Its time.

I don’t intimidate much, but this was new territory for me. In the time since I retired and started taking care of the girls full time, I stop doing what had worked for me before. I ate like shit, I didn’t drink a lot, but I drank enough and I smoked my beloved cigars every damn day. When I finished up with school (for the last time, I think) I was pushing past 300 lbs like a runaway train, out of breath just walking up the stairs and headed nowhere fast. I thought my path in life after I retired would be different, but storytelling or at least the chance to, dried up. It kills me to admit that something that I loved doing was pretty much gone, for whatever bullshit reason anyone wants to admit to. I really thought I was headed somewhere with it, but that door closed in my face.

When the opportunity to apply for a job I had been watching from afar for over a year (they only hire once a year) came up, I applied. I don’t have to work anymore, but I need to give back to the community that took my family in.  Another opportunity popped up and I could basically pick my date when I started, but there’s an issue. If I get tired walking up a set of stairs, how in the hell can I do either job? So I walked in. Not triumphantly, but the door was unlocked and I turned the handle.

I used to make jokes about people who did crossfit. With their motivational socks, every sentence that starts and ends with the word “crossfit” and the cult like appearance of it, but I needed it. It didn’t need me, but walking into a gym full of people doing things that my body could no longer do gave me a reality check. This was work and I had wasted the last 3 years avoiding it. The first person I talked to was more jacked than I had ever been or even dreamed about. She was a nice enough lady though, kind of walked me through how everything goes and asked where I live. I told her a couple of miles away and she snapped back that it was a good thing, so I wouldn’t have any excuses to not show up. I instantly became the same fat guy they had seen over and over. Someone who wanted to make a change, but didn’t last long enough to be remembered. I didn’t tell her that I was intimidated, I didn’t tell her that my fathers heart stopped in the gym while he was working out, leading him into a vegetative state and later to his death, while I was in Iraq. I just said that I had wasted enough time and it was time to get to work.

Going into a situation as the “fat guy” doesn’t go as unnoticed as it does at deer camp. Hunting has become one of my passions, and hunting takes all body types. I didn’t think that a class that was loaded with people chiseled out of stone would be as accepting. I was wrong. Im positive that I am the most out of shape person in the group who has started there and possibly the most out of shape that ever came in, but we all had to turn that same handle to get in the building.  Within 5 minutes of being there, I got daps, handshakes, a couple bro hugs and a feeling of being welcome. The gym is loaded with vets, which is something that means a lot to me. When I retired, the phone didn’t ring nearly as much with calls from other military types. This gym forced me to interact with those like me, which I hadn’t realized how much I missed. I hunt with other combat wounded veterans and I love them dearly, they are my brothers. This was something that was different. I got to sweat again, which doesn’t happen too much while sitting in a deer blind.

It hasn’t been long at all. The lactic acid is still fresh on my muscles, my legs and upper body hate me everyday, but I need this. I need to sweat again, to feel physical exhaustion and that corresponding pain. I have found a way to incorporate all that elk, halibut and whitetail in my freezer into my everyday life. Im not eating for pleasure which has been something dogging me my entire life, I’m eating so I don’t suck so much the next day and I have the energy to finally finish a workout. There are things that I can do, things I don’t do so well and there are things that my body just won’t let me do right now. As much as I wish that I could be the finished product, I know the journey is part of the reward. I’ll be there tomorrow and the day after and the day after that. Those days and the previous days all start the same, with a turn of the handle. Go get you some.

            

Phew, its almost 2017

Man, what a year. This has been a weird one for sure. Celebrities who I grew up admiring are dying (Yes, I liked Wham and Prince too) and half of America seems to think the world is going to end, the other half thinks that America will be great again and everyone is so busy telling others their opinions that I just don’t want to hear it anymore. I will most definitely not be doing that here. We always come to a point in the year where we start thinking of what we want our new years resolution to be. With a body by Haby’s bakery in Castroville, Texas, it is safe to say that getting in “shape” outside of round is off the table. So I started thinking about it. Save money (not gonna happen, we have 5 kids, 2 of whom are teenagers) or do charity work are things that are wonderfully nice to aspire to, but there is simply no time. As I sit writing this, its about 2:40 in the morning, and this is my time to do those things that I enjoy. I have fallen in love with writing. When 87.3% of your day is spent sharing your world view with a 4 and 2 year old, there is not much adult interaction and writing is a great way for me to express myself.

I found joy in writing and telling my story for the Moth, which is an amazing organization that gave me the opportunity a couple of times to tell people who I would most likely never interact with the story of losing our daughter and rebuilding our lives in the aftermath. Technically, I did get a standing ovation in Santa Barbara after the last show I did with them. I counted 6 people (that I could see) out of around 600 standing and clapping. After conferring with my friend and fellow storyteller, he said that even one person standing counts. I finally finished my Masters degree, which I tell you about so you can offer me silent congratulations or small amounts of money (whichever is more convenient). Finishing my degree was a big deal to me for several reasons. 1) I wanted to show people that just because you literally spent 5 years in high school, it has nothing to do with your academic potential 2) I wanted to show people that you don’t need to be a refined, scholarly type to do it. This is demonstrated by my Carhartt heavy wardrobe, bushy looking beard and a deep love of hunting and all things redneck. 3) I wanted to do something positive for myself and my family after hitting several tough years with PTSD. I chose an academic path to give me something to work for and something that I could hang my hat on, when I completed it. I need positive in my life that I helped create, I need to do good and if I cant do it in the Army, I had to find an outlet, and I did. That is completed, so I look forward to my next challenge. Learn the guitar? Why not.

 So I round back into my New Years resolution and I have decided. My resolution is to drive around teenagers as little as possible. There is a history behind this decision and I would like to share it with you. In 2009 I was in Afghanistan with a great group of guys and my bomb dog, Purzell. One day, we had to go get a bad guy. We were supposed to leave around a certain period of the evening and we did. We were supposed to get there at a certain time of night and we most certainly didn’t. Why? Was there a major shootout, IED, or Bin Laden sighting? No. We kept getting lost. For like 10 hours. If you haven’t been to Afghanistan, where we were going was most definitely off the beaten path. It was one of those places that you look out during the day and go, “There is no fucking Wal Mart anywhere near here”. There are no road signs, there is no, “Take a right at old man Perkins barn”, its all the same. Dirt road, which is either a road, or not, no one really knows. During this 10 hour adventure, which I lovingly call, “Operation Turnaround”, we did just that probably two dozen times. As daylight broke, we got on the right “road”, got the bad guy, Purzell found some explosives, everyone came home safe and it was a great day, outside of a unique encounter with a bull, who was tied off at the hoof with a shoddy piece of rope. One hoof, pissed off bull. I don’t know how we didn’t get gored, but I digress. What does this have to do with driving around teenagers? Well, I experienced Operation Turnaround 2, while taking my daughter to pick up her friend, with a final destination of La Cantera mall. With the benefit of an Apple iPhone, we turned around about 6 times in a 20 minute period, ending up around 5 miles outside of where my daughter swore we were supposed to be.

As the journey to the mall began, my ears were filled with the sweet gossip of teenage girls, which is light on sweet and heavy on gossip. When we finally reached the mall, much like the end of the original Operation Turnaround, I had another job to do. It was not writing a report about the explosives we found or celebrate with my dog. My next job was to go to Sams club with a 4 year old. She is the beautiful, profanity spewing sweetheart that we all love. Everyone who meets her loves her, but she is a unique shopping partner to say the least. With a family totaling 7, those conventional shopping carts just don’t cut it. We have to take those huge “L” shaped carts that are mostly reserved for the mom and pop shops who get their foodstuffs from Sams. So the 4 year old sits on it as we navigate the aisles. These things have horrible turning radius only being nosed out by the car shopping buggies that you see at HEB, that don’t hold a lot of food and don’t turn for shit. She wants something in every aisle. Literally. I want that. “Emily, that is bleach, you don’t need bleach”. She wants bananas. I can do bananas. We finally finish at Sams and victory in Operation Turnaround 2 has been had. I can definitely take a kid or two to the grocery store, I’ve been doing it for awhile and honestly, it’s kind of fun. Sometimes. Driving around gossipy teenagers is another story, and while this resolution will probably fall by the wayside, it was the safest one to make. This has been one of my longer blogs for a simple reason. I missed writing for you all. I wanted to share some fun stuff with you during these turbulent times. I don’t have to worry about balancing writing with school anymore, so I get to fall back in love with writing and it’s been long overdue. Happy New Year to everyone who has followed and there will be more to come!!!

Luckenbach and the world between

Friends,

  It has been awhile. Life sometimes gets in the way of things you love, even if what gets in the way are things you also love. Dearly. I was sitting half drunk on my porch, smoking a cigar, which is a little out of the usual for me. The half drunk part, not the cigar. Something shook me a bit the other day and I cant ignore it. I started this blog to talk about what its going like from a Soldier to a stay at home dad. I also started it because its cheap therapy and a way to reach out to people who may have shared some of my same life experiences, be it war or fatherhood, which sometimes seem like the same thing. I ran into a buddy who reads the blog on Saturday and we caught up a bit. I knew I would get back to it, but didn't know when or where or why really. Most of my writing takes place late at night after the kids go to sleep, but its dinner time now and I need to write. Hot dogs and beans can wait for a little. Its the food of the family with two adults in grad school. Money is not plentiful and the kids are young enough to think that beans are an acceptable side, so thats what we do. That and cowboy breakfast. cheap, easy and they like it.

Back to what made this blog tonight. I am woefully behind in my last three classes in school. At this point, I don't know if I care anymore because, frankly I would rather be on a ranch doing anything or helping fellow combat wounded vets, but I picked my poison, so now I gotta drink it. My wife and I finally scored a date to Luckenbach for Whitey Morgan and Cody Jinks show at one of our favorite places, so we shoveled aside school for the night, bribed my brother in law with free wifi and pizza and headed up. There is something beautiful about the Hill country. We always find land we want to buy, houses and ranches that would be perfect on the way up. The conversation usually goes with “if we win the lottery” or “if our credit didn't suck”, we find these places and its soothing. It wasn't the trip or the show, which was absolutely awesome, as we are both huge fans of theirs, but it was something that happened before that shook me more than anything since our daughter died 5 years ago. 

My kids follow me everywhere. At least the two little ones. I must be entertaining. 2 year old was in the bathroom while I was taking a shower. I could lock the door, but she would just continually bang on it and when I went hunting in Post,Texas in January someone removed the outside knob to the door, so it wouldn't work anyway. Ill replace it eventually, I know. While I was showering, she shoved a shampoo bottle into the tub, because she's 2 and its funny to her. It hit my foot and I yelled at her, probably cussed, and picked it up. I peaked my head out of the shower and she had retreated to the toilet and was looking in my direction. I apologized, told her  I love her and let her know that its not ok to do that. That was the easy part. I closed the curtain and got back to my shower, standing towards the curtain and a pink luffa thing hit my other foot. I kind of froze. There was no way that I made that happen. Then another one. It wasn't her, it wasn't me, was it Melissa, our daughter who passed reminding me why I chose this post retirement life? I don't believe in that stuff, at least not until that day. Maybe she was telling me that a knock on the foot from a shampoo bottle wasn't that big of a deal, when we look at the big picture. I think about her everyday. What would she like? What foods, toys, cartoons and why isn't she here? Ill never get those answers, I hurt everyday looking for them and I know that I will  never find out. Maybe those two little pink luffas that hit my other foot were a reminder to get over myself and remember why I chose to stay with the kids. 

So here I am, still half drunk on the porch, cigar gone listening to all nighter, by Cody Canada and I'm starting to get why I'm back writing and not cooking an easy dinner. Its time to do what we love, love who we are and who we hold the closest and remember the the short time was could hold those who went to a better world. God bless.  

         "Only the dead have seen the end of war"

                                             - George Santayana, 1922

         Its a quote that I have heard before, but never really paid that much attention to. Tonight, while flipping through the guide for the TV, I saw a documentary with the same title, read the description and figured that I would kill some time with it. I was half paying attention, half doing homework, when they began talking about the Jordanian embassy bombing in Baghdad in 2003. I think my body froze. I was there in the aftermath of that bombing. I fumbled for the remote and rewound what I had missed. There is the rubble. There are the burning cars. There are the exact steps I stood on with my team leader. There is the fish place right down the street. There are the drag marks in blood from the dead bodies. That day was the first time that I learned that you never stand in black spots, because those spots used to be people. An occasional shoe, and some body fluids are all that are left besides those damn black spots. There is video from the UN bombing. We had been there a week or so prior, ate lunch in their cafeteria. Their food was awesome. There is the parking lot where I peed on my friend Ashley Kennedy's vehicle tire, because he called me fat and he's 200 lbs of muscle packed into a 180 pound body, so its the only way I could get him back without getting tuned up. It goes a bit further, talking about Haifa street. It shows militants firing mortars into the green zone. I got wounded by a mortar round, right outside the green zone. This part was from 2004. I got wounded in 2004. Were these the guys who fired the mortar that wounded me? Im getting a little amped up. I can feel it in my body. I keep flexing my hands. I left all this behind when I retired. Im not that guy anymore.
    I used to be good at being that guy. I loved deploying. I got numb to the death, I craved the mission and what it could bring. It only makes sense to those who did it. It was the best drug I have ever taken, and watching the Baghdad I knew, when I left it physically in 2005 brought me back. I dont know how to feel about it. What I am watching through someones camera lens, is what I saw with my own eyes and it all makes sense. The quote that I all but ignored, because I don't need to hear people romanticize war, who have never been hit me like I rock in my face. I think about every deployment everyday. Sometimes, if the weather is right, it feels like Baghdad. I used to be obsessed with eating Afghani food when I came back from there in 2009. Now I don't even like to smell it. It reminds me of too much. I ate alot of it when I was there, and I will be the first to tell you how good it was. Just dont show me any today or let me smell it.
   I have made a new life for myself and my family. I should be worrying about school, the 3 kids of mine who have strep throat and how I can keep from getting it, because i'm going out to Santa Barbara next week to tell Melissa's story for the Moth. I feel like i've been pulled back into a different world. I finally have to admit to myself that I think about war everyday. I miss it. I hate it. I love it. It is part of me. It is a part of me that will never change, because it had that much of an affect on me. I yearn to talk to my friends that I went to war with. I talk with one or two, be it on the phone or social media on most days.  When we get together, we talk about things that only that brotherhood allows. I don't tell things to strangers. I tell things to the people I literally bled with. It is true. As much as I ignored it beforehand, I truly know that only the dead have seen the end of war.

                         

The song

What will the song of my life be? I ask, not because I have taken a large amount of peyote and done a maypole dance, but because my words will die with me. I love music and there is nothing better to me than eating tamales at Floore's with my wife and listening to damn good Texas music. There is something about pedal steel that just resonates with me. Its from the soul, be it up or down, its just something that I connect with. I cant play it, hell, I cant play the guitar in my closet, but I want it in my song. I'm at a point in life where my past career won't matter again until my obituary, much like the first kid I struck out in little league(Im looking at you, Robbie Hayes) and my current life is based on how good I am at changing diapers and the fact that all kids are accounted for. This is not a midlife crisis, as I love my wife fiercely and my kids, as crazy as they drive me, are amazing in their own unique ways and I realize how lucky I am to have them. They see the hope in me, they occasionally fall asleep in my arms and they laugh at my jokes. This is another one of the things that I love. I don't socialize much anymore. I have seen two of my friends from Washington state more in the past year than I have seen a friend who lives a couple of miles away in two years. We hunt together and I love that too. I hunt because it helps feed my family and it makes me feel useful. The drunken washer/beanbag tossing is hilarious and the shit talking keeps us all laughing, I wish I could take that with me. I find a certain peace out on ranches that I dont find in the city and I wish I could share it with my family. It may be a possibility one day, but for now, with fucked up credit, even a doublewide on 6.2 acres in D'hanis isnt a possibility.
 So I lose myself in the cigars that will eventually kill me, the laugh of my kids that make me whole, the music that heals my soul and the wife who has loved me for longer than I ever deserved. Maybe I am in the sweet spot of life and i'm too worried about the past or too busy to looking forward to enjoy the now.  I know i'm not the only one who does it, we all do. I just don't know why. I know for a fact that today will suck. Not because of the Presidential primaries that have ripped our country apart with childlike taunts that would have most definitely got your lip split on the playground at River School or Tularcitos, but simply because sometimes life bangs you when you least expect it. I will dust myself off, but as we get older and the stakes get higher, picking yourself up gets harder. Its in my blood to continue to get up until they throw Texas dirt on me, because its what my father did and if I ever learned something from him, is that we don't quit. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.
 So where do I go from here? Where do you go? What is my song? Am I doing life right? I can only wake up tomorrow, change the diapers, do the dishes and laundry, smoke that cigar and hear that pedal steel. What are you going to do?

Where I am

        In a house with 5 kids and even more animals, privacy is rare. If given the choice between staying in a luxury hotel or trading that for 20 minutes of solitude it would be a tough choice. As my 3 and 1 year old daughters walked into the bathroom, with our dog Lefty, dutifully following them in and plopping right down at my feet, my 3 year old asked, “What is that?” Caught redhanded taking the medication I have been taking for years to help with the PTSD that we all live with, I didnt really know what to say. First, im trying to go poo and take medicine, because multi-tasking in our house is a necessity to get anything done, and secondly, because she doesnt know why I take medicine. She was not there when I was a different person, on a lot more medicine, thinking about suicide far more often and trying to fit a square peg in a round hole with my mind. It was something that the whole family fought with and it was an ugly time. I hated the person I was, because it was far easier for me to just “click out” of the whole feelings thing and just go with the fast, often painful solution. I tried to open a guitar on my head one day, during an especially bad time, and to let you know, that a bridge to a guitar does not break very easily, but will leave you with a huge scar on your forehead.

    We lived like this for a couple of years, a constant roller coaster, a fight I would never walk away from, behavior that made me ashamed and an inability to care about any of it. Through time, with a wife who should have left me years ago, a great doctor and a great social worker, I stayed alive and out of jail. I needed less medication, and found the sweet spot where I could function, feel and be a contributing member of the house. I found hunting. Whether you agree with hunting or not, it gets me in an open space, through the kindness of others and it helps me provide for my family. I am not one of those “scary” trophy hunters that people who know nothing about hunting assume all of us are, but I hunt because I need to feel like im doing something positive for my family. Thats not to say that I have not taken a shot at a huge 11 point buck, only to be foiled by a fence wire, but in tradeoff, I ended up taking two doe( doe, a deer, a female deer.....) which provided the family with more meat in the end.
    So as I have an inquisitive 3 and 1 year old, and the damn dog, who is a great foot warmer, looking at me for guidance as to what I am taking, she cuts me off. “Is it so you dont get a cold?” In the world of a 3 year old, a cold is tragic. It keeps you from playing and having fun. I took a moment to think about it. “It kind of is, ma’am. It helps me feel better, but its only for me and not for you.” While there is medicine that I will take for the rest of my life, there is medicine that we don’t always see that we take too. How good I feel when I see the kids and wife smile and they tell me that they love me, how I feel when im out on a ranch, with nothing but land all around me and even when the damn dog is laying on my feet when im trying to go to the bathroom.

The bed

Have you ever seen Willie Wonka and the chocolate factory? The old one. Gene Wilder. This fine movie has a portion of it that is currently parallel to my current situation. No, I did not win a golden ticket, get sucked into a huge tube for drinking out of a chocolate river or turn into a huge blueberry. I’m talking about the sleeping situation. I have not gone off the deep and and purchased a bed gown with matching cap, my grandparents have long passed, so they aren’t in our bed and we have not started sleeping head to foot( I don’t like feet), but its something similar. If you know me, or have read any of my previous blog entries, you know, to be frank, we have a hell of alot of kids and dogs. Call me a bad parent, but our 1 year old sleeps in the bed with us. Along with my retired bomb dog, who sleeps at my feet, my wife’s pom, who sleeps on her pillow, on top of her head( sometimes mine, which is confusing, because I will often have dreams that I finally have hair, and usually wake up disappointed) and our 3 year old, who literally has a bed 5 feet away from our bed, but usually ends up with us.
    This is alot to take in, so lets take a breather. We have a king size bed. More than enough room for two, and even a one year old. When you add two dogs, and potentially a third if you get up to go to the bathroom, or get a diaper, or fill a bottle, or turn the wrong way, there is a 90 lb lab who jumps up to take your place and the 3 year old, who has migrated from her bed, things get confusing and uncomfortable. I currently occupy about a popsicle stick worth of space on this once king sized bed. If you have kids, you know that they tend to move when they sleep. Quite a bit. My 3 year old moves like a pop locker who just watched Breakin’ and will do the robot, topped off with the kickworm, from her spot, to the bottom of the bed, and back to the top or the side. There really is no method to her madness. The one year old, is fairly still, except when she rolls over to slap you, or kick you, because she loves you so much, she feels the need, in her sleep to smack or kick the everloving, hair having dream out of your mind with her tiny, strong legs and hands. She’s tough and i’m not anymore. I bruise easily.
    This is my problem. It is my struggle. How do I fix this? As most of you know, I have spent a fair portion of my fatherhood running around foreign countries with a rifle in my hand and I have missed shenanigans like this. I don’t want to go Joan Crawford and strap the 3 year old in bed, and the bomb dog has carte blanche to do whatever the hell he wants, outside of getting used diapers out of the garbage can and shredding them on the bedroom floor, which makes for an awkward first step in the morning. He still does it, and I hate it, but then he jumps on the bed and cuddles up with one of the kids, so he has found his safe spot where he cant get in trouble, and I get to clean pee diaper crystals off my feet. YEA!!!
    So we are back to where we started. I currently have my wife, asleep, 3 year old with her feet in the 1 year olds face, bomb dog next to her head and the pom on top of the pillow. As I type this from my popsicle stick space on the bed, I don’t know if I really want to fix it, to be honest. One day the bomb dog will pass away, the kids will get too old to think mom and dad are cool and we will have an almost empty king sized bed. Sometimes in life, we see problems as just that and not the blessings that they really are. One day, this bed will be a lonely place with only two of us.

Austin

I had a story to tell

      To be perfectly honest, the last time I had been on stage in a performing capacity was the much anticipated 4/5th grade performance of “Your’e a good man, Charlie Brown” that had a two night run at Sunset Center in Carmel, California. I had secured the much sought after role of “Rock” who at one point in the play wore a pair of bunny ears and ran across the stage behind a clueless Charlie Brown. I also was probably close to grammy consideration when I got to sing “Two kinds of ice cream” during one of the performance numbers. Let me backtrack. Rock was created for me, because every kid in my class had to have a stage part in the play, and I was not that great at taking directions or singing and according to my teacher and the director of the play, I kept messing with my mouth before I sang my line. I had to take my retainer out, so I could let those lungs shine!!! Last night was different. It wasn’t a mandatory participation play, Carmel Valley was long in my rearview and this was for real.
     My favorite Texan, who does not have a last name of Nunemaker, had pitched my story and after talking with the senior producer, and making her cry possibly every time we talked, I got a spot to tell my story. I say that David Crabb is my favorite non Nunemaker Texan, because he is. He jumped right past George Strait into the #1 slot, because without him I wouldn’t be doing something that was much bigger than me. We met several years before at a Wounded Warrior Project writers seminar and through that time, we went from writing stories to telling stories and David was always so good to us with his time.
    I have had many titles in my life. Jail bound, College dropout, Soldier, Dad, College Graduate, Husband and I still don’t know if I can add writer of storyteller to it, because literally a week ago, I couldn’t find one pair of clean underwear and might have considered wearing one of my daughters diapers, until I could. I said earlier how my story was bigger than me, and it was.
    The Story
     No, im not going to tell “THE STORY”, because it is very emotional and hard for me to tell. I selected the story, because of that reason and because I knew that we were not alone in what we had been through. It is about my daughter and her death, and I never realized that it would affect so many people. I sat in the Paramount theater dressing room before the show with the other amazing storytellers that night and I did two things. 1) I probably overdid the cheeses. I only admit that, because in our house, we go with the presliced kraft cheese that is best for kids sandwiches and giving animals medicine. Sometimes we go fancy and get the HEB havarti cheese, you know the one that has the black hard plastic back and the TWO layers of protective sheeting on it? Yeah, big time fancy for us.
        I had no idea what to do. I saw the other stroytellers, kind of go off on their own, and work on their craft. I figured that would be a good idea. I sat down in a chair in the hallway, right by the Chris Isaak autograph on the wall, and felt like the kid in school who should be doing his homework, but was definitely not doing it. Before I get too far, I need to let you know something. Music has always been something that I have cherished in my life. When I was in the Army, when we deployed, I took a discman to Iraq in 2003, same one in 2004-2005 and took my first Ipod to Afghanistan in 2008-2009. I always loved how before we would go on a mission in 2003, my team leader would play “Sandstorm” over and over through the jerry rigged speakers in our truck. Every time I hear that song, I think of Baghdad and what it was like to be young and wild. In Afghanistan, I had a guy in another unit that filled my iPod with music I had never heard of. He was a good Texas boy, so I got a heavy dose of Jason Boland and the Stragglers, Randy Rogers Band, Charlie Robison and Kevin Fowler. I had some of my own country that was already on there, but the red dirt got in my blood and it was a great break from music I had been listening to for almost a year.
     Sitting, now outside of the dressing room, I put on some Bruce Robison(Charlie’s brother) and Kelly Willis Robison(not Charlie’s brother) and it took me to a great place. Its a song called “Long way home” and I needed to get focused and in the right mood, it has great harmonies, the perfect amount of pedal steel and some great harmonica, and it did its job. David came out and asked if I was good, and I was. I had a great chance, not for me, but to introduce our daughter to the world, 4 years after her death, to people that would never know her, outside of tonight, but would come to love her like we did.
     My turn
     I was number two out of five and the first story was amazing!! Remember, the first time I was on stage to perform was when I was like 10, so over 30 years before and that didn’t end so well. As David introduced me, I walked up there like I knew what I was doing, and I think the 1500 beautiful people there, thought I did. As I told my story, I could pick out people in the crowd. The man in front who couldn’t look at me, the girl in the third row who was audibly crying and when I held my left arm to show how I cradled my daughter, I could feel her there. When I grabbed my left hand with my right, to show how I cradled her feet, it wasn’t my hand anymore, it was Melissa’s feet. I almost broke down several times, but I got through it. I was so lucky that my wife faked a family emergency and came up early, so she would have no problems getting her seat and my friend Zach came up too, and I think in the couple of years we have known each other, he has never seen me serious. I got to give my wife a kiss, right as I came off, but something even more amazing happened. During the intermission, I heard stories. I hugged. Someone cried with me. We were not alone. One older lady told me that she was there with her rainbow daughter, and she couldn’t look at her. She said that she didn’t know that's what children who are born after their sibling pass is called that. I met a rainbow baby, who was know probably in his 20’s. I met a man who lost his mother on Saturday and gave me a long hug, because we both needed it. That is the reason I told my story and I will continue to tell it, as long as people need hugs and good cries. This is a big world, and as fast as it moves, its good to know that we aren’t as alone as we think we are.  Welcome to the world, Melissa. Everyone loves you.

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.

Showdown in San Antonio

It was a battle that he never wanted. Face to face. An old school, high noon town square standoff. The music of the old Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns played in my head. There would be a winner and a loser today and everyday thereafter. There was a staredown,then a smirk. The tension was palpable. Like the unexpected crack of thunder, the first move was made. It was over before it started. My one year old had successfully grabbed my beard and gave it a yank whose strength knew no bounds. As I let out a yell akin to a stuck pig as she belted out her cute laugh, victory in her eyes and a light misting in mine.

I am the 2013 version of Michael Keaton in Mr. Mom. I was not fired from my job,I had no Gedde Watanabe to turn to or softball games with the lovable lunks who I had bonded with, but I was medically retired from the Army, due to my PTSD. I had served for a little over 16 years, and the two times in Iraq and my last deployment to Afghanistan had taken their toll, a toll that made me someone that had utilized all the mental health care that the Army had to offer and was not able to continue on. My doctor thought that I would benefit from focusing on reintegration for the next year if it was financially possible so I could become a productive member of society. My wife and I quickly agreed. I have 5 girls, ages 15(who is in WA with her mother),11,10,5 and the baby. Being home,as in the Country and not deployed or somewhere on temporary duty or at an Army school would be an experience only the baby would be privy to. My other girls never got the full dad. There was always a deployment,preparation for a deployment or some other detail that kept me rotating out of the door. The baby is getting the full dad,beard and all. When I was in the Army there would often be discussions about how big our beards would be when we got out, how much beer or whiskey we would drink or how much pot we would smoke. I am proud to say that I  grow a beard pretty quickly. I am on month 3, which would be a normal persons month 6. I treat it like its one of my kids. It has its own shampoo and conditioner,it gets taken care of and I make sure its nice and combed before I go out.

Our daughter, Emily is my little shadow. She is different from her sisters because she has me 24/7 and she is different in our eyes, because her sister, Melissa Louise before her passed away at birth. It was the worst day of our lives. We were so excited to have our first Texas baby(my grandfather and mother are native Texans) and everything was fine until that morning. Everything felt perfect. Every ounce of love that we had saved up for nine months  was met with heartbreak and the love was double that when Emily was born, happy and healthy. I make her breakfast tacos(She is a native San Antonian, after all), take her on walks in her stroller through the neighborhood, take her shopping at HEB or Wal Mart with me, often to the confused stares of the stay at home moms who haunt the aisles looking for something miniscule while waiting for that mid morning nap to take hold.  She is growing by the day, first it was another tooth,then it was some semblance of a word, then walk and fall, and finally a walk. She is my little buddy.

As my beard grew, her hands grew stronger. First it was a rub of the growing beard, then it was a little tug and finally it was a grab that  could only to be matched by the handstrength of a bullrider. There are many places to grab a full beard. The cheek is much ado about nothing, just like the mustache,the face is tough there and can handle quite a bit. The painful sweet spot in the world of bear grabbing is just below the jawline. I am not a beard scientist so I cannot for certain explain why, but I can tell you the pain is somewhere between getting poked in the eye and kicked in the junk by a large farm animal. 

This showdown happens everyday. Sometimes it even happens in her sleep. Yes, I let her sleep in the bed with my wife and I. More often than not she falls asleep in my arms, which is prime beard grabbing range and that quiet time is secretly my favorite part of the day. During her waking hours, I carry her wherever I go, unless there is a shopping cart involved. Sometimes she does it just to do it. Because she has baby hands with her vice like grips and when kids discover something new with their hands,these interesting little tools at the end of their arms, thats all they want to do. Grab it and never let it go.

Why do I put myself through this torture? I often ask immediately after what I call a “grabbing”. My 250 pound frame quivering as I try and rub the pain out of my face. The answer is simple. One day she will grow too big to carry everywhere,too old to want to have dad hold her all day and too cool to admit that the bearded,bald headed guy is her dad. So I tolerate the yanking and tugging of my beard because I know one day that there will be no sweet miracle baby to grab my face, and while my beard won’t  be going anywhere, she will be. She will go to college,move out and find her own way in the world. She will one day have her own family, and then her children can grab my beard and I won’t complain. Their mom toughened me up for them, and thats alright with me,Grab it and never let go.