one point. I'm not sure exactly how I came to be named something else, but I spent a couple of years in my childhood planning to legally change my name to Sarah Savannah when I grew up big. Miss Vannie knew all there was to know about gardening, mostly as a matter of necessity. She lived 10 miles from a store and she never once drove a car. She was my grandmother's grandmother, if that gives you any sense of her era. All her planting tips are pretty easy to remember, as they're tied to holidays. Plant this at the end of January, plant that on Valentine's day, and these other things on Good Friday.

Of course, I'm ... mentally challenged by calendars so I'll probably botch that pretty good a couple of times. But I don't live 10 miles from a store and if my peppers don't turn out, I can always walk across the street and pick them up at the market. Sometimes I get a strong sense of dissatisfaction with the urban life I live... The cars and the streets and all the people slammed up cheek-to-jowl and none of them friendly with each other, it really gets me down.

And then I look in the little pot out in front of my house and see that I've helped strawberries find a place to live in the city one more year, and it keeps me going. I bet Miss Vannie would've liked to have a little more city in her life sometimes, for the convenience. It's good to remember that on days when I have to pluck grocery bags that blew away from the store out of my crape myrtles.

where water comes from...

Many years ago, my Aunt Kathy gave to her father a book. It was a mostly empty book, with lots of lined pages in it and printed prompts at the top of each page. The prompts asked simple, generic questions that anybody might ask in a "get to know you" sort of conversation. If you filled out all the prompts, however, you'd have a reasonably good stab at an autobiography. My Papa James, in spite of how intimidating that big empty book was, gave it a serious go in his last few years. Sometimes, he wrote only one word or one sentence in response to a prompt. Sometimes, he had so much to say that he'd write for three pages on one topic, ignoring the prompts on succeeding pages so he could tell his story. This is one of those, and if I say so myself, he's a great storyteller. I hope to grow up to be like him.

Today, I'm a Master's Degreed Civil Engineer with a specialty in Water Resources. I've never lived in a home that didn't have hot running water and modern plumbing and I spend most of my time thinking about how to protect water from the polluting influence of humans. This is my Papa's perspective on water. Change takes time, but -- WOW -- does it happen.
Just FYI, I have corrected misspellings and grammatical mistakes to make the meaning clear, but the text is otherwise unaltered.

Water, A Precious Commodity

When I was very young & even into adulthood, water was not readily available everywhere. If you lived in rural America, most likely your water supply was a well, or if in southern Louisiana, a cistern for rainwater. All over East Texas water was plentiful at about 30 ft. or so. Most people dug their wells about 3 ft. in diam. You could start out digging w/shovel & posthole diggers, but when it got into hard clay & then rock you had to use a flattened point bar & chip away one side while you stood on the other side. Then you scooped up the chips & put in a bucket & handed it up to or had someone else draw it out on a rope. You then got on the other side & did it again. This was a slow process but effectual.
After getting down to the first water, which was usually just a seep or trickle it got real messy, because from there on down the sides were wet clay mud. It was hard work & hot in summer & cold in winter. You needed to keep the walls round & straight, especially if you intended to run concrete tile in it to keep it from caving in later. At night seep water would accumulate & had to be drawn out before digging could resume.
After getting electricity & installing a pump & indoor plumbing, a lot of older wells had to be deepened to either hold more volume or down to another water vein. As long as people had to draw w/a bucket & rope, they were more conservative w/water. Some wells had to be 60 or 75 ft. deep to reach sufficient or good water. (n.b.: The next time you run water, remember these 3 pages)
I had to deepen our well when it got dry one year. It was hard to find someone to go down into a well & work. There was danger of caving & dropping a bucket on them. Humpy Fielder’s well was 75 deep & I helped him clean it out & deepened it a few feet. 5 gal. of mud gets awfully heavy drawing it up that far. Humpy was a trusting soul to work down in that well w/me, a 14 yr. old drawing mud. The hard part was drawing him back up, but by letting the tail of the rope down into the well, he could help pull himself up after he could reach the tail rope.
When water is this precious, you can take turns bathing in the same tub of water. You only use 1 glass full to brush your teeth. You dip your brush into the glass, brush, then wash your brush out in the glass of water, then spit & rinse your mouth w/the same glass of water. It looks kinda gross but your brush just came out of your mouth anyway. You swallow your spit, but if you spit it out into a spoon you wouldn’t want to put it back into your mouth & swallow. Ha. It’s all in your head!
Some people either were too lazy to dig a well or provide water near their home. They carried water from a spring, usually downhill from the house. Some people went to a stream to bathe. A very common practice when I was a small child. All the men & boys went to one hole & the women & girls to another. It was common to see tubs of water out in the sun warming for baths later on that day.
Wash water had to be drawn & heated in a big cast iron pot by wood fire. The clothes were boiled in that pot & rinsed in tubs. That was a chore, especially wringing by hand.
Without water in the house there was no bathroom. Every family had a chamber pot w/a lid to use at night or when someone was too sick to go to the outside toilet. The whole family used that one pot sometime & it got awfully full & smelly by morning, unless someone did the noble thing & went out & dumped it. If you were prosperous, you might have more than one pot. You could really know who was your pal when you were sick & needed your pot emptied.
Besides having to draw water for the family, the animals had to be watered. Even the hogs had to have a mud hole to wallow & stay cool in. A big mule or horse would drink more than 5 gal a day & cows almost as much. Teenage boys usually caught these chores. I almost always enjoyed drawing water except when the rope had ice on it. UGH!
Some people had a specially made bucket for milk to be kept in, down in the well. That way you could have cool milk for supper & it would keep 1 day w/out souring. If it soured a bit you could use it to make butter & buttermilk.
If an animal like a rat or mole or snake or cat got in the well & died the water would smell & taste bad so the carcass had to be gotten out & all the water drawn out. That was a big time job. Usually took hours of constant drawing to get the well empty, as water was constantly running in while you were drawing out. Bleach was then added to kill bacteria & you carried water from somewhere else for a few days. We had 2 wells & that was handy. It saved carrying water very far, too.

Followup story...

I love it that people read my blog. I love it even more that my family and friends come read it and sometimes even come back. My aunt sent me an e-mail recently to correct some of the details of my Memorial Day post. While she was at it, she shared another story about my grandfather and his service in Vietnam and how that unexpectedly tied into her life several years later. With her blessings, here is her story:

Papa was in the Naval Reserve as a Seabee (they were called that but it was a play on CB which stood for Construction Battalion) and he served in Viet Nam, not Korea. He was too young to fight in Korea, but he was not too young to join the Naval Reserve! None the less, he was so proud of this country, and was glad to serve when his Naval Reserve unit (the Lone Star Battalion) was called up as a result of President Lyndon Johnson deciding to escalate the Viet Nam War. Congress said fine, but if you are going to start calling up Reserve units, the first one to go will be from your area. Thus, the Lone Star Battalion was the first Reserve Unit to go to Viet Nam. Papa was 41 at the time, and anyone over 35 was given an automatic dispensation if they did not want to go. Papa, and all of the other men who were in the Reserve Unit with him, said no, they would go because that is what they had trained for and received pay for for the last 20 or more years. The oldest man in their unit was in his late fifties - he went and was their postman. Ironically, when Uncle David [my aunt's husband] went to work at FESCO in 1975, they had a big anniversary celebration because FESCO had been in existence for 25 years. Papa and Grannie came to see us that weekend, and got there during the FESCO celebration. All of a sudden someone yelled "Chief Dahlstrom". His name was Jim Denim and he had been 19 when he was sent to Viet Nam. He came up and saluted Papa. He had served with Papa - and told me stories that I could believe so well because I knew what a good and kind man Papa was. He said that when they had all been over there, so scared and lonely, that Papa pretty well adopted them all and took care of all the young men. He said that Papa would read his mail from home out loud to all of them, and tell him about his family that he loved so very much. Jim Denim said that Papa had made a very hard time bearable for lots of men over there. He loved Papa and after that always asked me how he was. Jim was a welder for the Alice office, so after we moved to Victoria, I did not see him very often. However, when Papa died, it was in the FESCO newsletter, and Jim sent me a really sweet and kind sympathy card.
Papa lived the motto "Be kind to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise"

With much love and fond remembrance, I salute my Papa, too.

Lest We Forget

I'm a part-time writer. I'm not really a "content creator" as they are called in these internet multi-media-rich days. One of my all-time favorite songs, however, is Loreena McKennit's tune Dante's Prayer. And I found where a content creator over on YouTube had made that song into a tribute to fallen soldiers from Iraq.



My grandfather returned safe and sound from Vietnam. He had joined the Naval Reserve to help make ends meet for his large family, and he ended up serving as a SeaBee. I used to call him every veteran's day and thank him for doing that. He passed away a few years ago, so now I spend this day remembering him.

I am a pacifist through and through. I think there is always a better way than war to fix diplomatic problems. But until the rest of the world agrees with me, there will be a need for a defensive military, if nothing else. This is where my practicality and my ideals collide. I would love to see military engines dismantled world-wide. But until that happens, I recognize the need for defense and I honor the people who answer the call to serve. I respectfully and patriotically think that the wars we're fighting now are a crock of shit. But I also respect the patriotism of the people who are over there doing the job they signed up to do and I hope they do it well and with dignity.

So, for all soldiers of all countries everywhere, gay, straight, bisexual, Christian, Muslim, Atheist, Hindu, Jewish, or otherwise - I pray you do your job well and with dignity, and that you come home to the respect and love of your family. We remember.

Edit: Corrected the location of the war and branch in which my grandfather served. I originally said Korea and National Guard.

Crack in the armor

It is 4:12 AM. I am grumpy, and snarky, and quite clearly not asleep. And I have a headache. So... *pout* It could be worse, but it's enough to make me feel pitiful. However, my ill fortune is your gain, because it means I'm going to summon a happy memory to re-center my psyche and hopefully get pointed back toward sleep. And I'm writing it all down, which is where you come in, dear reader.

I had, pretty much, an ideal childhood. I've become aware since then that my folks were struggling with their demons, and hey, who isn't? But at the time I was Blissfully Unaware. In those days, the oilfield was flush with money and my folks were doing alright; we were really blessed. We had a little piece of land out on the edge of town, and a couple of horses, and a black lab. That's right: I had a pony AND a puppy. I pretty much hit the childhood lottery jackpot.

My dad worked for this guy named George, and George was a stubborn jackass with a hot temper but also a charming way with people. And money, so if he couldn't charm you or out-stubborn you, he'd just buy you. George had, at some point, "gotten into" horse racing and bought himself a very promising racehorse who turned out to be a stubborn jackass with a hot temper. He wasn't fast enough to win races, but he was fast enough to be a good pace horse. Except that Midnight Dancer, George's horse, would pick fights with the horses he was training with while they were training. That made him a very unpopular pacer, so he got retired. Midnight Dancer got bounced around a bit because he was too expensive to shoot and too obnoxious to have as a pet and too stubborn to ride. Eventually, George noticed that my affable father was married to a stubborn woman who happened to be "into horses." (Come on, you didn't think I was going to call my own mother a stubborn jackass, did you? For the record, she stops shy of jackassery, but she's the primary source of my stubborn streak and Rose says I do NOT stop shy.) And that's how Midnight Dancer came to live on our little piece of land.

Racehorses, like show dogs, often have their pedigreed name and then their "real" name. You know what I'm talking about, right? Your neighbor calls her dog Ralphie but when they go in the AKC show Ralphie-poo is introduced as Dame Nellie's Revelry or some such pretentious nonsense. It turned out that everyone who had ever had to deal with both horse and owner had come to one unmistakable conclusion about Midnight Dancer: his real name was George.

We used to go out in the evenings after school and feed the horses pretty regularly. They can get by on grass, but especially in bad weather you have to supplement that with something. Ours got a bit of oats some days and a bit of "sweet feed" on others. Sweet feed is a mix of grains and vitamins and salt with a little bit of molasses tossed in to hold it all together. Everybody, kids and dogs included, loved sweet feed. It's basically crack for horses.

My dog had been one of those frou-frou AKC-caliber puppies, before she was born. She was probably destined for two names and papers and retriever trials. There were ten in the litter and the mom was a national champion retriever. But the whole litter got sick and five of them died and the one we got was the runt. Amazingly, or maybe not so amazing considering my mom's nurturing skills, that sick little runt puppy with all her hair near burned off by a fever grew up to be a whip-smart retriever/guard dog/pet/babysitter/horse herder. We named her, with all the originality that children can muster after watching "Lady and the Tramp" 8000 times, Lady. To our credit, our pony was named "White Star Pixie Dust" but you can clearly see Walt Disney's stamp on that one, too.

So Lady went with us out to our little piece of land on the edge of town and chased rabbits through the tall grass and brought me sticks and pestered the horses. And she LOVED sweet feed. She'd just stick her head right into a feed bucket with any of the horses and nosh. Any of the horses except for George, anyway. George was NOT on friendly terms with Lady and if she ever forgot herself and tried to put her nose in his bucket, he would lay his ears back against his neck and snort and bare his teeth. If that wasn't enough, he'd stomp or charge a few steps toward her in defense of his food.

One day, my mom was working out one of her demons by giving George one helluva training workout. By the time they were done, they were both dripping sweat and exhausted. I don't remember this too particularly, but I expect I'd been down at the stock tank with Lady while mom was doing that. My dad had built this great arena out there out of spare oilfield drill pipe and a borrowed welding rig. So mom turned George out into the arena to let him cool off but keep him nearby and contained while she cleaned up. George had found some deep soft sand as far from my mother as he could get and was just rolling onto his back to scratch and dry himself when Lady and I walked up on the scene. I swear, I have never before or since seen a little black dog look more like a wild tawny lion than at that moment. Lady dropped into a low crouch and stalked up on George's tail like the hunting dog she was meant to be. She leaped up between his hind legs, landed full on his sweaty ribcage and went junkyard-style barking right up in his soft underbelly for about 10 seconds. Then she leaped between George's front legs, over his head, and dashed out of the arena to safety on the far side of the pasture.

George was righteously pissed off and a little embarrassed, of course, by the whole thing and probably spent 20 minutes running back and forth along the arena fence snorting and fuming. She still never did get any of his sweet feed after that, but I don't think it bothered her so much.

don't know what to say...

I'm having a spot of writer's block these days. I should probably take the very good advice of a random blog I strolled through recently, and start carrying a pen with me so I can jot down ideas when they occur out in the Big Blue Room. Because, clearly, those light bulbs popping up over my head whilst I'm out having a life are not coming home with me. What did I do, ideas? Did I snub you somehow? Make you grumpy by forgetting your names? Are you jealous because I mentioned former ideas? Whatever it is, I wish you'd forgive me...

So today, I give you a memory of mine:

I had a friend named Kristin Wheeler when I was at the Air Force Academy. She was from Lakeland, Florida and was one of those elusive and rare creatures -- the Native Floridian. Most people who are "from" Florida are actually from New Jersey or Idaho or some place cold. They move to Florida for the glorious tropical weather. Kristi, however, was actually from there for at least 3 generations that I know of. At our age, that means her family moved to Florida BEFORE AIR CONDITIONING. This proves them to be exceptionally hardy folk, and Kristi was no exception. She and I were in theater together at USAFA and had lots of good times escaping the military life back stage. We also figured out how to get out to the internet and connect to a BBS. Back in the days before the WWW there were no IM clients or java-driven chat rooms or forums. You had to telnet to a BBS and carry on in text-only systems. Seriously, the year after us, freshmen got computers loaded with Gopher for web browsing. We were a couple of years ahead of Netscape or Internet Explorer. Thus the point about Kristi's Floridian hardiness.

Kristi and I had some wild and silly and fun times connecting with each other and the outside world via the BBS. One of the big things the Air Force (and, really, any military training program) does is try to isolate you so that you're forced to rely on and build bonds with your squadmates. The internet really undermines that, and if the Academy higher-ups had been aware of just how we were using the budding internet socially, they'd likely have cut off our access. We weren't doing anything illegal or dangerous, just undermining their precious training strategies by building up a support network of people we chose, rather than clinging to the ones we'd been tossed in with by alphabetical happenstance.

Kristi and I managed to stay in touch for a couple of years after I left the Academy, and even for a few after she graduated and got on with life. In that span of time, I moved about 16 times, so this was no easy feat. The last time I heard from her was when I got an invitation to her second wedding. I was sad to have missed it, but I was embroiled in my own troubles at the time. I never sent a card and when I tried to get in touch via the e-mail address printed in the invitation, it wasn't functioning.

I miss her. One of my best memories of my summers in Florida, working for the Mouse, are of her coming to spring me out of the all-Disney apartment complex so we could go play at Busch Gardens. We went to the beach, visited her folks' house, rode roller coasters, and just enjoyed a day away from the grind. If you've ever lived in a cloister like military school or a company-owned apartment complex, you understand how vital those little slices of "real life" are. It's unimaginably special to get away for a day and just eat dinner with a family (even if they're not your own) or do any ordinary thing outside the insular environment. Environments like that can be really useful in the short term for providing intense experiences, immersion, focus, and building cohesion, or uniformity, if you're cynical. Beyond that, they're not so good, but the friends you make inside those pressure cookers are the kind you never forget. So wherever Kristi (Wheeler) Cummings is now, I wish her well. I remember her fondly and hope that she continues to bring her particular spark of humor and liveliness to the people who surround her today.

GO LOOK AT THE MOON!!!

NASA advises you to go take a look at the moon tonight. It'll look large and lovely as a result of an optical illusion that nobody understands, just like microwaves and non-dairy creamer. There are a few theories on why the moon looks so large when it comes up on the horizon, and there are great explanations of them on that link.

I've experienced that myself... the most glorious moonrise I ever saw actually looked like a massive grassfire in the mesas of New Mexico. It spread thick and red and wavy across the horizon, getting larger and larger as I drove toward it, cursing the fact that I had no cell phone reception and the nearest land line was 14 miles TOWARD the fire. For a while, I honestly wondered if I'd have to ditch the truck in an arroyo and hope the flames passed overhead. Then, suddenly the upper edge of the moon popped out crisp and clear into the cooler layers of air. The atmosphere stopped playing mirage tricks and the orange moon rose splendidly over the mesas and canyons.

It's a terrific memory and one that I hold out any time someone says they don't get what the big deal is about light pollution. Happy memories and good moongazing tonight, internet!

Gone to Refugio, Back by 2!!!

Monica and I had known each other for four years. She was in my English classes from Mrs. Reuter to Mrs. Schurtz (quite the gamut those English teachers ran...) We were never especially close, however, until our sophomore year. That year, we competed in Certamen together and ran the Latin Club, and over time we became good friends. At first we didn't get along well because of some typical best-friend drama with her childhood pal, the result being that I was left out. But Monica was never the type to exclude someone, so by our junior year we had become like the Three Musketeers, but without the Muskets and all in Latin instead of French. Monica and I had more classes together our junior year, and she taught me how to raise a little hell but still be a good kid.

She was working at Grandy's at the time. When we had Certamen tournaments she would spend the night at my house after she got off work. That was better than driving all the way out to her house, trying to snag a wink of sleep, and then meeting us by the roadside on our way out of town in the small hours. We had always planned for me to spend a night with her sometime, just for fun. We looked forward to going dancing and sleeping late, rather than studying and going bleary-eyed as we usually did.

Junior year rolled by and Senior year came on and I quit taking Latin, but Monica and I still spent a lot of time talking because of all those events that happen to you in high school which are much bigger at the time than they ever are in retrospect. Well, one weekend in the fall, we were finally going to do it. There was a dance Saturday night, and we were going to go to it and then spend the night at her house. I had a physical exam for the Air force Academy that morning in Beeville, but when I got back that afternoon, my eyes were still dilated and my mom said I couldn't go out. My mom had the right idea - my eyes didn't return to normal until Monday. Hopes dashed again, we waited.

Some weeks later, however, everything was finally right. Monica had to work for a few hours on Friday afternoon. She came to my house and we "got ready", which couldn't have taken very long since neither of us really was the makeup-wearing type. Most likely she had to shower the fried chicken smell off herself and fix her hair. We went out to Inez Community Center, because TAB (the Texas Armadillo Band - in their day they were an act not to be missed) was playing there and it was just a half hour north of town.

We had good times, staying until the dance was nearly over. I met her cousin Bill, who she was going to visit two years later when the accident happened. On the way home, we sang to the radio and talked about everything and everybody. We got so busy talking we missed the exit where Business Highway 59 splits off of US 59 and goes into Victoria. We just kept on driving, singing, talking. After a while, we started to wonder if we had missed an exit, but there's no way to turn around on that stretch of divided highway, and we weren't sure how long we'd been driving, or how far. So we just kept on going and talking, and from time to time one of us would say, "Gee, are you sure we didn't miss an exit?" But neither of us remembered the merger of Business 59 with US 59 on our way out to Inez, so we couldn't figure out why there'd be an exit to miss. All of a sudden we were in Refugio. (For those not familiar with the route of US Highway 59 through south-central Texas, that's the next town down the road, a solid 30 minute drive from the south edge of Victoria.)

Neither of us had realized we'd been driving for that long, and we laughed so hard when we got there, I almost couldn't get the car turned around. Time flies, as they say. On the original route home, we had planned to take a shortcut her grandmother had described to her. By the end of that misadventure, though, we decided to simply follow the main road and get home as directly as we knew how. Afterwards, we had a secret between us that we never told anyone, but now I'm the only one who knows.

We were the kind of friends who can spend two hours out on the road together, not even knowing half an hour had passed. Predictably, when I left for school, we swore never to grow apart. Both of us knew we had the kind of friendship you don't let go of. She wrote and told me her milestones and her little things. I wrote back and we managed to stay close. I called whenever I was allowed, but freshmen at military institutions have precious and limited phone time. I tried to call her to catch up on her news on the night she died, Oct. 17, 1992. I got her last letter the next day, and it said she had to tell me something, but it would have to wait until a private time. I never found out what it was. I still think of her a lot, especially around Refugio.

In Memoriam - Monica Deanne Hartman - Ana Behabbek

I Tried.

I tried to pour my light into your darkness, to fill it up, to lift you and light you and show you your own light. You were a crystal cave that my spark could awaken to fiery color, to dazzle.

I didn't have enough light. Your darkness needed every spark I had, needed more the more I gave. I wanted so much to give, I would have died to give it all to you, and
YOU.
WOULD.
HAVE.
TAKEN.
ALL.

You couldn't let me go out for more light. You relied so much on me, you didn't have your own to give.
You wouldn't let me refill myself, and so I could never fill you.

We both went dark.

I tried.

I tried.

When I was cold, alone in complete darkness, underground, when no light was left in me -- you asked more even then. I was dead. My eyes were dead, my heart was a rock. It wasn't numb. It had never felt, forgot living and warmth and the light. How could you ask for more from me then? Where was I to get it? I didn't even remember what the light looked like.

Knowing I couldn't give you what you needed... it broke me.

For you, for my beloved, if I had it to give, if I'd had to scrape it out of my own heart with my own dying hand and leave myself a weeping wound to get it,
I.
WOULD.
HAVE.
GIVEN.
ALL.

HOW COULD YOU ASK ME TO DO THAT?

I used to shine.

I used to glow.

I remember it now, although I didn't then.

I used to light a hundred souls who returned that light, reflected and strengthened. I always had enough for myself, for everyone who wanted any, for everyone who needed, for friends and lovers and family and beloved. Always some reflected and some didn't, but there was always enough.

You took it all. You took from wanters, needers, myself, friends, family, everyone. Your dark swallowed me until no reflections came back to me. Enclosed, I tried to pour my remaining light into you. I tried to make you glow, so we could shine on each other. I was a gambler trying to recover a lifetime of savings with her last chip. I wanted to see the crystal cave lit from inside, to see you sparkle and shine and give back to me what I gave to you.

I tried.

I tried.

I tried.

And now,
for taking from me so carelessly,
for asking more from me than I had to give,
for swallowing me up,
for taking from me all I had,
for using me,
i hate you.

supposed...

... to be sleeping. But I'm wide awake, so I'm up typing instead. I had a long nap this evening when I got back from walking Molly after work, and then a long luxurious bath. So I guess the current wakefulness should come as no surprise. It doesn't, really, even without the above-mentioned factors. I'm a lifelong night-owl and I've been indulging myself lately. I had such trouble breathing when I woke up this morning that I sucked on my inhaler and once my breathing returned to normal I just kinda went comatose for a few hours. That was great, in one way, because I needed the deep sleep to recuperate from all the struggling I've done with my lungs these past weeks. In another way, it meant I was three hours late to work and had to stay uber-late this evening to make it up. Even that was okay. I got it done, and luckily I had a task at work that was very well-suited to the quieter working evironment one finds at 7 PM in a near-abandoned office. More of the research I was working on last time I posted, actually...

Less okay is the reprimand I got from my pregnant friend about how long it's been since I called her last and the fact that I'm not going to her baby shower this weekend. Truthfully, though I love her dearly, she's a little difficult. We tell this story about ourselves, and we tell it in good humor, but it has a very real element of strain to it. The origin of the story itself is strife. She and I went to college together, and majored in the same thing, and for the last two years of our schooling had all but 1 class together (save summer school). When we were anywhere doing anything, we got along, unless we were in the car. It didn't matter which of us was driving, if we were in the car, we were fighting. We were not just "bickering" or good-naturedly ribbing each other, either. We were fighting like only two old people who've been married 50 years and know the darkest of ugly things about each other can fight. If I was driving, she'd try to tell me how to drive. I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE TELL ME HOW TO DRIVE!!! I'm all for a navigator. Strategically speaking, I want to know what street I need to turn on, that I have two blocks before I need to be in the far left lane, or that the restaurant is about 2 miles ahead on the right. Tactically, I figure out how to make those things happen, and woe betide the soul who thinks to tell me otherwise. So I nearly killed her on any number of occasions. I have never heard such violently ugly things come out of my own mouth (and to my own great surprise) as when she was telling me how to drive. I can think of only two other people I've ever really wanted to pound with my fists as badly as I wanted to hit her almost every time we were in a car together. She used to expect me to tell her the same stuff when she was driving, and I usually did so, albeit reluctantly. This didn't become a problem until she was the Designated Driver one infamous night in New Orleans. We were halfway back to our hotel and on some freeway bridge across the Mississippi River when she started hollering at me (who? quite intoxicated, eyeglasses removed, seeing sextuple me?) to sit up and help her watch for the exit signs. It was then that it became quite apparent to me that in our former lives, we HAD been and old couple married for 50 years. And one night, we were driving across a river bridge, and she started telling me how to drive (AGAIN) and I deliberately drove over the bridge railing into the river and killed us both to SHUT HER UP! That said, aside from our in-car experiences channeling our former lives, we get on great and I love her to death. I hate to disappoint her. Anyway, she's not thrilled that I'm missing her shower, but I've had this weekend in College Station planned for a lot longer than I've known about her shower and there are more folks I can't disappoint there.

In other news, I'm halfway through The Witching Hour by Anne Rice. Good book!

And now, back to bed. Ahhh, to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream...