The Myth of Storms

An evening waits to be scrubbed. An afternoon hovers like the air in a funeral parlor...the pale unmoving, unbreathing humidity hangs as funeral clothes in a graying sky. It is a day dying, the skies shuttling in mourners of darkening clouds, armbands of black. The sun blinks one last golden stare before closing, dispersing in a flat line of orange before being penciled out by lowering clouds.

The thunder is slight and faint at first, artillery far away. The sky as fragile as fine bone china. It ripples slightly, tremoring. It rattles, stacks of dishes set before a doorway precariously. Ink spills blackening and staining what is left of lightness, and a scented wind carries the hint of copper.

The house darkens and quiets. A light goes out, the hum of the refrigerator stalls and ticks. A lowering grumble of something unleashed, still so distant away. The storm, like some unredemptive lover stalking after its prey shines bright and pretty lights in dark places, followed by the crush of her fists. Kicking in the doorway, crushing the fine bone china sky into billions of bits. Crying, screaming after the loss, unsalted tears pouring as she runs from room to room, bolting, tearing through walls, exploding doorways, lost love looking.

She passes overhead, dark and beautiful, thundering past me, leaving the droplets of her pain behind.

Xs and Ys

I didn't put an image to this latest post, because it's probably too personal and too close to home to render something that will conjure up my thesis statement.

First, a quick apology for the hiatus. Things change, times move quickly. It's all good, positive and inspiring. So sorry for the delay.

Second, coming from a traditional nuclear family myself, I really find it quite blessed that I also had the fortunate circumstance to father both a girl and a boy, in that order, with all the accompanying drama that each gender...engenders.

My daughter, with all the beauty that only a 20 year old can possess, is a mall designers dream girl. Armed with merely a credit card and a somewhat flexible schedule, she can find enough clothes to address a small African country. She is a driven soul with an achingly unfailing aptitude for sarcasm and panache, and seems wiser than her years. Why? Probably because she's been close to the edges at times, when life has decided to towel-snap her ass and remind her that it takes a lot of work to be excellent. So she is the ultimate resilient one. Who's mood can sometimes be defined by the label behind her neck. She loves what she is and she wants to be front row and show you the love. To smell what the rock is cooking. (Which is a new found joyful interest and can likely just add to the repertoire).

My son is perfectly content as the single most stalwart soul I know. A rock who has assumed his position and stands nakedly for who he is, take it or leave it. He is unabashed. He is patient. He looks for and quite likely finds the best and most special part of a person and announces it and shares it. He is so completely the opposite at times of his carefully coiffed sister that it sometimes baffles us to believe we are a small family.

He could give a shit about a lot of things, but for the things he treasures he gives it his all. He is willing to put his feelings on his lapels, and he maintains a sensitivity that is intriguing. He listens more than he shares, and he accepts wounds that I know cut deep. I know because I've often created them.

They remain quite a constellation for us, a sun and a moon to observe. One basking in the hot-house spotlight that reflects such brilliance and endeavor, and one that remains at time the brightest part of the nighttime sky, a dependable fixed object that is unmoving and remains steadfast to all fortunate to fall within the light.

They are my somewhat awe-inspiring children...so very different, yet so vastly part of what we've created.

It's Been Awhile

The significance of the moth is change..... Caterpillar into chrysalis or pupa. From thence into beauty---Hannibal Lecter, "Silence of the Lambs"

So, it's been awhile, and I apologize. It's just that frankly things have changed. And as this opening reflected, it's the hope that this change is subsequently reflected as being something of beauty.

In the respite since my last post, I've decided to depart a company and a position that had given me tremendous opportunity, tremendous comfort and clout and tremendous security.

To rip literally away from it, to flee the suckling teat is probably a hallmark of mine. A habit. And frankly sometimes it scares the shit out of me. Why do I suddenly get all A-D-D after some quantity of time passes, and I am at my apogee. Do I truly fear the fall to earth? Do I truly fear the possibility of not meeting the previously gained expectations?

I don't rightfully know. It's a little like the male dog marking. I've marked, I'm moving on.

So now I'm in a new job, in a new technology space, and from what I see the only way up...is up.

And that's why it's been awhile. I've been in my cocoon. Waiting for the butterfly. For those that know me...I mean, really know me, know that that is perfectly like me.

So soon I will post some other meanderings, but I thought you should know. For those of you who read.

What Love Isn't

I remember somebody once told me that love isn't what you see when you're out in public, or when you're broadcasting yourself in some sort of forum. Love is what happens when nobody is looking.

Love takes out the trash. Love stays up late.

Love is what happens when somebody makes the other person better...when they fill the gap. And love is seen by those who watch, those who listen, and those who observe. And when a supposed love burns down the carefully placed combustibles that make up a person, that torch the tiny and spider-like connections to all the other people that happen to be connected, then it is not love. It is a toxin. It is an addiction that is compelling, and singular, and focused. And it tastes like love. And it acts like love.

But it is its opposite. It is pride. And it is love of self.

And sometimes, it is only when you lose something that you love, or have the impact of almost losing something that you love, that you realize the fragility of it. The happenstance of it. The mercurial thing we all seek.

I don't love a lot of things. But the things and people I do know that I do. (Or I hope they do) But I don't show it in an endless of array of sayings, or comments or elaborate schemes.

It's in the tiniest, tiniest portions, doled out with a silver ladle. A favorite meal. A favorite salsa. A favorite drink. An extra hour to sleep in. Coffee made fresh.

It ultimately is the action of love that reveals, not the words that are written or murmured. The actions. The constant refrain of unsolicited, unbiased, unrequited, unexpected actions. Some visible, but many invisible.

Those that are loved feel the tiny delicate drops of such actions. They stand in a rain, they stand in a storm. They know they are loved, and they never need doubt it. Love never asks, nor does it need reminders.

Love is where you can return to, always. Even after it has been stepped on, discarded and almost forgotten.

Because love isn't what you feel when you are with somebody...it's what you feel when you are without somebody.

Settling with Power

I was in a helicopter crash once. A claim not many people can make, let alone live to write about in retrospect.

We were returning from a border surveillance mission along the East German border in 1989, just months before the Wall fell. Our mission: to monitor and create presence along the Western border of Germany to ensure the Soviets didn't forget about us.

In a return to the airport, we experienced a compressor stall, essentially the aircraft consuming itself as it flew 100 mph and 100 feet over the ground. I was on the headset, with the pilots while a fellow intelligence observer was next to me. As soon as the reverberating bangs echoed through the aircraft, the pilots immediately decreased speed and went through a series of drills to attempt to continuing flying.

My friend next to me had grabbed my thigh and although he didn't have the headset on, he clearly discerned an issue.

"What the f*** is going on?" he screamed loud enough for me to hear.

"Shhh" I intoned back to him. "I'm trying to find out."

Needless to say, in that span of seconds, we plummeted in a controlled crash that left the helicopter bouncing along the grass and fortunately leaving us in an upright position. The talents of the crew and the luck of the day certainly were instrumental.

But needless to say, it reiterated the unforgiving nature of flight, particularly rotary-winged, and especially helicopters.

The very recent tragedy in Afghanistan is a highly visible indicator of the danger of our mission. I guess my only concern is that pilots die in numbers merely training for the very missions they are conducting overseas, and that I am saddened that it takes a war effort to highlight the peril of their profession.

My first weeks in my very first Army unit were fresh from an awards ceremony that honored a future friend of mine when two helicopters collided and he landed his nearby and with little consideration for his own safety pulled pilots out of aircraft. My first few weeks were trodding where a very fresh wound lay inside the unit.

Numerous small issues ensued...a tree strike here, a bird strike there. But the one unsettling incident came about during a very stormy night during a live-fire exercise when a helicopter "settled with power" after being fully loaded with fuel and armament.

The term is very sophisticated, and I had to look at the definition a few times to make it somewhat understandable but essentially what happens is this:

Vortex ring state describes an aerodynamic condition where a helicopter may be in a vertical descent with up to maximum power applied, and little or no cyclic authority. The term “settling with power” comes from the fact that helicopter keeps settling even though full engine power is applied

Translation: You're flooring it and you're still falling out of the sky.

Flashback: When my young wife and I arrived in Germany we had no friends, no familiarity and she would argue no money. Matt Heins was a pilot who was fresh from flight school and he and his young wife were in the same boat. He was from southern hick state, with an accent as thick as the German beer, and he was one of those personalities who shined in every dismal, god-forsaken German army exercise. He drove me up to get my car when it shipped and he invited us over for Christmas and 4-wheeling when it snowed. He was in every sense an outstanding officer and an excellent friend.

Matt "settled with power" that night in Germany and broke his back. They believed that he would never fly again, and that he would spend the rest of his days in pain and on the ground.

Matt ended up proving everybody wrong, and against tremendous odds he regained flight status. He flew again, and led soldiers as an officer in the army flying AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters.

Matt was killed in a helicopter crash that was merely the unforgiving nature of his chosen profession. He widowed a young lady less than 30 years old, and he left a huge hole to those that knew him.

My point is that in this post-news Afghanistan wreckage that reveals the horror of war, I cannot help but wonder at the lives that were lost even before these boys went overseas.

They are in a horrible profession, a job that requires high skills and high risks. Their deaths, while honorable, are in line with the nature of their calling. They are not unique. They are by no means the first, and by no means the last.

I grieve for Matt, and for the soldiers lost in the accidents that are part of the hardening that sharpens our spears. But I believe they died in an endeavor of love, doing what they were trained to do, and merely experiencing the ultimate sacrifice for something that is ultimately chosen by few.

Do not get into a helicopter. They are unforgiving.

Hushed Conversations

There are very few times on my commute to New York that I actually sit beside somebody. Usually I'm in an early train to arrive in the morning so that I can be the good corporate citizen and punch in for my full 8-hours.

It is a rarity, then, when somebody plunks down beside me.

And usually, I have either my laptop open and my Ipod or minimally my Ipod so that I can appear the least interested in my surroundings. In public transportation it's a necessary trait.

My last trip to the city was a little different, in a broad variety of reasons...I left mid-day, worked my way through a fairly large crowd of fellow travelers and also had somebody sit next to me prior to even departing.

She was young, probably my daughter's age, and if somebody asked me to describe her I think that the most effective word would be Persian. Dark hair, tee shirt and jeans, she sat next to me and immediately put her head in her hands and leaned forward, hunched.

She was clearly upset...not distraught, not at a loss of control, but rather she looked like she had received atrocious news.

As the train departed, she made some calls and despite my desire to merely look away and listen to the 80's music that dominates my Ipod, I did hear snippets:

"Just came from the doctor's office"

"I haven't told a lot of people"

"The treatment takes about three weeks and then it's over."

Now, as a former Army Intelligence officer, I didn't need to hear everything to come to some conclusions...and by her body language and hushed tones it was clear that this was something piercingly personal...and unprecedented.

I ventured a guess to myself that she had become pregnant, and that she was either doing something about it or was thinking about it.

"My mother was a wreck...my father was very quiet"

Spilling out upon the fabrics of the cloth seats, this poor girl's fabric was rapidly unraveling. I sat there fairly muted, not wanting to intrude. When she called one of her friends, she admitted that she was heading out to a date in New York City that very night.

"Do I even tell him anything?"

I listened a little bit now and then, not because of some voyeuristic quality but because she was so close in age to my daughter that I figured I could learn something. Figured I could hear how this girl's world might unveil slowly, over the course of 3 hours on a train. She grew stronger on the ride, likely comforted by the friends on the other side of the call, offering advice, and thoughts and in brief tiny moments a laugh.

I don't think I was judging her either. I don't think I was filled with "how dare she?" I actually think that I felt like she had discovered a problem and was very matter of fact in fixing it. Yes, it was debilitating, but she seemed very up front and resolute. I think I was impressed by the straightforwardness.

Almost to New Jersey, the calls started up again, and one included her mom. It was a quiet conversation, and the fact that she called her "mommy" made me smile...for it is a term that my wife continues to lobby for when our kids talk to her. My daughter I think sometimes tries...my son outright refuses.

"Mommy...how are you feeling?"

She went on for a bit and then made one last call. The call that actually became the big reveal, leaving me feeling extraordinarily stupid and naive. A call as we rolled almost into view of the city when she brought up the entirety of the circumstances.

"I went to the doctor today. With my mom."

"She has cancer...she's very upset...she needs to start right away and she's very scared."

In my brief recollection, I wanted to know if I should have come to this conclusion, always assuming the circumstances were hers. That the privacy of her conversations were of her private life, whispered in discreet volume so that only I, her seatmate, could hear.

I felt different as well...that her postures and exhortations were not about her, but for her mother. That she wasn't some "unlucky girl" who got unknowingly pregnant, but rather she was victimized in an all too familiar manner that unfortunately afflicts too many mothers.

I felt foolish in that regard. My stupid conclusions. And I felt like I was sitting too close, almost invading, as this young girl tried to make her mom feel better and support her at these early moments.

I asked her if she was getting out at New York since I needed to step over her to exit.
She was, and she got up and walked out the opposite door. I knew that I had something to write about, this trip, this quiet small conversation that was not between anybody that I knew but certainly got to know. I think I was trying to do the math in my head about how many passengers on the train were sharing such private discussions.

I was in the line to go out the door when two people in front of me were discussing a colleague who was featured in The New Yorker for behavioral psychology. A man still seated, a complete stranger, asked the two if they were psychologists.

"Yes, we are."

"Interesting. My son was diagnosed with autism yesterday. We're working with some experts."

The two, sort of stunned by the revelation, fumbled their response.

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Oh, I wasn't looking for any sympathy. Just thought I would share that."

I shook my head as I walked past, exiting the train, following quiet individuals who I truly preferred would stay that way.

Cusp

And so we arrive at the time when the pinks of sunburn become the reds of maples. We atone for the summer of lazy days and hazy skies and find crystal blue mornings with our breath fogging aloft as we start our day.



It is a reminder for those of us who live where seasons start and end with abrupt delineations; not say, those in Florida who can only determine the season by the calendar.



I love the transition of Fall, I love the heightening beauty of an object as it begins to die, like trees consumed by flames as they reach their apogee of color and then sputter and crumple in bits and pieces strewn on the ground. Whole forests engulfed.



But then just empty and brittle husks, beneath skeletal remains.



That's later...for now we are just on the cusp of Fall.



For people born under the astrological signs that fall on seasonal cusps, they carry the energy of both signs...or so I'm told. But with a daughter with one foot squarely in summer and another in autumn, I believe I've seen the delicate balance as these two seasons collide in colors, temperatures and intensities...

She is a kid with a popsicle. Perpetual laughter that splinters the humidity of an afternoon. She is a hot-house plant, craving the covers and blankets when the house dips below 73-degrees.

She is exceptionally placid, a smooth plain of a lake in a day without breeze. She is effervescent, the clanging melodies of the ice-cream truck as she flits through her day.

She was named after a flower, which thrives in full sun...and as described provides a seemingly endless parade of blooms. But she is far from delicate, far from frail. Her personality shines as a thousand day summer, and while she has been handed some exceptionally tough cards in her all-too wonderful life, she remains bouyant, and shining. She beams. She radiates. She has created a sun from which many fall into its gravitational pull.

The transition to fall, and the intermingling of high pressure systems colliding with cool jet stream air creates the opportunities for thunderstorms, the chance of showers. But like lightning seen across a darkened sea, it smolders mostly on the horizon. Her intensity flares mostly on the playing field, at a time when her energies and focus are on performance and the desire to excel.

It is mostly in this fall sport where her autumn begins to show.

But it peaks in other times, like the smoldering embers of a late November fire. The direction of intellect and energy, a keen focus on achievement, a single-mindedness that is rare for somebody just shy of two decades old...

And like trying to predict the chaos of summer-swinging into fall weather, she provides her fair share of unpredictability. She has the confidence to swashbuckle, to hang by a thin-thread rope and dive violently into a challenge. She has the confidence to question, virtually everything, to reconcile in her sometimes-closed but many times open mind. She has the perspective of a humbled survivor, and she has had to pick herself up with the help of a couple of people and brush herself off. Again. And again.

She is no wide-eyed ingenue. She surprisingly defaults to cynicism, until she learns or experiences something to offer new value in a new perspective. She sometimes can be cool as an October morning...but her sun burns away the mist fairly quickly. Her sunrise returns.

She shares the same first initial with my wife, a choice made deliberately. If I ever got a tattoo, it would always be an "A". They share many of the same traits, many of the same elements, a clear apple from the tree. Although my wife is infinitely more patient, while my daughter has inherited my hair-triggered intolerance for stupidity...or perhaps those less capable of displaying their intellect.

But as she moves into her days, in some way we are watching her teenage summer come to an end, a fall that begins her transition into the fully blessed and legal definition of an adult.

It's how you feel when you leave the beach. When you lock the door on a summer home. It's time to return to the chores, the jobs, the responsibilities...in this case, it is how I used to feel when I saw her baby shoes on the stairs. The speed of change fractures the heart of a parent, but the burgeoning adult that emerges is a wonderful event to behold.

It is not a single day event, but rather a transition. It is watching the beauty of something turn bright with color and emerge even more beautiful than when it started.

It is a tree on the cusp of autumn color. It is an afternoon, transitioning to evening in pastels. It is a daughter, on the cusp of a 20th birthday, born on the cusp of the seasons of summer and fall.