This

This isn't about a fun day. This is about the heartbreak I feel when I see a country that I lost friends in, that I was wounded in and a country that changed us all, fall back into enemy hands. In 2003 we crossed the burm and felt like heroes without every firing a shot. Cheered from the side of the road, with little kids trying to steal our gas cans off the back of our truck. Jesse Velasquez getting his sunglasses stolen off of his face because he left his window down. Driving for what seemed like forever until we hit Talil, passing burned out Iraqi tanks that were in school yards and right next to peoples houses.  Early April in 2003, we were a bunch of gypsies. We squatted in Talil until we got caught by people who knew better. I was part of the advance party and we were led by a First Sergeant that wanted to get us in the fight. We all wanted to get in the fight. Every one of us will remember the convoy of death when we left Talil for Baghdad on what can only be described as one of the most fucked up back roads in the world in the middle of the night. This is about the pain when we lost our first guy, Travis Burkhardt. This is about pulling security at the first meeting of the new Iraq. Fucking history and we were there. Living in tents with stolen air conditioners, a platoon Sergeant getting us ice by shotgun and  burning a field to clear it for our tents only to realize that underneath it was an ammo bunker and rounds were cooking off, every damn way you could imagine. This is about brotherhood that was forged out of fear and unconditional love, because whatever argument or dislike you had for someone disappears the first time you get shot at. This is about taking a bitch bath is Saddam’s garden at the Republican palace in one of the stranger moments of my life, my brothers by my side. This is about giving a full bird Colonel who we didn't know a ride and seeing how the years in an office made him soft, when we were smashing our mirrors on other cars getting out of a bad situation. Its what we do, its how we stay alive. Drive fast, shoot straight. That’s how we made our money. This is about leaving early after I got hurt, coming back 7 months later with a new Company and seeing that all the love that was there for us before had now turned to hate. I really thought I had Baghdad down. I was there for the second time in a year. I knew the place. I did know the place until I was running down the street between the Baghdad convention center and the Al Rashid hotel with blood pumping out of my legs after a mortar round landed five feet behind me. I did not know Baghdad anymore. I don’t know Iraq anymore either and it kills me inside.

    We make sacrifices for each other and for people we don’t know in the name of freedom. To some its because they want money for college, others its a calling. Whatever the reason, we do it for each other, where the rubber meets the road, we have each others back. I sit watching northern Iraq fall, moving down towards Baghdad, my Baghdad and I wonder if the sacrifice was worth it. Was it worth Travis Bruce never getting to make that confused looking face that he was so good at again? Was it worth Todd Partridge never being able to play with his daughters again? Was it worth Steve Reynolds never being able to tell you about the Polizei or the Spetznatz again, while rubbing his hands together and drinking mountain dew while smoking what seemed like a carton of cigarettes in a quick conversation? Was it worth the horrors that followed Ashley Kennedy home that led him to kill himself? Was it worth Blair Emery getting extended past the twelve months the Company was supposed to be there to fifteen months and getting killed when he should have been home with his wife? Was it worth my gunner, who was an all State swimmer in High School losing his leg or the shrapnel that lingers in my legs? These past few days have caused me to wonder what the hell happened to this Country that I left some of my blood, but more of my sanity in.

    While it may be a blip on the news for you, it is every sacrifice we made, every brother we buried, every nightmare we have and every pill we shove down our throat or joint we smoke to help us live some semblance of a normal life. This was our world, a chance for us to make a change for people so they could live a life of freedom and it is for all intents and purposes gone. We left them in a worse situation. I feel guilty because of that. I feel guilty that I get to selfishly play with my kids while my friends don’t. I wish there was a way that I could make it right, but the uniform is off, I'm just another retiree and there is nothing I can do about it. I can only watch the news or see the videos of people getting shot from passing cars, the camera going up to the dead bodies constantly filming. I can still smell the gunpowder, blood and stench of death in that Baghdad sun and I am helpless to do anything about it. I wish I could have done something more to help, but this situation is bigger than me. It is bigger than my brothers. It is a Country I had hoped to go back to some day as a tourist and put some of these demons to bed, but it is only a dream. Just like the dream of a free Iraq.

Combat fatherhood

 If you thought this was gonna be a piece of cake, please set your cheap ass plastic fork down, along with your paper plate and let me tell you that it isn’t. Its ok. I drank the Kool aid too. I thought this new life would be so much easier than my old life. I can handle little kids. Hell, I was the boss of some adults who acted like little kids. Except these little kids now, well, they are a lot slicker than any E-4 I ever met. If you're old like me, you remember that “we do more before 9AM, before you do all day” Army commercial? With the guy saying good morning to his First Sergeant, hoisting his canteen cup of coffee in some victorious manner? Im not gonna lie. I would probably kill you for that cup of coffee.With an E-tool. There’s no time for that nonsense. This is combat fatherhood. Before you get your silkies or ranger panties or whatever the hell you wear in a bunch, I am not comparing actual, bullets flying combat with this. But in this life, we have our oporders(1) too. My day is planned the day before,kids clothes are set out, homework is signed, order of movement(2) is set. Fragos(3) happen the first time my 6 year old can’t find the socks her sisters hid from her, and those kids clam up like bad guys when they know they're caught. The eyes never lie. My 10 year old has ditched the 6 year old for the bus stop, so that means she is getting a ride to school and we will be crossing MSR “insane fucking traffic” and ASR “They should have finished building this road 3 years ago”. My 12 year old is trying to sneak some makeup on her face, but ends up looking like a village person, but she's trying and its a hard time in this day and age for 12 year olds and their instatwitterbookgramsnap, or whatever the new social media obsession  is this week. The 2 year old, fresh out of a slumber, kind of like that fireguard you had in basic training where you are there in physical, but definitely not mental form is in the car seat. The 6 year old wants a hash brown and with that, the time line is screwed. 

This is the life. When I took off my uniform for the last time, with all its cool velcro parts and patches and badges, I switched it for basketball shorts, one of several T-shirts from my favorite veteran owned business, RangerUp and shoes, if I felt like it. This clothing liberation and relaxed grooming standards is comfortable, but it is a steep price. The kids are at school, the 2 year old now needs her breakfast and I have several dogs who have crossed paws and need to go outside and pee before they ruin the house. Breakfast is down the hatch and I chuck(or gently place) the baby in her stroller for a walk. This kid loves being outside. She loves the wind and the Texas sun on her face. It is safe to say, at least once a month during, or shortly after this walk,that I will get a call from the school. Someone forgot a notebook, or some random pencil that they need, or life will cease to exist. Back to school. This is also a great time to stop at Wal Mart and get gawked at by the stay at home moms, who see a fairly large, heavily bearded and overly casually dressed guy walking around with a small child in a shopping cart. I think I have almost had the cops called on me more than once, but if someone takes a kid, do you think they go to the store right away? I can’t be the only one who watches law and order. Profiling assholes. 

If this is appealing to you, I invite you to a diaper change. Its like a combination of Baghdad burn pits, Afghani sewer problems and that soiled smell of death. Diapers don't work all the time. I wish I could take every defective diaper back and get a replacement. Sometimes they don't hold so well. Sometimes poo comes out the side. Sometimes your daughter gets like three baths a day because of said faulty diapers, peanut butter that she wipes in her hair at lunch and then when she goes all “Randy” from A Christmas Story and becomes Daddies little piggie and sticks her face and part of her body in her dinner. This kid. I don't mean to foreshadow, but its gonna happen, keep your ammo dry, gents. As kids begin to trickle in from school, the 6 year old instantly wants to go next door to play, the 10 year old has choir and needs to be picked up, so the 2 year old, who is running 24 hour ops is getting her nap time kanked and put back in the truck. She will fall asleep, either on the way there or the way back, but waking her up once we are home is like trying to wake a honey badger up. Best of luck, this kid likes her sleep when she gets it. I get the 10 year old. Since she knows what bad words are, no Howard Stern. I throw on some Willie or Josh Abbott Band and she instantly hates it, because they don't sing poppy,crappy, auto tuned music.  After another diaper change, she is up watching “Frozen” for the 19 millionth time. This week. I have dreams about this movie. I have a sled and I'm selling ice. In South Texas. You cant even say “ice” before it has already melted down here. I truly hate this movie. My 12 year old wants to hang out and not come home, but with some not so gentle prodding, she is on her way home from the bus stop. The 6 year old has soccer practice at 6, so its a mad dash to find her shorts and practice shirt. I know where her cleats are, because the 2 year old is is doing from “Frozen” inspired river dance, on the living room floor. 

This is my life. The idea of being a stay at home dad seemed so romantic at the time. Kind of like when you crossed the berm into Iraq for the first time, or you were on the plane for a legit combat landing. The romance of that moment is lost the first time you get shot at. The romance of being a stay at home dad was lost the first time my daughter took off a full diaper and was running around the house with it, flinging things everywhere. This is not to say that there aren't victories. The 2 year old giving random hugs, the 6 year old saying “yes sir” like a proper young lady, my 10 year old getting a solo for her next choir concert and my 12 year old having consecutive good days at school(which is almost scientifically impossible for someone her age) and then telling me about people I don't know for an hour and how this one broke up with that one and that one got in a fight at lunch. These are the victories, the victories I missed in my past life. This is the life I live now. If you thought it would be so simple, throw on some basketball shorts and forget about that fucking coffee. 

1) OPORDER ( Operations order. Basically, what you're gonna do)

2) Order of movement (who leaves in what order)

3) FRAGO (Fragmentation order. When shit changes)

The climb

Sometimes is takes getting knocked on your ass for you to realize that you miss the comfort of standing on your feet. I have spent the last several months backsliding, going down a bad trail. Kind of like the shale you stumbled up in Afghanistan, that unforgiving, goddamned shale. Treatment is like that. Regardless of the substance or the issue, we hit peaks and valleys and its how we climb out of those valleys that makes us or breaks us. Meds had run their course, as they often do, which means you either need the same meds in a stronger dose, or different meds altogether. I hate those meds. I hate that I am regulated by some bullshit pharmaceutical that is not of my medicinal choice. I hate that some company is making money off of my treatment and what a doctor types into a computer. But this is the game and I grew tired of playing it. If you grew up with me, you know that I was pretty damn loud, pretty damn funny and pretty damn good at having a good time. That guy is not around much anymore and for those last three months that I didn’t write in a blog,talk to you, or care about myself, that guy grew further away from me than I realized. This is the downward spiral. Something I hadn’t been on in over a year, and it was ugly then and it was uglier now. 

It was not until I took the time to breathe that I realized how much suffocating I had been doing. Not just in those three months, but in all the times I treated life like chess and thought two moves ahead not paying attention to the current beauty of the first move. It started with a laugh. A laugh from a kid who was just doing what kids do, they have fun, they laugh. That laugh cut through my soul like a pick axe in soft,virgin ground. What have I been missing? How many things had I said that I regret now? How many days did I spend half assing everything, when just a smile would have doubled my effort or let someone know that I appreciated them?  These are the things you think about when you start that climb back out. 

I went into retirement with an excitement about something new. That excitement turned to frustration, the money was wrong, the days had no structure and I was getting my ass kicked by something that I had no understanding of. Being a dad. There are no smoke breaks or time outs,and I fought through the lack of fatherly knowledge and began really starting to get a grasp on things when I realized that the past I had invested so much in, some of the people I knew and called friends were no longer there. I was a memory, good or bad, I was done to those who relied on me whenever they needed something. They weren’t answering the phone anymore. Call it a culture shock, because the Military is its own culture. Its own brotherhood. The biggest High School in the world. The place I was looking at from the other side of a locked door. I had no distractions to take me out of my environment. No breather. My wife was breaking her back, working her ass off trying to keep our heads above water, while I was waiting to get paid. It killed our credit. So close to buying a house and 5 months later I couldn’t get a snowcone in Alaska on credit. This really kicked me in the gut. We had come so far and now we were at below the starting point we were when we got married. 

This was the bottom. The climb out started with that laugh. Nothing is more pure in my mind then the belly laugh of a kid, who knows no pain, no hard times. They only know love and being happy. That laugh saved me. It happened and the mind that once clicked on with situational knowledge in hard times, clicked on again. The laughs came more frequently. I looked at my kids in amazement, both good and bad, but I was truly looking now and not glancing. I tried to look at the world through their eyes. I watched more kids shows and sang more Mickey Mouse songs in two weeks than I had in my entire life. I enjoyed the time I had watching my girls play soccer, going to practice early so we could kick the ball around. I enjoyed going to my daughters choir concert. I enjoyed listening to my daughter tell me about the gossip at school about kids I didn’t know. I enjoyed finding out that my daughter was playing high school softball. The climb became easier. The steps not as hard as they looked from the bottom. Something was missing though. I drove up to Ft. Hood to pick up the missing piece of our family about a month ago. He is a little shit, but he is our little shit. My dog that I worked with for 4 years, deployed with and who broke my heart when I dropped leash, to come to Texas and train dogs was coming home. 

It had been in the works for a long time, but nothing in the Military happens quickly. When I finally got him in the truck and started the drive, I had closure. It does not mean that the ride down was routine. If you have ever met my dog, he is like me. Nothing with him is routine. He bounced from the back seat to the front seat, to the floorboard, to my seat, like a psychotic ping pong ball. There is something unique about a dog climbing in your lap while you’re going about 80 on the highway. We have been in more dangerous situations before, but I really wanted to get him home to the kids, before we died in a car crash. After a stop at a McDonalds drive through in Austin, he ate a cheeseburger, french fries and some chicken mcnuggets. He was at least courteous enough to let me have the drink. With a full stomach, he finally settled down next to me until we got home. He is home now. He is still the same dog that the family remembers. He is reminding me about the good times. With our family together again, the climb is so much easier. These last several months have been a dark time and its where I have been. Now i’m feeling the sun on my face, family and dog in tow. Belly laughs all around.