A NEW KIND OF FOCUS

I just had my one-year anniversary of being home from Iraq on June 21st. and I have now enjoyed my second 4th of July home with the kids. The first one came mere weeks after I got back. A full year of rich experience, though utterly incomparable to my 18 month deployment, keeps my mind quite focused on the present and the future. But this is a new kind of focus, and I do still think about my time in Iraq a lot. In my daily life, I'm trying to unweave the web of events that came together or were pulled apart in my life. The global scope of those events and the complexities of emotion related to them boggle me still.

I just finished writing for the New York Times this June. I had fun again, but it was different than the "Frontlines" blog I participated in while still deployed. As you can tell from their new blog's title, "Home Fires," the general theme, while really anything was fair game, was the transiton we've made since returning to the States.

Writing these pieces has made me feel very lucky once again, just thinking about the gravity of my situation in Ramadi. I wrote four personal op-ed essays for the NYT, which can only illustrate my own situation, but may vicariously shed light on the stories of many other soldiers as well. I occasionally read some of the blogs being written from Iraq right now, and specifically from my old base, FOB Ramadi, and I can empathize with every word. On so many levels I know exactly how they feel, how they spend their hours. And yet writing for the NYT this last month made me accept mutability on an even deeper level. And though I thought I was so wise, sitting under those Middle Eastern constellations and pondering the world, sending my prose out over web 2.0, this Matrix of invisible transmission waves, I was really only being prepared for what awaited me. And I would have been less prepared had I not gone to Iraq. War actually helped me to handle the reality of life back home. I am not only stronger in every sense of the word, but the timing of my wartime experience, as it is juxtaposed with the overarching evolution of my life, was perfect. I hope that those still in Ramadi, and anywhere in the Middle East, can execute their own part of the mission, get home safe, and brave their own transitions back into American life without too much pain or hardship.

I'll be re-publishing all four of my recent NYT pieces, and in the name of promoting the archives, here are the links to what I wrote in that same forum back in 2006, in the midst of my combat experience. When I stop to look back, which I inevitably do quite often, I am filled with gratitude that I am home with my kids now. My opinion about this war has changed and become more convoluted with distance, but I am still glad I went.

The Fog of War

A Staff Visit

Fighting with Honor

Just Drop Me Off When This is Over

Listening to the Land

In and Around Ramadi

Good Medicine for the Heart

Incoming! 

Embracing Change 

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