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.