Flashbulb Thoughts

    Sometimes I lay in bed at night, in stillness, after a long hard day, and my mind is like a shutter- the flash of a picture taken in the dark:

-FLASH-

 I’m a child again in New Orleans. Its Mardi Gras and the world is a carnival of sound and color. My dad has built a two-seater kid’s chair and mounted it on top of a ladder. I’m sitting in it next to my cousin, and we have bags that we fill with all the beads and trinkets and candy we can catch. I have no responsibility. I have no enemy. I am so young, and I don’t want the night to end. In fact, I don’t believe it ever will. I keep looking down and touching my dad’s hand to make sure he’s holding on to the ladder, keeping me safe.

 -FLASH-

 It’s 2004 and I’m a father. I’ve been married for six years, and it’s my anniversary. My daughter is humming a song while she eats her cereal, and my son is acting grouchy, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He just woke up. It’s early morning and the sun is low on the horizon, barely peeking over the Rocky Mountains. I’ve let my wife sleep in, and I’m going to bring her breakfast and coffee in bed. I don’t realize how good I have it. The smell of coffee and the soft morning light and the relaxing feel of a long hot shower. My mind is already racing through the day – give the kids a bath, get to work, don’t forget about 1100 and 1400 meetings, make some time for my wife tonight, be a better listener, try to slow down and enjoy the daily grind. Life goes by too fast.

 -FLASH-

I’m driving away from my wife and my children after pre-mobilization training in Mississippi. I am going to Iraq. It’s so hard to let her go, and to kiss the kids over and over not knowing for sure if I’ll ever see them again. I feel like this isn't real somehow. My eyes burn fiercely as I watch my daughter’s little arm waving out of the back window. I can't see my son's because he's so little. Until then, it was always “Don’t say goodbye yet. This isn’t goodbye.” Well, this is goodbye, for better or worse. All my doubts about this war are in my throat and the harsh reality of an 18 month deployment slaps me in the face. The sun catches the rear windshield and my daughter’s hand disappears as the car turns a corner and blurs into the trees. I want to run after it, to say goodbye over and over and over and hold them and protect them forever.  But instead I turn around and start walking. I am speechless, and the pain is more than emotional- it's physical - my heart hurts. I need to be alone with my thoughts. I walk four miles. Then I go dutifully back to work, preparing myself for the war of a generation.

-FLASH-

 I’m one of 12 soldiers in a Chinook helicopter flying over hostile enemy territory into Ramadi, Iraq. I’ve been living out of a duffel bag for two months, all my possessions covered with a fine dust, through desert training and intense heat. But nothing prepared me for the heat of Kuwait. Now even that is behind me. I can see Fallujah not too far away. The sound of the double props harasses my ears through the earplugs. Tension is high, as all the training culminates in this moment. Everything is unknown, and all that is familiar 7,000 miles behind me. I look around at my fellow soldiers. Our families ears must be burning because I know they are in everyone's thoughts - a place to go in the mind for strength and inspiration. We are all focused, lost in our own thoughts in the eerie darkness inside the helicopter. The back of the craft is open, and I can see we are getting closer to the ground. There are a million stars out this night. We are passing right over villages and homes of people I will never meet. I’m nervous because we heard that an earlier flight received some small arms fire. But we land safely. I grab my bags and exit the bird. Thus my feet first land on the soil of the Al Anbar Province, Iraq. I start walking …

 -FLASH-

       I’m asleep. I am simply human, innocent, and alone, lying on my side hugging a pillow as if I’m still in High School - without a care in the world. I’m dreaming of water. My children are there in my dream. A large noise disturbs me, reeling me back from rapid eye movement. The door to my room rattles in its frame. There's another explosion, and I sit up in darkness. I look at my alarm clock – 0400. Three more explosions land very close. I know they are within a couple hundred meters of my bed. Are there more coming? Will the next one hit my room? I grab my body armor and move to the safest area I can find, turning on my hand-held radio. I’m crouching in the corner like a criminal who is about to get caught, as if I’ve done something wrong.

-FLASH-

     Its three years from now and my daughter is nine and my son is six and we are vacationing in New Orleans to visit my parents. The city has been rebuilt. Many people decided to re-locate, but many more never even considered it. Mardi Gras is coming up, and there are parades every day. Now I’m the one holding the ladder for the kids. Their hands keep checking mine to make sure I’m holding on tight. “Don’t let go, okay?” My son says. I promise him I won’t. I look at the profile of their faces in the bright lights. It took them a few weeks to warm back up to me after I returned from Iraq. I had been gone for 18 months, and that’s a long time indeed, especially for a citizen soldier. I see the scene around us reflected in their eyes – the complete joy, the laughter, the freedom, the warmth of safety, however fleeting it may be-  and I hope that because I fought in Iraq, my kids won’t ever have to. I hope they never grow up, and they’ll always want me be there to hold the ladder for them. But I am keenly aware that my hopes are in vain, so I enjoy the moment as if it were the last. I’ve always had a knack for making the best of a situation, but my time in Iraq taught me more about it than I ever thought possible. And it took me a while to realize it, but the experience made me a better dad, soldier, friend, writer, and person. I hold the ladder and I smile. I'm still glad I went.

-FLASH- 

My alarm clock goes off, in reality, at 0630. I rise from bed and begin my day in those solitary moments when the mind is still recovering from sleep, sweeping away the cobwebs, like a car engine warming up after a cold night. I open the door and walk outside, blinking in the harsh sun of another Iraqi day. I stop for a moment, and as if I'm back home on my front porch, stretch my arms up to high heaven and let out a monstrous yawn. Everything changes and everything stays the same. And life is always, in the end, what you make it.

Live as if you will die tomorrow,

Learn as if you will live forever.

                              Author unknown

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