The Passing of August

  Our Brigade is composed of some 5,000 National Guard soldiers, who hail from over 20 states. My battalion alone has soldiers from over 10 states. We are a melting pot of religions, attitudes, and backgrounds, but we have come together for a single purpose: to perform whatever missions the Army needs us to.

   It’s hard to believe we’re already close to mid-September. I have an Excel spreadsheet on my computer that counts down days, minutes, and seconds based on the numbers you punch in. As of this moment, I have 265 days, 381,839 minutes, 22,910,325 seconds until I can once again pick up the pieces of what I call a normal life.

   I can’t think of time in this way, counting down the days, or I’ll drive myself mad.  Recently my daughter started Kindergarten. I spoke to her on the phone as she was getting dressed for school and she sounded so sweet and excited. It filled me with pride, but it did make the miles seem longer.  Of course I wanted to be there, in the comfort of the morning in quiet suburbia - perhaps some cartoons on the TV, a little sleepy-eyed, the smell of breakfast still on the pans, and the sound of coffee percolating – brushing my daughter’s hair and making sure her socks match and telling her mother “don’t worry about it. I’ll get her ready and take her to school,” and doing exactly that. Closing the car door after this incredible little girl and making sure she puts her seatbelt on, and driving to her new school, and enjoying the whole experience vicariously through her huge brown eyes, and then giving her a hug and a kiss and walking her up to the school. Once I was back in my car, I’d sit there for a minute, looking at the school, worrying. Then I’d drive home, smiling the whole way. Instead, I’m smiling as I write this. At least I can talk to her, and I know she’s okay. And I know how to count my blessings.

   I didn’t have to come here. I was asked, and I accepted. But in the larger scheme of things, I did leave the Active Army and join the National Guard because I wanted to focus on my family, and not be gone so much. It’s ironic that I was never deployed overseas while I was in the 82^nd or the 101^st Airborne Divisions.

    Now that I am a father of two, it’s my time to serve in Iraq with a small National Guard unit from Utah. My fate is such that I’m in a country full of change and violence, only it’s not my country. Just as Arches National Park in southern Utah has the highest concentration of natural arches on the planet, the country of Iraq currently has the highest concentration of things exploding on the planet. This fact sounds worse than it is. Very few of us are hurt by things exploding, when you consider how many of us are in Iraq. More soldiers are hurt, across the country, in car crashes back home in a given month. More people are hurt in America than in Iraq daily. It’s a relatively safe place, if you’re smart and you’re trained, which we are.

      As a blind man given a chance to see, it helps sometimes to be pulled out of the structure of life, so that you can view it objectively and pick it apart, wonder at it, improve it, and cherish it all the more.

   I can’t help it. I count the days. I open the spreadsheet and punch in the numbers. The word Utah has become my two-syllable mantra, I get nostalgic just saying it, Ute- ahh. Oh man, the mountains, the winding roads, the people, the fervor of it all. Oh yes, I will be happy to see the Rocky Mountains once again.

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