This post was originally published on 11/16/2013
As Veteran’s Day approached, my daughter came home with a form to fill out about any 
veterans she knew for the school display. She wanted to fill out the form about me and attach a picture on the bottom. I tried to encourage her to do a sheet on her great grandfather, who was a handsome man in his Navy dress uniform. I, however, have never liked pictures of myself. It’s not false modesty or some sort of facial dysmorphia, it’s just that unless it includes a cat scan of my brain activity, a list of my favorite books and pictures of my family, I feel like it’s a false representation of my personal values. And plus, I can never get my hair right.
My daughter’s friends had expressed disbelief that her mother had been in the Army, so I caved, sending along my doe-eyed 19 year old self dressed in Class As. Shortly after this, teachers and staff would comment, thanking me for my service. I find this to be extraordinarily awkward. I try not to make it more awkward by saying “it paid for college, it was peacetime, I spent most of it drunk or hungover and I left the military with a chip on my shoulder for mindless bureaucracy.” Not all service is equal.
The Army of today seems entirely different from the Army I joined almost 30 years ago. It was the end of the Cold War. I served in Military Intelligence as a Russian Linguist in what was then called West Germany. Let’s just say we spent a lot of time in the field and standing around outside motor pools chain smoking. I never found us to be a particularly impressive bunch. The work was hard, dull and rarely what we’d been trained for, unless being really, really smart inventory takers and mechanics was part of our occupational specialty.
I want to be honest, because I look at the tough, shitty work the military has to do today and it simply is not equal to the passive grind of my experience. Perhaps it is because I am getting dotty in my middle age years, but I shrug when I think about getting screamed at in basic or spending hours guarding nothing. The lives that were lost in surrounding units involved someone getting skewered by a nighttime antenna and civilians who died when a tank rolled over their car. And all this was second and third hand information. IEDs were never on our mental or literal landscape.
I met a lot of people in the Army, that in today’s terms would be described as being “on the spectrum” or with borderline personality disorders. And then they were armed. Since then I’ve discovered that any behemoth bureaucracy can serve as an umbrella for sociopaths and miscreants, and camouflage for untreated neurological conditions, so the military has no corner on that market. Many of them go on to be C-Level executives or servers at fast food franchises. Fortunately, most are unarmed.
It is true that I had some idealism, some sense of patriotism. It was the Reagan years, after all. But mostly, I grew up in poverty. No one talked to me about financial aid. No one in my family had graduated from college except for my grandfather. I needed a way out. The military provided me with that opportunity and for that, I will forever be grateful.
As to gratitude for service, the real ‘thank yous’ go to those service people who have been or are currently, on the ground, in the air and on the seas who have waited in restless boredom for the action that will inevitably come. You know who you are. I salute you and wish you a safe return home so that you can enjoy the awkwardness of stranger gratitude as well. You deserve it.
WAYS TO REALLY HELP VETERANS THAT DON’T INVOLVE MAGNETIC RIBBONS ON A VEHICLE:
National Coalition for Homeless Veterans
Some days it seems like too many ethically-challenged, bad people are gaining power and steam. I was lucky enough to come across the feed of writer, A.R. Moxon, who also has a 
I was contacted by 
One book that I didn’t get gratis, was by a blogger who I have been following for a couple of years. Dave Astor blogs at 
Dirty dishes sat on the counter, my daughter ran out of jeans, my family foraged for their own meals, and the cats scratched their own bellies. I was writing. I wrote and wrote and wrote, consequences be damned. I submitted a short story to a lit mag and didn’t throw up from anxiety. I came up with a plan for November’s National Novel Writing Month. This time I’m writing a big sociopolitical novel that I’m very excited about. The world did not stop spinning on its axis because I ignored my chores. My child did not need bail money. My husband was able to find things. Nothing happened except for one thing.
close in on this blog’s seventh anniversary, I marvel at how much the online world has changed since I began, but that I still enjoy writing here. With so many things grabbing our attention, it becomes harder to find community and connections. Anything we do to improve that, from connecting with bloggers on the other side of the planet to giving each other an encouraging Like or Hell, Yeah in the comments – these things do make a difference.
I always find the time at the beginning of the new year to be particularly poignant. It’s around this time that I turn into an internet detective, in search of the people who were, for years at a time, part of my life and then no more. Where had they gone? Who had they become?
The picture of a glamorous couple smiling from a beach in Aruba cannot show that they met in a support group for grief or alcoholism. It cannot show the nights of tears or the lack of trust they had to get through in order to become that picture. It cannot show that he’s been cheating on her the last four months and that she has given up on being loved. It cannot show that on the second Tuesday next month, at 7:32p.m., on their way to visit his mother at the nursing home, they will be killed by a drunk driver.
Perhaps this is why I sit here, full up on visual images, but famished for stories. It is not enough to see the photo flip book of someone’s life, multiplying and aging and losing shape. I have the momentary urge to write, call, or email. What to say? Can you tell me what happened between Point A, when I knew you as the person who could drink me under the table, and Point B, when you posted a picture of a very large collection of paper-mâché elephants?
I’m of the school of thought that the past is past for a reason. That we grow and change and hopefully evolve beyond our initial capabilities. Looking back only serves to remind us of progress and of the many lessons we’ve learned on this journey, with its inevitable end. Perhaps all we can do is bow our heads in thanks to those who, for better and for worse, met us on the road.
It’s down to the wire on getting my novel draft out to some amenable friends and family for reader input. Thanks to my skillful procrastination, this will be like writing my senior thesis in college, except that I won’t be running to someone’s office, reeking of all-night coffee, cigarettes and stale sweat, clutching a mangled stack of papers. Fortunately for my beta readers, I will only be repelling the postal carrier and she’s used to that.
On a holiday to honor and memorialize the war dead, you can also get futons 20% off. I tend to agree with some veterans that Memorial Day should never have been moved in the 1960s to create a three-day holiday weekend. I associate the smell of barbecue with the day, more than the stench of war. I say move it back to May 30th and create a three day voting weekend during a warmer time of year. Let’s make voting a bigger deal, in order to truly honor those who have fallen.
My daughter and I spent many hours wandering about the bookstore, always making discoveries. She’d find the latest in a series she was reading and I’d discover a collection of stories from a favorite writer. It was the thrill of the hunt, the surprise discoveries on a random table that made it a pleasure. The more jumbled a bookstore, the happier I am.
It’s raining this morning again. The windows are open and Mr. Cardinal is making a racket from the fence, letting all know far and wide that this patch is his. My husband and daughter are asleep. The cats have resumed napping after breakfast and the coffee is still fresh. A moment of gratitude to start the day. And then back to writing.
and served as a Russian linguist in the Army. I was stationed in Germany for a couple of years. I learned a little Tagalog from an elderly man who worked in the hotel laundry with me while in college. I picked up some Arabic from an Egyptian friend with whom I used to ride the bus downtown to work. My husband has attempted over the years, to teach me the Swedish his father taught him.
This year, I’ve attended more live music performances than I have in the last decade, thanks to my daughter. She’s playing in four orchestras, including one that plays rock music by ear. She’s begun to write her own music, laying down piano, glockenspiel, ukulele, viola and violin tracks, using our living room as a makeshift studio.
Reading is a series of endless gateways through which one can walk. One thing always leads to the next. There is no end to the knowledge or the hidden gardens one can stumble upon. Reading was also a lifeline for me. Introverted, growing up in a dysfunctional home, it was my escape and a promise that there was a better life out there. I’ve never regarded it as a passion, but as a necessity.
For 40+ years, I’ve played the flute. I taught lessons to help with college expenses and get my instrument out whenever nostalgia hits me. I am good at reading music and have the discipline of practice, but I do not love playing as much as I love listening. It is simply the history of self I carry along.
Last, but not least, is an Honorable Mention post by Alison at 
Then I read out loud the requirements: a positively happy nice incident, an admirable person in your life, unwitting luck or fortunate consequences. Bingo! He fulfills all the categories – for me he is a continuous positively happy nice incident, being with him is the biggest piece of unwitting luck or fortunate consequences to ever happen to me, and I admire him enormously. Here’s why:
myself. He makes few demands. He’s committed to clear communication and authenticity, and he chooses love. Even in the face of discord he chooses love. He chooses the path of courage to face the truth, courage to be seen no matter how shameful it may be, courage to stand his ground in things that matter to him. He says clearly what he wants and needs. At the same time he can be flexible, bending like the willow, his roots firmly planted, but branches flying free when the situation demands it. He’s willing to admit when he’s been wrong.
The Green Study 