Well Loved

Child 2 has an emotional relationship with nearly everything. With its close (and dearly beloved) family it's often a rather grumpy emotional relationship, but given how much button-pushing it puts up with I feel that's only to be expected. It's the inanimate things that are a little more problematic.

Child 2 is a hoarder and collector from a long and distinguished line of such beings. In fact it has a double dose because there's the genetic link (from my side definitely, less certainly on Kirk's) as well as the behavioral link since its paternal grandfather is the Hoarder Grand Poobah and High Mucketty Muck. With an emphasis on the muck.

Child 2 has a fine even handed approach to its hoards; currently its dresser top is strewn with small plastic toys from a friend's brother's recent birthday, several DVDs brought in apparently simply to gently pat the covers, an inevitable stack of books and a general dusting of papers etc that refuse category. When told that "clean your room" needs to include such surfaces it looks at me in blank confusion and wonders how I cannot see that all of these objects are fabulous and utterly desirable and must be in plain sight (or semi-obscured sight) at all times to be truly appreciated.

It also owns an enormous number of stuffed animals. It was banned from acquiring any more several years ago when the population overflowed its bed and seemed to be planning an invasion of the rest of the house, but that left the dozens of "best friend" cuddly toys that already had burrowed their plastic-eyed way into its heart. When we moved after Kirk's disappearance we had to cram our not-too-large household into a considerably smaller space and so, with much difficulty, Child 2 was forced to decide exactly which among the many would become the chosen few allowed to remain out and about. The others were tucked carefully into plastic garbage bags and interred in bins in the garage. They have remained there for well over a year now, but Child 2 refuses to hear gentle (loud and continuous) hints about thinning the herd.

Then there are its clothes. Child 2 was one of those children who seemed to stay the same size for ever. It was petite - to say the least - for most of its young life and so could wear the same grubby, worn out sweaters and jeans for two, sometimes three years running. Maybe that's why emotional attachment to clothes, for Child 2, is enormous, what with having invested years of sweat and grass stains and all. Even more beloved are things handed down by friends - doubly valuable and impossible to relinquish.

Yesterday Child 2 took out a shirt I had washed and pointed out to it as probably no longer wearable. It was a magical shirt, I admit, bought just for Child 2 all itself, bought because it was clear Child 2 would love it (new clothes were and are much more now extremely rare in our family). It was, however, bought five years ago. Child 2, after squeezing into the shirt with much effort, glanced down at the exposed bits of flesh and admitted, reluctantly, that just maybe the shirt is on the small side. It has agreed that the shirt can be handed down, probably with ceremony and a solemn promise that Child 2 can visit the shirt when necessary.

It will be missed.

Words of Wisdom

The thing about kids - you know, having them and then keeping them around and things - is that conversation becomes rather surreal. I know it's not just my particular kids because I had a dear friend ask me to wait a moment while she hollered "that, young man is a one way door and you know we've had this conversation before, so put down the carrot."

You learn quite quickly not to ask for context when these things come up, so while I know it happened, I'm not entirely sure why Child 2 had to say severely, "YOU are over-stretching my frog!" but it stuck in my mind.

Today was register-for-school day, and we have reached that plateau of bliss where all three Children are attending the very same school which means 1 schedule for holidays etc and 1 bus. Things haven't been this good since Child 1 was unfortunately allowed to graduate from 5th grade. However there is a price. I had to register all of them which meant I trotted down with two of the three clutching two pieces of id per person, copies of shot records and what I was assured (twice) was perfectly adequate Proof Of Residence. Only it wasn't naturally which we discovered after standing in the wrong line for only an hour. Not to worry, if we lumbered home, picked up the piece of Really And For True Proof Of Residence they would be happy to register all Children at once thus saving me another trip out to the school.

You can see it coming, right?

Picked up Child 3 (meaning it was peeled off of its video game and forcibly inserted into its shoes), found original copy of Really And For True Proof Of Residence, went and stood in entirely NEW line for another 1/2 hour only to discover... that our Proof Of Residence is faulty AND they're closing down for the day so we'll have to so-sorry-come-back-tomorrow.

I seriously wanted to lean across the desk and hiss, "lady, you are totally over-stretching my frog." Child 2, I hear you baby.

Lesson Learned

As I was leaving work the other day I walked behind a woman about my age who appeared to have forgotten her trousers. It was a little strange because her hair was absolutely perfect and her make-up had been done with great care. Maybe she spent so long on her head she just figured - Oh, what the heck I'll throw on this mini-sweater dress and call it done. Or maybe she was about to attend a high school reunion and wanted to make sure everyone would recognize her so she wore her favorite outfit from junior year.

The problem was she had realized too late what a tragic mistake it was, and so as she walked she kept almost-but-not-quite tugging on the hem to try to stretch it down towards her knees. There was a desperate tenseness about her - she might as well have stopped and shouted "yes! Yes, I decided I could get away with wearing a piece of knit maroon whatever that would make a generous tea cozy but is a little on the skimpy side as a piece of clothing." Out of pity I had to look away.

The same day in the bookstore a man sailed past me wearing a bicycle helmet. He wore it with enormous grace and elegance and as he looked around there was an expression of such supreme certainty on his face it seemed utterly right that he should wear that helmet.

Confidence my friends is key.

Mental scars

Yesterday something terrible happened.

For the rest of my life now I will have a vivid and dreadful visual whenever I hear the phrase

Hair shirt.

ETA: It's been suggested I clarify. Okay, but follow the link at your own risk. Your mental scars are your responsibility.

Reading Aloud

My mother is a brilliant reader-alouder. From the time we were tiny she read to us - at the lunch table while I was trying to avoid eating my liverwurst sandwich, in the afternoons down in the den with me hanging upside down off the swing (yes, we had a swing in our den) or trying and failing to stand on my head. She read Francis Hodgson Burnett and Louisa May Alcott, Elizabeth Goudge and Eleanor Farjean. She read when we were driving to Colorado or Kansas to keep my sister and me from murdering each other in the back seat. She just read.

So I read too, to the Children, and have since they were babies. We used to be able to squash up into the couch together while we read A.A. Milne or Dr. Seuss. As the books (and the legs) got longer the children began to sprawl out on the floor or arrange themselves with drawing things, cards or other projects to keep their hands busy. I read them many of the books I was raised on, and added others of my own: Arthur Ransome, Susan Cooper and Philip Pullman. Usually after the book is over there is a general rush to claim it so one Child or another can re-read as quickly as possible. Child 3 won on His Dark Materials and then committed the cardinal sin of losing the book before finishing it (it found it again but things were a bit fraught for a while there!)

So now we're reading The Deathly Hallows. We got through nearly half on Saturday although it meant I had a rather sore throat. Sunday there were too many other commitments already made so we only squeezed in a few chapters, unfortunately leaving all of the final stuff still to come. Child 1 did indeed bring out its project bits and pieces and lay on the floor to listen, forgetting its card house now and then as things heated up in the story. Child 2 perched across the room and did glare at me whenever a particularly beloved character seemed in danger. It also has announced gloomily at every plot turn "XXX is going to die, I just know it. I KNOW it," just so that if the sad event does take place it will be well prepared - and have the consolation of being able to say "I TOLD you so!" Child 3 has punctuated the reading with wild predictions and shouts of "Oh! that's what happened..." and has also bounced into my room multiple times when it was supposed to be face-washing-teeth-brushing to tell me its latest ideas about What Will Happen Next.

Seven books worth of reading aloud; we'll finish this afternoon.

I wonder what we'll read tomorrow.

Harry Potter

Yes... I know... but the fact is that the Children are going to a midnight party tonight, and one of them will be dressed as a Death Eater, and another is seriously considering Hermione (having natural assets of unmanageable hair and a know-it-all attitude - Love you Child!) while the third has rejected my suggestion of an old pillowcase thus becoming Dobby.

Child 1 was given a Harry Potter book in Alaska by its very best friend. I had heard rumblings about the books, but since they were *gasp* popular I assumed they were also horrible and I wasn't going to have MY children read them. (see also cultural deprivation as described in an earlier post) But Child 1's best friend was a charming and wonderful person, and it insisted that the books were fantastic! Marvelous! Really, really great! So I practiced my best oh-well-if-you-must-but-we-all-know-we're-better-than-this face and read the book.

Like how many thousands of other children mine have now grown up with the series. I think of them geographically: books 1-3 were Alaska, book 4 we got in Virginia, book 5 in California.

So now we'll be going, at midnight, to pick up book 7. They still want me to read it aloud to all of them, although it's a little harder to cuddle everyone together now that legs have stretched so alarmingly and they come darn close to outweighing me. So probably Child 1 will have some project spread out over the floor as it listens, Child 2 will be ensconced in a corner of the other couch where it can glare at me if the plot goes against its likings and Child 3 will spend half its time bouncing up as its inspired to make something or try something out or shout out a prediction.

I'll probably stop at the end of every really exciting chapter and make to close the book. There's no point in ending at a boring bit - you have to make them suffer a little bit - and the Children will howl in anguish and insist I read just one more chapter... and then another...

So - do you think Harry will die?

GRANDfather

I was thinking about my grandfather the other day.

That's my father's father - the only one of my grandparents I knew very well at all; the other three died before I was seven.

He was Grandfather with a rolled "r" and and emphasis on the GRAND. I seriously envied my friends who had a grandpa, but he was introduced to me as GRANDfather and GRANDfather he remained.

He was the dean of an episcopal cathedral which meant he got to wear really impressive robes, and all of our birthday cards came with a return address to "The Very Reverend." That certainly added to the grand impression, and when I wasn't around him it was easy to think of him as terribly stern and very, very holy.

He tended to destroy that image in person since he liked to wear plaid golfing caps with little bobbles on the top and started out every visit by announcing "You grew just enough this year - your legs are just long enough to reach the ground!" I used to get a wonderful image of myself the next year solemnly wading around in several inches of earth.

His wife, my grandmother, died when I was six and I have no real memories of her. We went to visit when she was very ill and I vaguely recall being frightened because the room was dim and she was so terribly frail. I wish I had known her because she sounds like an amazing woman. She went to a very posh college where she majored in chemistry and (according to my probably twisted memory) also acquired the skill of eating a banana with a knife and fork. She also single-handedly got my grandfather through divinity college by writing all of his papers for him.

He remarried fairly quickly - a member of the cathedral who spent the rest of her life calling him "the dean." We weren't to call her GRANDmother or even Grandma - she was Mimi (meye-meye). She took wonderful care of him, keeping his house meticulously tidy and cooking enormous meals. She loved to take us shopping and my grandfather was the chauffeur. She would keep up a constant stream of comment "I think that was the turn... are you sure this is the exit we need? Now, you're not going by the railroad are you??" and he would serenely smile as he drove just the way he wanted. We realized that he had been discretely turning off his hearing aid just before he got in the car and literally turning a deaf ear.

We toured his cathedral several times - I covered myself with glory once by successfully identifying Judas in a stained glass window (he was the grumpy one with the huge bag of money). I remember attending Midnight Mass one magical Christmas (I got to stay up! As a child! On Christmas Eve!) and not recognizing the purple-stoled man with the deep voice. My parents were what my mother calls "heathen" when I was a small child, and then converted to a non-episcopalian religion to my step-grandmother's chagrin. When we stayed with them my sister and I were often asked to say grace before dinner. Our prayers were fairly short, casual embarrassed affairs including rote phrases from our own church ("keepusfromharmoraccident," "blessthisfoodthatitmaynourishandstrengthenourbodies") and just as we were rushing for the end Mimi would shoot out an iron hand, grasp our wrists and say firmly "Aaaaaaand..." adding in all the things we had missed out and closing with "andmakeusevermindfuloftheneedsofothers [breath] throughChristourLord [significant pause] Ahmen."

When Kirk and I were married in my parent's living room - a five minute service by a very nervous Mormon bishop who had never performed a marriage before - Mimi stood up at the end and announced that my grandfather would give us a wedding prayer. Kirk, who had just been feeling terribly relieved that his endless ordeal (in front of at LEAST 12 people) was over, swallowed hard and agreed. I don't remember what he said, just that he smiled sweetly at us at the end and told us we should kiss again (which we did very awkwardly). "There," Mimi said with relief, "he doesn't tie many slip knots!"

He didn't.

Second Hand Harry Potter Review

So, I took the Children to the Harry Potter movie yesterday, but that's all I did. I bought the tickets, drove to the theater (sorry, I save Theatre for ackshual plays what have people in 'em. At least when I remember I do), threw them enthusiastically out the door and waved buh-bye.

It's not that I have anything against Harry Potter - I like Harry Potter. I refuse to dislike it on the basis of popularity OR fantasy genre OR books-for-kids.

It's just that I have a few things I truly cannot bear in plots and while books have this really neat feature where you can skip on a few pages and Ta Dah! Icky bit over! Movies in theaters don't let you do that, and your Children might be a wee bit embarrassed if their mother sits through much of the movie with eyes squinched shut, finger jammed in ears saying "la la LA LA LA IS THAT PART OVER YET?"

One of my real problems is people making fools of themselves. I've never liked that. It makes me squirm for the poor saps - even if it's the bad guy I get all twisty and uncomfortable and I want to look away QUICKLY. That's why I hated Laverne and Shirley. Or I would have if we had watchable television in our house.

The thing that I really have trouble with though is any story line that depends on the hero being framed or falsely accused. I don't know why, it's just the way I am. Now, not to spoiler anyone who hasn't seen the movie or read the book, but let's just say there's a weency bit of that sort of thing in this film. So I sent my kids on ahead as scouts to see if all the good stuff was going to make the misery of the bad stuff worthwhile.

This is made more difficult because we have a family rule about Not Spoiling Movies For People Who Have Not Seen Them. So they honestly tried to give me the information I wanted without actually ruining the whole thing. Here's their report as far as I can translate:

"OMG! It was so cool with the... I mean, the dementors, they redesigned them (insert nerdy question from me on the art design and lighting) and there's this part where... no never mind. But then! They didn't have some of the stuff - oh, but they did have the part where, and I'd tell you about it, but I can't! Oh! And pink kittens, and Umbridge was like 'hem!' and that was.... but the end was really! And the rooms! With the... oh, and I liked the kiss."

So there you are. Three thumbs up and a resolution from me to wait until either the theater will be fairly deserted and I can hide under my seat in peace, or it comes out on DVD and I can take frequent bathroom breaks while the Children shriek "Wait Mom! This is the best part!"

Indoctrination

I was culturally deprived as a child. It's sad to say that, because my parents probably wanted what was best for me, but it's quite true. We had only one television in the entire house, and for many many years it was a black and white one so I honestly believed that Leave it to Beaver, M*A*S*H and Happy Days were all filmed in the 50's. It also meant that I did indeed shout loudly and with consternation, "Hey! Who colorized this??" when watching Wizard of Oz in college. Oh yeah, that'll leave a scar.

We did not have cable so I missed the entire time frame when MTV actually played music (except for illicit viewing at various friend's house). I saw maybe... mentally totting up.... maybe 12 movies in an actual movie theatre by the time I hit high school and that includes Snow White where I wept bitterly for the last 20 minutes or so because Dopey had cried (I was going to marry Dopey and take him away from all his friends. Grumpy would have beaten the crap out of me), and Sleeping Beauty where I had to hide under my seat for much of the end what with the ginormous dragon and the possibility that the ginormous dragon would somehow come back and eat the poncey prince (leaving the three fairies as after dinner mints probably). I didn't see any Molly Ringwald movies when they came out which meant I had to get my fashion tips second hand (wait, no fingers in the gloves? And how many pairs of socks are we supposed to wear? Dangit, my mom won't let me wear a sweatshirt with the neck cut out 'cause it might show my bra strap) AND I missed the television airing of Red Dawn which had all the rest of my friends discussing how far from the blast point of a nuclear bomb you'd have to be to ensure instant snuffing rather than long, drawn out radiation sickness agony.

To be fair I was given alternatives. I could tell you who the Secret Seven were, I knew which new girls were likely to cause the most trouble each year at Saint Clare's boarding school and I had read every last Agatha Christie by the time I was 11. Oh yeah, I was really great at parties.

Kirk on the other hand had been handed a summer pass to the movie theatre each year (with strict instructions not to lean his head back on the seat - stranger hair goo is contagious, not to sweat, and not to come home for at least four hours). He was served his fast-food dinners on a tray in front of one of the two or three televisions there were in the living room alone. I was a granola child - he was definitely twinkies.

But I felt the isolation of not sharing culture with my peers, I truly did. So when I had children of my own I was definitely going to make sure that they were well exposed to all the most important and useful bits of popular culture. As a result they know most if not all of the really seminal Monty Python sketches (Dead Parrot naturally, but they also like Close Order Swanning About) along with several other really vital things, like Yes Prime Minister and Good Neighbors (British title - The Good Life). Recently I realized though that maybe this doesn't quite provide a large range of experiences. They need to be prepared for the tough life ahead. Perhaps old Brit coms aren't enough?

So we've been watching Animaniacs cartoons all week. I'm such a good mom.

NPR drive by

While half-listening to NPR in the background -

Me: Hey, is that Beverly Sills?

Boss: I think so

Me: Oh.... um, isn't she dead?

Boss: Yes, I'm pretty sure.

Me: Well, in that case, she sounds great.

Indoor League

My boss told me a story today about how her step-sons were using their airSoft guns to fight some sort of sibling-annihilating guerrilla war game inside their mother's house. We both agreed easily that probably this is not an idea that would have flown had any reasonable female, and even some reasonable males, been around. Which instantly made me remember a story...

I came home in California one day to find the living room furniture all desperately hugging the walls. The rug had been rolled up and put aside as well to expose the grey carpet, and an entire field complete with goal boxes, midfield and free kick lines was marked out with masking tape. The combatants were spread out around the room and all looked up with a certain amount of guilt.

Except for one of course - the largest one. It had been his idea in the first place. Granted, Kirk felt he was being very responsible and sensible by insisting they replace the real soccer ball with a balloon. It was hardly his fault that one of the children still bears a scar from a mid-air collision when going for a header.

These things just happen you know, even in the best regulated households.

Instructions

Child 3 took its hard earned cash to Sharper Image and purchased one of these: Ripstik. It promptly demolished the packaging (leaving a hamster trail of shredded cardboard and bits of foam packing) in the back seat of the car and settled down to read the Instruction Manual.

The front cover says in large formidable letters: Read This Before Using This Product

Then there are about four inner pages which give the following instructions for enjoying this fine piece of recreational equipment.

DEATH or INJURY can result from NOT READING INSTRUCTIONS

INJURY or DEATH can result if you do not wear the following VERY IMPORTANT SAFETY GEAR: Helmet, elbow pads, knee pads, long sleeved shirt, long pants, well soled shoes in good condition.

DEATH or INJURY may result even if you do wear the VERY IMPORTANT SAFETY GEAR

INJURY or DEATH may result from replacing worn parts with UNOFFICIAL parts. USER must CALL US before using UNOFFICIAL parts.

PARENTS must READ and UNDERSTAND these instructions, and explain them to the child. These instructions should be REREAD every few months.

Oh, and you clean it with a damp cloth.

Child 3 has spent a happy three days Ripstiking around the neighborhood. Despite not wearing any of the VERY IMPORTANT SAFETY GEAR (except shoes - it is wearing shirt and shorts) it has not yet managed serious INJURY or DEATH.

I think its just not trying.

Slave Labor

Kirk and I have always been lovingly honest with our children. We would look into their beloved wee faces and croon "now darlings, you know we only had you for the slave labor, right?" and they would wrinkle their adorable noses up at us and lisp back, "of courth, and may we do the vacuuming now?"

Or something like that.

In practice they have a mixed history when it comes to household chores. Child 3 is willing, sometimes, but has a peculiar blindness to anything that is in contact with another object or surface. So it will swear absolutely that its room is clean and looks on with astonishment when I point out the bread-crumb trail of lego pieces up against the walls. Child 2 read The Gammage Cup at far too early an age and was happy to discover a fictional character who believes strongly in the "organize with heaps" method of room cleaning. Child 1 will cheerfully tidy up when pressed but is blissfully unaware of messes left behind when showers are taken or clothes changed.

We did have one glorious coup when we convinced them all that dish-washing was a terribly, terribly grown-up and exciting thing to do. Child 1 had watched one of us at the sink (taking in the unbelievable possibilities of foamy white suds and a large amount of water) and had asked if it could wash dishes some time. We wrinkled our brows and looked dubious - oh, I don't know really. Maybe when you're older, if you're really good we might let you wash dishes as a very special treat. But not now sweetheart, not yet. We spun that out for several weeks and as a reward got a full six months of happy, even grateful dishwashing. Even better, Child 2 watched the whole thing, green with envy, and tacked an extra three months on the end of that. Child 3 however managed to spread the water so far and wide that it was ruled out on the basis of collateral damage.

Apparently that's the hard way to get 'em to do things though. My parents came up with a much more simple plan. For the last week all three Children have happily weeded, stacked wood, ripped up and disposed of carpeting, removed ancient and well-glued tiles (of unknown matter - probably asbestos lightly seasoned with lead), washed walls, swabbed floors, sanded, plastered, patched and painted apparently without complaint.

I could suggest it's the kindness of their hearts and their deep and abiding love for their wonderful grandparents.

But I'm pretty sure it's the cold, hard cash.

Glorious Fourth

It always feels a little petty of the universe to put the Fourth on a Wednesday. No four day weekend naturally, but worse, you have to then get up and go back to work the next day as though the entire neighborhood weren't firing off illegal fireworks well past 11 the night before.

Good fun was had though. Children 1 and 2 went one direction to incite acts of arson among young and impressionable types while Child 3 and I spent the evening with friends on the other end of town. They have a house that looks out over much of the city with a gorgeous view of the firework displays held at the fair-grounds, the balloon park, at least two country clubs as well as the enthusiastic if law-breaking neighbors. Since it's monsoon season we also had a very impressive lightening display and were finally chased out of our chairs by the rain.

No one lost a limb although Child 1 managed a small burn on the sole of its foot. It needs to come up with a really good story for that though because "sparkler accident" just doesn't sound all that heroic somehow. Nope, it definitely needs something that starts out:

"There I was..."

Alan Johnston is Free

Thanks to all of you who emailed me - this is amazing news. Alan Johnston has been freed after 114 days in captivity. You can read the BBC article here.

What an incredible and wonderful thing to happen.

Kandahar Journal

I found a wonderful blog the other day. It's the journal of Richard Johnson, a Canadian illustrator who is documenting his time in Afghanistan. The sketches are fascinating (and it's interesting to see him gain assurance as he goes along - he mentions in the first post that he's a little rusty), but the prose is just as good.

Afghanistan is often overlooked with all the noise and confusion and anger over Iraq. It's good to see this ongoing effort to rebuild and restore being documented so vividly.

News combat art isn't seen much anymore, but there's something very evocative about it. Maybe it's because the sketches have to be done with deliberation. I certainly find something in them that reaches me in a way photographs don't.

A Kandahar Journal

Perspective

I met a man in Target the other day.

I was waiting for Child 1, sort of browsing-not-buying in the movie section and I had just picked up Flags of Our Fathers. He tapped me on the shoulder and said, "I was just looking at that."

Have you seen it yet? I said, I saw it in the theater, and it was pretty good. But I read the book first, and that helped.

No, I didn't need to see it. I was there.

He was a navy corpsman in the Pacific, and he was quick to say that he wasn't on Iwo, he just treated the guys who were evacuated. We talked for a while there in the store. He said he loves to find Marines and go give them a hard time, calling them "jarhead." Then he tells them what his job was, and every last one of them has given him a hug.

I can understand that.

He didn't go into medicine when he got out, he said. He went to work for the post office instead. But he was glad of the medical training, because when his wife got cancer a few years ago he could be her nurse - the only one she had. He cared for her until the day she died. She was his second wife - he had been married 21 years the first time, 28 the second. That made him about 53 he said, and I agreed.

His son wanted him to move out to California, but he wouldn't go because his wife was buried in the national cemetery in Santa Fe and he didn't want to leave her grave. She had been a WAV in Korea and you could see the way his shoulders straightened when he talked about that. He was going to be buried with her - not beside her, but with her, and he told the officials at the cemetery that he didn't care what they said about his service so long as hers was on the marker.

He asked me if I'd ever been to Washington DC, and then wanted to know if I'd seen the memorial. I knew for him it wasn't the Vietnam Memorial, the one most people of my generation think of, but the World War II Memorial. I had, I told him, and I thought it was about time they put one up too. He shrugged.

He had an application form sitting on his desk at home for the American Legion. He was already a member of the American Veterans of Foreign Wars, but he didn't think he wanted to join the Legion. Their literature was all about benefits, he said, all about getting what was owed you. No one owes me anything.

I think we do, I told him, but he shook his head.

Nope, look at me, I have all my limbs, I've got my head on (for all the good it does me), no one owes me anything. I had an adventure, that's all. I saw a lot of stuff, and some of it was pretty hard, but I was just doing what we all needed to do.

He smiled at me then, and slowly wheeled his basket away.

Taboo

Right from the start I kept talking about Kirk. Not about what was happening always, although it was important to talk about that too, but just about him. He was part of our lives, he always would be, and I didn't want the horrible stuff that was happening now to stain backwards over the rest of our lives together.

So whenever something happened that reminded me or the kids of Kirk, of something we had done together or the sort of things he would say, I would talk about it. It wasn't a huge choice on my part; it was perfectly natural. We've never really lost those memories, we talk about him all the time and it's good.

The problem is other people. I'll be talking with friends and something Kirk said, or something we did together will be relevant and I'll quite happily add it into the conversation. It seems to be the social equivalent of tossing a matching set* of underwear into the middle of the room.** Everyone gets embarrassed and uncomfortable and then reacts according to their personality:

Type 1 feigns complete unawareness of the underwear. There is no underwear. There is no underwear.

Type 2 shifts a little, gives a sort of combination hiccup-cough to acknowledge that the underwear is there but really we should not mention the underwear because Miss Manners has not covered underwear (HA! Best phrase I have ever written on this blog! I'm unbelievably pleased...)*** and what does one do at this point?

Type 3 acknowledges the underwear gravely with a preternatural solemnity - even if the story was funny. Underwear: it is very serious stuff and should never be taken lightly.

Type 4 flares its nostrils a bit but girds up metaphorical loins and soldiers on with the conversation, valiantly including the underwear but making a bit of an effort to do so.

Type 5, the rarest of all beasts, accepts that now and then into every room a little underwear must fall and (oh dear. I should have chosen a better metaphor) embraces the underwear gracefully.

I do understand that it's hard to know what to say when someone has had a tragedy. I'm past the point now when I feel I have to work extra hard to make other people feel comfortable around me and my Very Dreadful Life. I've gotten used to the fact that yes, it makes people uneasy when I talk about Kirk.

I could stop doing it I suppose, although it would take a real effort because we were married for 15 years; my stories are his stories. I would have to mentally edit much of my life just to keep people from feeling a little uneasy. Somehow I think that would be wrong.

Of course, it would be much more wrong to do it on purpose just to watch folks squirm. I save that for special occasions.

NOTES:

*Tasteful mind you, and clean.

** Not that I have ever done this.

*** I have a deep suspicion that this post will bump me up the Weird Searches on Google That Include The Word Underwear and Miss Manners. The price I pay...

Alan Johnston - Video II

Another video of Alan Johnston has been released. You can read about it on the BBC news site here.

Blog For a Year

This is an interesting experiment. Basically, if I can get enough votes then they'll pay me for a year to blog. Trying hard to come up with a more enticing possibility... well, outside of being handed mind-numbingly large amounts of cash I honestly can't come up with one! Click on the link once a day and it counts as a vote. Have no idea what else goes on with this, but hey! Fun times!

Not Posting on What I Could Post on If Only I Didn't Have a Mother

It's so hard. It's like the entire universe is spitting in your Wheaties when something happens first thing in the morning that would make an unbelievable post, but you can't post on it because your mother reads your blog and she's not supposed to know about some things.

I mean, look at the ingredients:

3 children (ages varying, but all of reasonable intelligence) and me

1 homeless man (cleaner variety, nicely trimmed beard, belongings in plastic trash bag)

1 word that my mother does not admit to knowing the meaning of.

See, the homeless guy really and truly seemed to be trying to come up with a good opening line, something casual but friendly, something that would establish a rapport before he then followed up with the inevitable request for "coffee" money. I give him credit for that effort. It's just that, well.... he might want to work on his content.

But to go back to the main point, what he said was so obviously intended as blogger fodder, and I can't blog it. Darn my continuing efforts to keep distress out of my parent's lives.

After all, it was just the one word that was the problem, all the other words were perfectly fine for a conversation starter with a complete stranger.

It went something like this:

Oddly tidy homeless man: "I'd have a/an [WORD ALERT!!!].... If I could. Do you have some change?"

Phew. Got the post out of my system, and didn't offend any maternal sensibilities. I'll just let you guys fill in with a word of your choice. I even edited the article so you won't be unduly influenced by "an" vs. "a."

It's a class act, this blog.

Parenting is Your Chance to Screw Up the Next Generation

Everyone's family is nuts in some way, right? Mine is beautifully normal in all the important areas - loving, generous, supportive, hospitable - and completely crackers everywhere else. Which is why when I started to date Kirk I startled him (and possibly nearly sent him screaming in the other direction) by having a rather unusual habit. It's this thing, see, where someone says something quite innocent and all, and you immediately respond with a song. Kirk even tested me once, and thought he would stump me with "splinter." Poor man had obviously not sung "Clementine" shrilly at top volume over and over and over again.

Yes, I know. Annoying AND embarrassing! It's the perfect personality quirk!

It's not my fault though, my mother whiled away every spare minute, particularly on long road trips, by singing. And as she had memorized the collective works of Peter, Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger, and many, many other artists of the folk-singy-granola bunch her repertoire was extensive. Also it was augmented by a large set of songs-for-kids that mostly take well known and otherwise inoffensive numbers and make them unfit for public use by adding twee or "funny" lyrics, preferably of the infinitely repeating variety.

When we married and had children of our own we were on a long road trip and I, well trained, turned around and started suggesting that the kids sing a particularly awful song along with me. It's not that I wanted to sing, mind you, or that the children did anything but look at me with disdain and disbelief, it's just that in my experience you have to sing on road trips. It's sort of like having a book when you head to the bathroom - it's required. Kirk however looked at me as though I had sprouted something unpleasant from the top of my head.

"What," he asked reasonably, "do you think you're doing?"

"Singing!"

"You do know that song is horrible, right?"

"Well... yes."

"You do know that if you sing it it will run around in your head for weeks and you will complain to me the whole time about how you have this stupid song going through your head."

"Well... yes."

"And you also know we're in an enclosed car and none of us can get away from you, right?"

"Um.... yes?"

"So why are you singing?"

I blinked at him for a few seconds and then blurted, "you mean, I don't have to??"

It was a beautiful moment.

However, it didn't cure the root disease of being mentally equipped with far too many obscure, or irritating songs which tend to lurch out of my subconscious at the strangest moments.

It's not all bad though. I sat down today without a clue what I would write about, and the titles of the last two posts stared at me. Sure, now I've got "3 Coins in a Fountain" running lightly through my brain, but on the other hand, I got a post out of it.

EDIT: It's such a waste really that I should have that inspiration on what to write today of all days, because this morning I also got a charming message which is worth a post in and of itself. Clearly it's from someone who loves me deeply. She said:

"abernathy aminobenzoic corpse cure" and

"bestselling bolshoi bernard" and even

"breast axolotl comprehensive alphameric aberdeen breakdown"

Verna Fontenont, whoever you are, you always say the sweetest things.

The Coin

I thought I had told about this, but after an exhaustive (two minute) search through the archives I can't find the story.

This was in Germany so... way-back machines set nicely. Kirk (remember) was a Russian linguist working intelligence intercepting radio transmissions from the Soviets.

At some point he intercepted a message and, translating it, believed it was really important - not just sort of important, but time sensitive, vitally, politically essential important. He found more messages, translated them, and pushed the whole thing up the chain as hard as he could.

As always, I don't know what the interception was about specifically. What I do know is that it was August 1991 and there was a significant coup attempt in the Soviet Union. I also know that some anonymous person sent us a section of barbed wire, and that seemed significant to Kirk.

The message and the results were important enough that Kirk's immediate commander put him in for a pretty important award. That recommendation went up chain, where the major (who had not even been aware of what was going on until it was all over) downgraded Kirk's suggested award and put himself in for a more important one. The same thing happened again at the next level. In the end, Kirk was given an Army Achievement medal (I think... I'd have to dig through the dusty box of plastic award folders) while the colonel or someone was trying for a Silver Star. It was all very silly, and Kirk was mostly irritated that people who had nothing to do with anything were trying to grab glory for themselves. He certainly never paid attention to the medal he was given, except that he enjoyed wearing it sometimes on his Air Force uniform and watching the other officers try to work out just what that ribbon meant.

However, someone up the command line must have felt a little guilty, because on the day the award was pinned on they also handed him a division coin.

It's a big brass thing, heavy and thick, and on the front is the name and symbol of the 8th Infantry Division enameled in blue and green. It's a bit battered now because Kirk carried it around with him when he was in the Air Force. He had generals tell him that they had never seen division level coins - it was a good conversation piece, and never failed to win the coin game.

In California he had stopped keeping it with him - there was only one friend who would understand the significance anyway - and the coin just sat in a drawer with some other bits and pieces. Then he went to Iraq, and my memory betrays me. For a long time I thought he must have taken it with him, and it had been lost along with all of his other personal belongings. Now I have a faint memory of him asking me to send it out to him, along with a few other things. I think I tried to find it and couldn't. I know I looked again when we were moving, but there was no sign of it that I could see.

So it was a little strange when, along with a Russian watch, a WWI German ring we found in the soil one day, and a few other pieces of memorabilia, the coin turned up in a plastic bin. I had been so sure it was gone, stolen with all of Kirk's other belongings, another thing missing in Iraq.

The other things were dusted off, more carefully protected, and stored again for the unseen time when we'll want them again. But the coin will stay out. It's on the bookshelf now, in incongruous company with a blue glass bottle and a piece of Russian cloisonnes work.

One piece of the past reclaimed.

An Excercise in 3's

Three things I thought I have but don't (anymore):

1 Bombay Company wooden shelf/plinth thing that hangs on the wall and used to hold a tasteful reproduction of a Greek vase.

1 set of 6 (does that still count as 1?) simple silver candle holders

1 can opener

Three things I have but had completely forgotten about:

1 brass unicorn, gift of grandfather at age of about 10 (actually gifted to entire family, but he placed me in charge of caring for it which obviously meant absconding with it when I married)

1 glass pumpkin (small), the only thing I could stand to buy from the annual Half Moon Bay pumpkin festival (except wine. We bought wine too)

1 small box shaped like two toads - best surprise of the move as I had forgotten all about this lovely thing and I ADORE it. Favorite thing in the house. Sorry kids.

Three things I thought were lost, stolen or strayed but which have turned up:

1 book on the history of the English language - a linguistic study (bedtime reading for children if they don't behave darnit)

1 high school diploma (see mom! I did gradumagate!)

AND - Kirk's division coin, his 8th ID division level coin that I thought had been lost in Iraq.

Very strange finding that coin. More tomorrow.

Point Me At the Boy Scout Sign Ups

So Child 3 and I had a very important talk this morning. Not that Very Important Talk - Child 3 could probably tell me a thing or two there. No, we had a preparedness talk.

It started with Child 3 letting me know that it had worked out something pretty essential. It had spent the night before mulling over the best way to escape from hostage-holding mobsters - you know, the variety that jam a handgun up to your throat and ripple their muscles suggestively. I thought about it for a moment and announced that I too had a solution. Child 3 wasn't interested. It just wanted to let me know what it had figured out. Its method used some lightning quick reflexes and a bit of head butting. Mine was much simpler.

I'd lick 'em.

Then we went on and solved other conundrums that might emerge. We are now prepared for the following. For those who haven't been as careful and might wish to know how to deal with life's little emergencies I provide our separate solutions:

1. Alligator attack:

Child 3 - punch it in the nose

Me - reach down its gullet and lift up the flappy valve thing Steve Irwin claimed was there so the critter starts to drown and then spits you out, probably making cat-with-hairball-noises

2. Killer bees:

Child 3 - explain to the bees that you live in a swamp and offer to give them a tour of the home (based on apocryphal book it claims to have read at some point)

Me - drive away really really fast. Or do that thing they do in the cartoons where you walk on the bottom of the lake with a reed to breath through. Of course, in the cartoons the bees are never fooled and they spell out rude messages or make themselves into arrows and things, but I don't think bees are as smart as they are in cartoons.

3. Stranded on top of disintegrating ferris wheel:

Child 3 - climb down superstructure, doing the fireman pole slide on the straight bits.

Me - use the mountaineering equipment you brought along to rig up a belay line and whiz down on a carabiner. (small argument about whether one would have this gear. My point being that having worked out the solution one would now never go on a ferris wheel without such items)

4. Falling off cliff:

Child 3 - dive headfirst so as to avoid lengthy and painful death

Me - glide gracefully down using your skydiving suit thing with the flaps on it. I know I've seen one in a movie somewhere. (same argument)

I think we covered all the basics. You're welcome.

Feeling Blue

We painted Child 3's room this weekend. It chose a nice blue, bright but not cold, and I set about training the available Children in the fine art of DIY painting.

Step 1 - purchase supplies. This is an art in itself. Not only must one negotiate the Mammoth Home Center, one must avoid the charms and allurements of the power tool section (mmmmmm.... sliding compound miter saw.... laser cut line... oooooh), forcibly pry all three children away from the color sample chips (NO Child 2 you may not paint your room a. black or b. red), resign oneself to handfuls of paint sample chips lying around for days AND remember to get all those little niggling extras like two rolls of masking tape, a drop cloth, and edging tools. Check. Success on all fronts. Also, does anyone want to buy slightly used paint sample cards? We have a few...

Step 2 - move furniture. Designate - that's the key. In other words, children are slaves and should be used for all heavy lifting and other manual labor. However, the adult in charge should stand around helpfully saying things like "mind the walls," and "didn't I tell you to mind the walls?"

Step 3 - tape. Here's where the adult in charge has to dance carefully between the perfectionist's need to get the masking tape EXACTLY in a straight line around every baseboard/window/door and the aforementioned slave status of children who really should be doing this tedious job as well. It's a difficult life I live.

Step 4 - drop cloth. Realize that going cheap and buying only one drop cloth (even though it's a tiny room) and also going lazy and not removing the large and bulky bed means it's going to be a harrowing morning as we shift the drop cloth c-a-r-e-fully from one side of the room to another. Inform the Children that dripping paint is one of the signs of the apocalypse, and war and/or pestilence will be visited upon them if they get any paint on the pristine surface of the drop cloth.

Step 5 - edge. Child 2 realizes at this point that messiness is going on and passing it by, and wanders casually into the confined space of the semi-drop-cloth-covered room. It is allowed to edge because it of all the children has inherited that perfectionism, but it should not be left alone as it also has a tendency to lie prone on the floor in the middle of everything and sigh heavily.

Step 6 - roll. With drill-sergeant precision one must coordinate the efforts of the edger (with rolly edgey tool thingy), secondary edger (with paintbrush for the corners) and roller. Special attention should be paid to height/reach, and the ability to notice when bright blue paint is dripping down one's arm. Assign child 2 to checking walls for bald patches, which it does happily and with great thoroughness, but remove it from duty after two walls because no one wants to go back and fill in at that point.

Step 7 - clean up. Adult in charge should do the primary clean up as Children seem to lack grasp of staining capabilities of paint on carpet, furniture and concrete. However allow Child 3 the delight of holding its thumb on the hose and creating a high-pressure spray for the roller. Point out that it is possible to do this and have most of the milky-paint water spray forwards rather than backwards at the hose holder and its closest relatives.

Step 8 - assess damage. Final count - three highly painted bodies (me, forehead and temple plus arms, Child 2 arms with marvelous coverage, Child 3... easier to point out the small bits still flesh toned), not one drip or mark on the carpet, and one freshly painted blue room.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

Familiar Faces

It's a strange sort of unpacking we're doing. Our other moves were simple, if irritating, affairs; we just loaded our belongings into boxes at one end, and a few days or weeks later unloaded them again. This time I hadn't even been the person packing everything - there were so many friends and family helping out that day that boxes were just filled, taped and hustled to the truck without my even seeing inside them.

Once we got to my parent's house those boxes lived a sad sort of life for a few months, mouldering in the garage while we pulled out only the few things we considered "needs." That meant that legos were quickly uncovered for one child, books for another. Movies and computer programs slowly emerged and were found shelf space as available. Everything else sat there, ignored by me and fretted over by my mother.

Eventually the dust and the possibility of flood forced a new plan - large plastic bins. It meant disinterring the box contents and at least trying to force a general sort-by-category on the contents. I knew it had to be done; I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

All of Kirk's things were there - we had even kept socks and t-shirts because, of course, he would need them when he got back. Arm-pit stained white t-shirts should not be emotional objects, but they smelled of him, and when I opened the first box and came across them I simply closed it up again and left.

There were his Russian things as well - uniforms of various types, the hideously impractical and uncomfortable tall leather boots, pot-metal awards pinned half-haphazardly onto a strange, thick swatch of cotton cloth.

Even the boxes of kitchen things had traps for the unwary - the Wildflecken stein we had bought together, the pottery bowls and mugs with moose and bear on them from Alaska. Every thing - a story.

In desperation my mother finally did it all, tossing everything into bins based on her best guess as to what it was. And there things stayed - about 12 large blue bins containing everything we owned - our mutual past.

Now, in our new house the kids and I have been doing archaeological work on those bins, slowly working our way through. We haven't seen much of this stuff for over three years, and I find I have no expectations about what will emerge. I recognize it all, or almost all, I just haven't thought about these things for so long that they no longer feel like mine.

There are the two crystal "snow ball" candle holders from Germany, the chipped set of mixed cappuccino cups and saucers from Wechtesbach which the kids used for tea-parties when they were small. There is a small Greek vase with the Death of Achilles on it, and two plaster bas reliefs - St Cecilia and a Gryphon. There are antique pictures we picked up at flea markets, and a series of photographs of the cliff-side beach near our house in California framed in plain black frames.

We bought these things because we loved them, and because they were powerful reminders of things we did, places we lived - our story in objects. Maybe it's because that story-line was broken, but I do feel removed from them all. Our things are only acquaintances now, no longer friends.

Moving - California

The move from California was... difficult. Partly because I was still desperately hoping it wouldn't have to happen, that Kirk would be found, that he could come back to our home. I did set a deadline though, and my parents planned to drive out to the coast about a month after Kirk went missing.

I sorted through things, packed boxes, and started trying to re-paint the living room and hall we had only painted together two months before. We had finally decided that we would stay put in California for a while, so we should try to make this house (a house I didn't particularly like) feel like home. Painting it was our way of marking it as ours. Now I had to try and undo it. I was trying to work hard at it every day, but somehow couldn't seem to get everything done as I should.

Only a few people knew what was happening - Kirk's best friend in California, his friend and former colleague from the counter-terrorist days, my family, his family. There was so little I could do, keeping the secret was the only way I could think of helping Kirk, of trying to keep him safe. If the story got out inevitably his background would be discovered as well, and if he were being held by someone then his past as a spy, and as a counter-terrorist expert with high clearance knowledge, would surely endanger him. So, after the first week, the kids went back to school, we kept going to soccer practices and games; we went through all the motions of life as normal.

And then the story broke. An article was written by a British reporter who had met Kirk once or twice in Iraq. It had his name, it gave the same details I had heard from the army investigators, and it also included our home town. Someone called to warn me I think, but I can't remember who now. I just remember feeling as though I had been punched - winded.

Within an hour of reading that article on-line, the doorbell rang. The guy was young - one of those people who look like they're about 12 or so, and he asked if I was My Name. Then he asked me about the story, and it was so quick - I hadn't imagined anyone would find me so soon. I had not begun to think about how I should respond, so I just said "no comment." And by the smug, satisfied smile that spread over his face as he turned away I knew that I had confirmed the whole thing. He spent the rest of the morning knocking on all my neighbor's doors. That was the day before my parents were due to come into town.

So when we moved, we didn't have a week to quietly sort and pack all of our things. Instead, our amazing friends, family and neighbors came over and worked all day while reporters and photographers camped outside the house and ambushed everyone who went in or out. They tried to follow my children down the street when they were going to another house to get away from the madness. They shoved business cards into people's hands and insisted they be carried in to me. They left dozens of phone messages on the telephone until in desperation I unplugged it. One of them even tried to carry away an old computer that had been placed out on the street for the trash. A friend took it in his truck instead, wiped the drive with a powerful magnet, and drove it out to the dump himself.

There was no time to organize anything, or make reasoned decisions about things. The majority of our furniture was simply given away. The only things I cared about were keeping as much of the kid's belongings as possible; and throwing away nothing of Kirk's. People kindly pointed out that we might sometime want kitchen things again, and I nodded and agreed to everything they said.

The reporters stayed around all day, only leaving in twos or threes to follow cars that left the drive. One friend chased a van away, then followed it down the highway, and when it was clearly planning on circling back pulled up next to it and gave the driver a full and explosive piece of her mind. "We're just doing our job," he said. "This is a huge story." I knew that - it wasn't their fault that doing their job felt like they were killing my husband.

We had planned to leave the next day, but I was so distressed I couldn't face staying in the house one more night. We spirited the kids away to one friend's house, mixing them in with her children and driving around the block. We parked the moving truck there as well because it could be hidden off the street behind a high gate. My parents and I went to Kirk's best friend's house for dinner; a few hours of peace where we could talk quietly, and admire their baby daughter. Then we spent the night with yet another dear friend who took us, and my large and messy dog in and loved and supported us without a thought.

I'll never be able to repay all of the people who helped us that awful day. But I think of them constantly, and am always aware of how generous and loving people can be.

It helps to remember that.

Life in Statistics - Moving

I got curious after I had done my quick count-on-the fingers. Even though I knew it was a rough count, and probably not accurate since I'm a bit lazy, I still have told at least four people this past week that this latest was our 18th move. So now I have to actually do a real count, and face up to the fact that I have been counting move-across-the-city moves as well as move-across-the-country moves and I feel vaguely guilty about that. If you have to box up and shift all your stuff doesn't it still count? Or do you need the additional bother of a multi-state drive or a long and harassing plane ride?

So, I present the Opera of Life in 18 (or so) Move[ments]

1. New Mexico to California - with all our worldly goods (mostly brand new wedding presents including about 5 crock pots) crammed into a VW bus. Kirk had chosen the apartment without my ever seeing it, so we ended our two day drive in Monterey in a one-room bedroom-cum-everything-else that barely contained us much less the five crock pots. Which led, only a month or so later to:

2. Monterey to Pacific Grove 2 - This one had two whole bedrooms with real doors and was furnished almost entirely with founds and cast-offs. Yes indeed Kirk did come home in utter joy and announce that someone had actually left a "perfectly good" mattress by the side of the road! Imagine! Our first child was born while we lived here, and one of my main memories is rocking it while Kirk meticulously polished his boots. Two repetitive motions; trying to keep sane.

3. Pacific Grove to San Angelo, TX - Our friends from Pacific Grove found our apartment for us, right next door to them. It was Texas in the summer, and since I was no longer working we couldn't afford to run the air-conditioner. In the evenings when Kirk came home from intel school we would put Child 1 in a stroller and go swim in the deserted apartment pool. When we came back we would have to spray down the sheets repeatedly with water to get the bed cool enough to sleep in.

4. San Angelo to sort of New Mexico kind of - Kirk had one more school to go to (and I don't remember at all what it was - some kind of radio school maybe?)in Boston, and as it was only for a few weeks it made sense for me to go back to New Mexico for the duration and wait until he was settled in his final assignment.

5. New Mexico to Wildflecken - Our first Germany apartment was the top floor of a white-stucco house (tells you nothing - every house in that town was white stucco with red tile roof). The town's name was Sandberg, and it totaled about 200 people, most of them retired. The hausfraus had nothing to do but watch each other and make sure everyone was tidying their house properly and on the right day. Until we arrived that is - then they spent most of their time talking about how I didn't hang my bedding out the window on Wednesday (or was it Thursday?). The father of our landlord had a crooked back and walked with two sticks - a gift from the Russians in WWII. He loved Kirk because Kirk was spying on the Soviets.

6. Sandberg to Sandberg - The second Germany apartment. This one was over a cow-barn, on a farm. The actual town was a mile down the road. The landlady was gruff and angry and disliked us because we didn't buy her cheap cigarettes from the BX. At least not very often.

7. Sandberg to... can't remember the town! Block away from the Rhine - The only time we lived in government housing. It was my favorite of the places we lived, but I remember it mostly because of Kirk's unhappiness as he tried to get out of the army.

8. Germany to New Mexico - back to live with my long-suffering parents. We had two small children (aged 3 and 1) and I was pregnant.

9. New Mexico to New Mexico2 - Kirk's father signed over a house to all of his children, allowing us to move out of my parent's to everyone's relief. We didn't have to pay rent, but until Kirk got his commission we were still desperately poor. But it was our own (sort of), the closest we have ever been to actual home ownership.

10. New Mexico to New Mexico3 - Back to the parents (I have mentioned many, many times of the amazing saintliness of my family) while I finished my last semester of college and Kirk went on to Texas for asymmetric warfare intelligence training.

11. New Mexico to San Angelo - We spent four months here. Kirk had chosen a house that was close enough to base for him to bicycle in, and it was horrible. We could run the air conditioner at last, but it was so awfully hot the kids couldn't play outside for more than a few minutes before they would droop in to lie pathetically on the furniture and sigh.

12. San Angelo to Anchorage - Our first Alaska house, remarkable for its emerald green carpets and proximity to the school.

13. Anchorage to Eagle River - Second Alaska house. I loved this house, although there were things about it that were very odd (drop panel light fixture thingy in the kitchen that I never could work out what it was for). This was the house we brought Sophie the dog home to, the house where Child 2 broke its arm, the house where the kids for the first time had dozens of friends to play with, and it was safe enough that they could run around everywhere and I didn't worry. Unfortunately, the owner decided to sell which led to:

14 Eagle River to Eagle River - Final Alaska house. It brought Child 1 to within a block or two of its absolute soul-mate best friend. Also there was a balcony with a view of the Chugach mountains. I remember lying on the couch in dark of night, watching the aurora out the window and talking to Kirk on the phone from Italy where he was planning bombing targets in Kosovo.

15 Eagle River to Newport News, VA - Biggest and most impressive house we ever lived in. We never did get truly settled though. This was where Kirk slept no more than four hours a day sometimes, and we went on long mountain biking trips every weekend while he tried to forget about blast radii, bio-weapons, and terrorist targets.

16. Newport News to Moss Beach, CA - We lived in this house longer than we had lived anywhere else - a full three years. There are only two places that really have felt like home - Alaska, and California.

17. Moss Beach to New Mexico - The move we made when Kirk went missing. I do have a post about that running around in my head. Probably later this week.

18 - New Mexico to New Mexico - This move.

Looks like I can count after all. Eighteen moves. And we still don't feel like we're home. But we're together - and for now, that's home enough.

Alan Johnston - Video

A video of Alan Johnston has been released, the first since his capture, and can be seen on the BBC site here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6710863.stm

Of course there's no knowing how old the video is, but it's encouraging to see it. Hopefully this will help keep Alan's story in people's minds.

Moving - vignette

I went with my father to pick up the moving van from the U-Haul place. They had been very nice, calling me twice, once to confirm, once to remind me that indeed I had reserved a truck for the day and I would be expected to bring it back.

When we showed up, the woman at the counter surprised me by affectionately referring to the truck as "she." I hadn't really thought about a gender for a 14 foot orange-and-white behemoth, but throughout the conversation "she" was waiting for us right out the door and "she" had been started up just that morning.

She was also apparently PMSing because she had an enormous appetite both for boxes and bins (which she swallowed without complaint although I had that inevitable sense of dread that the truck wasn't nearly big enough for all of our stuff), and for gas as well. She happily guzzled five gallons in about ten miles. She also seemed a little cranky, wasn't exactly responsive to persuasion, and complained a bit about the way she was fitting into the driveway.

I have to say that I returned her without much regret.

Moving - Sad Truths

Sad Truth #1:

The amount of stuff one thinks one has is inversely proportional to the amount of stuff one actually owns.

Sad Truth #2:

The approximate value of the stuff one has valiantly moved is inversely proportional to the number of packs/unpacks one has performed on one's stuff.

Sad Truth #3:

The total weight of said stuff is inversely proportional to the total in Sad Truth #2, and will inevitably increase exponentially with each additional shift ie stuff --> moving van --> temporary situation in new house --> unpacking venue --> final disposition.

Sad Truth #4:

No one is going to want to admire one's moving bruises nearly enough, nor will they be interested in hearing more than once that you can't remember how on earth you got it, but isn't it a fantastic shade of purple? And doesn't this one on the back of my calf sort of resemble a young Fidel Castro?

Sad Truth Subsection A Which is Just a General Sad Truth and Not Moving Related:

As a history major I am probably completely misusing the term "inversely proportional" but it makes me feel pleasantly intelligent so I'm leaving it in there. Even though my pleasant feeling of intelligence is probably exposing my ignorance. Dangit. That's probably inversely proportional in some way too.

Character Analysis - the Moving Test

So I'm moving. Again. And you would think that after all these moves (this is the... hold on while I add things up on my fingers... 18th move) I would have learned the fine art of Not Keeping Stuff. I have not.

I suppose the sort of Stuff one accumulates is a direct window into your psyche (sort of like the snail death thing, but with less mucus). I would like to say that I am the sort of person who accumulates small objects d'art, very tasteful and extremely expensive. Maybe I am that kind of person, I've just never had the budget to find out. But right now I cannot escape the sad truth (because the evidence is all too clear in front of me) that I am the sort of person who ends up with:

Boxes and boxes of books. Even after I've gotten rid of 12 boxes in the last move, there are still boxes more. I blame the family tradition for this one.

Lots of office supplies. Harks back to shopping for school supplies and those boxes of 64 sharp pristine crayons. I was never allowed to get the 64 crayon box, but as an adult I realize (looking at my several dozen unused gel pens) that I would not have been able to bear spoiling their crayonny perfection and they would never have been taken out of the box anyway. But I would have liked to look at them.

Thousands of identical white socks. Because I have three kids who never EVER remember to put both socks in the dirty clothes hamper I therefore refuse to buy them anything that requires matching. I used to tell Kirk that when we made our fortune I was going to hire a sock boy named Hans whose entire purpose in life was going to be washing and folding socks.

So that's the sum total of my worldly goods. But at least if the world comes to an end tomorrow we'll all have warm feet, something with which to write a touching final message, and a darn good book to read.

Character Analysis - the Gastropod Test

So I was talking to the Superior Aunt, and after she had firmly told me what I would not be allowed to write about here (but it was pretty funny - sorry you're going to miss it), we got to talking about snails; you know, as you do. You see, we've been having this strange, probably global-warmingly-ominous weather thing happening here, it's called rain. It's not Seattle type rain mind you, but it does manage to fall from the sky and land on the ground which is not always something you can count on in this area.

There have been two noticeable results. One is that some of the stunted, down-trodden, depressed looking - well, I suppose plants is the closest term - have actually had the courage to throw out a leaf or two here and there, with the result that the normally cat-box tinted landscape has, now and then, a hint of green. This is very odd.

The other thing is the snails. They must have been dormant for years, just waiting for this bizarre set of circumstances; now they're everywhere.

Which is why we began discussing our methods of snail destruction, and I realized this was better than a quick trip to the psychoanalyst for a down and dirty look into your inner-most soul. Take the three women in our family for example.

One of us picks up the snails, moves them to a hard surface, apologizes profusely, and stamps them into crunchy wodges of snail boogers.

Another one picks up the snails and tosses them into the road, wincing when they land with a loud crack, feeling guilty for the relatively lengthy death, but being far too chicken to actually stomp on them and feel the crackle of the shell.

The last one does the road toss, but claims she enjoys the sight of the crippled, mucusy little vermin trying valiantly to slither back across the pavement to the relative paradise of her garden.

I won't tell you which of us is which.

But you won't find me apologizing to no gastropods any time soon.

Big Brother is Watching. He's Just a Little Nearsighted

I have friends who are extremely concerned about the way personal information is so accessible. One managed to snaffle a grocery store rebate card without actually filling out the form because she didn't want her shopping habits to be part of the Safeway Conspiracy to Target Market. Granted, it was fun going with her to the store and watching the clerk's little face go all confused when they bleeped the card through and tried to give her a personal greeting. "Here you go Mssuzzz.... ermmmmmm havvaniceday."

For those who are convinced that organizations everywhere are keeping meticulous records of everything about us, I offer this slightly less than encouraging piece of consolation. Yes, they certainly are trying - but they aren't very good at it.

Case in point - today's mail which contained a nice letter from the good people at MOAA (Military Officers Association of America). It even had a real genuine stamp on rather than the computer salad in the corner. And it was addressed to:

Kirk von Ackermann
Col USAF Ret.

Random Sightings

Hari Krishna guy has been gone for a while now. I didn't notice when he left, but eventually I did recognize that the plaintive if highly repetitive strains of "Krishna krishnaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" had stopped. Maybe he's gone to Peru in a sort of street-musician exchange or something.

However, to replace him I now have yoga-master-cab-driver. He's always parked in front of the same apartment building early in the morning. The first week or so he was wandering aimlessly, apparently waiting for his fare to wake up. The next week he had started doing some simple side stretches. I didn't recognize those as intentional exercise at first because there's a homeless guy in the nearby park who does nearly the same thing and is either doing angry gesticulations at a faceless god, or is helping the sun rise. Or he's just really drunk and arm-waving is part of his bob-and-weave thing.

But yoga-master-cab-driver didn't stop with arm-waving. Last week he had moved on to deep knee bends, which I don't really mind because he doesn't wear the saggy jeans/boxer short combination that makes such things very unpleasant from the back. In fact I smiled at him in a friendly way as I went by, and decided not to tell him that deep knee bends are really tough on the joints at his age.

He must be taking some of those secret Costco bone supplement things though, because on Monday he was actually touching his forehead to his knees, and this morning he had one leg propped up on the roof of his cab - the roof mind you, not the hood - and was making a darn good grab for his toes.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this, but I'm starting to wonder if there is a plan for a new reality show based on quirky but flexible cab drivers of the American Southwest. Nah... that sounds about as fascinating as an hour long program on Bingo...

News of the World

Today's favorite news quote - from a Yahoo article about dolphin dialects:

"The Shannon Dolphin and Wildlife Foundation (SDWF) has been studying a group of up to 120 bottle-nose dolphins in the River Shannon using vocalisations collected on a computer in a cow shed near Carrigaholt, County Clare."

The alliteration in that last phrase is breathtaking.

But now I have an unshakable belief that the dolphins in Ireland are addicted to wireless and use remote cow-sheds to check email and upload files. And you just know which e-community site they'll use... Twitter, what else?

It's Monday, All Day

I had to work Saturday, because my job about-which-I-shall-not-blog has a distinct seasonality and one of the more important seasonal bits was that weekend. Normally I'm not tagged to go to these things, being a virtual person and all that, but it was barrel scraping time so off I went. I did scare them by showing up in a red t-shirt and jeans, but after doing my part of the non-digital manual labor I nipped up and changed so as not to let down the side. I don't think it was necessary for quite so many people to comment (with surprise and amazement) that I "clean up really well!"

The trouble with working Saturday is it makes Monday come along too quickly, and when it does arrive it feels off somehow, all day long. I feel a little like one of the Children who, having borrowed my boots, had been grumbling for hours about how they didn't feel quite right, and then suddenly announced "oh! I have them on the wrong feet!"

I think I have my Monday on the wrong feet.

Alan Johnston Wins Journalism Award

"BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, who was abducted in Gaza nearly two months ago, has won a major journalism prize at a London awards ceremony.

He was named broadcast journalist of the year by the London Press Club for his work reporting from the Gaza Strip."

Read the article on BBC News here.

Susie Dow - Three Part Article Now Online

Susie Dow (author of the Missing Man blog linked at right) has completed her three-part article about the Defense Base Act. You can read the entire article online:

"Part I traces how the lack of adequate insurance coverage can impact famillies.

Part II concentrates on how the appropriate Defense Base Act contract clauses that could have made a difference went "missing in action."

Part III focuses on the lack of information and access to low cost coverage for contractors based overseas."

Alan Johnston - Gaza Strip Article

There is an article about the effect of the Alan Johnston kidnapping in the Gaza Strip on BBC news.

Also, Stuart Hughes, a colleague of Alan Johnston's has made a video blog which you can see on his blog here.

Out of Context

Driving home from work today I was behind a slightly battered white truck with a camper shell on the back and one of those oval black and white stickers.

I'm sure you've seen them. We encountered them first in Europe where a two-letter abbreviation announced to the world what country you were from. I think it was to help people sneer at the right cars - terribly embarrassing if you miss out on a Belgian because he wasn't properly tagged.

I didn't pay attention to them again until California where they sprouted on cars everywhere, announcing people were from HMB or SJ or SF. Our town was too small to support its own sticker, so one enterprising neighbor snipped the H off the HMB and defiantly stuck it on his Eddie Bauer edition SUV (with gold detailing and fawn leather seats).

This one was different though - it didn't announce a place, it shouted out a way of life, and took me right back to Alaska.

Fishing for salmon is not a solo effort. Even if you don't know a soul around you, you're part of a close knit community. There are rules, and regulations - social mores if you like. I had to hear three indignant fishermen tell the same story of the idiot from the lower 48 who not only cast over other people's lines and tangled their gear, but hauled in the mess, cut the lines and then pocketed the tackle.

There is one thing you can be sure of though (unless you're the tackle thief). If you do hook a salmon, anyone worth their salt as an Alaskan will smoothly and ably help you bring that fish in. You just have to know the magic words - usually shouted triumphantly if slightly breathlessly.

Fish On.

I don't know where that truck was going, but I'm pretty sure I wanted to go there too.

Alan Johnston update

There is further news on Alan Johnston, the missing BBC correspondent. According to Palestinian authorities, he is alive and they "know what they have to do" to secure his release.

You can read the full article here.

More of Alan's story can be found by following the link on the right of this page.

Rolling Stone article - thoughts Part 3

So... basically I was expecting the article to mention Kirk, but focus on Ryan. I did not expect anything new; I did not expect what was written.

I'm not going deeply into the details, but basically the problem is that for three years I had been trying to accept that I would never know what really happened, that I would never know whether Kirk was really alive or dead. After the CID briefing, there were still many things that I did not know, but some at least that I did; including why Kirk died.

The article didn't exactly shatter that idea, but it cast things that had been black and white into shades of grey again.

Now, I suppose I have once more accepted that at the moment anyway, and probably forever, I don't really know. I don't know who was involved, I don't know who was to blame. I'm not sure how I feel about that. At the moment - mostly numb.

There is a great deal that doesn't make sense, but as always there is very little I can do about it. What we do is collect as much information as we can, try to relate it with what we know about Kirk and then...

... wait.

Maybe someday we will know more.

Rolling Stone Article - thoughts Part 2

So... the interview itself. It took a while to set it up actually. Originally Dan Halpern was going to come out here and talk to me in person. I have the impression that he did go to Turkey... or maybe Russia... or something, and talked to several of the other people face to face. I'm pretty sure he met with Greg Manelick, and probably the Ultra Service employee mentioned in the article. By that time I think he knew already that he wanted to spend more time on the Manelick story, and so coming out here was probably not really justified.

Finally he just called, and we talked for several hours over two evenings. It mostly ended up being a verbal version of this blog really... I don't know if he learned anything new; I did probably tell him more about what happened after Kirk went missing.

It's funny, I can't really remember much about the interview; it did seem to go fairly quickly.

It took months after that for the article to come out. By that time we had met with the CID (and I had let Daniel know what they said), and I really thought maybe the magazine had decided not to publish at all. Finally Dan contacted me and asked if I could provide some pictures. At the same time he let me know that the article would not include much about Kirk and his background; he said he was sorry, that he had fought for it, but the editors had the final say.

I did fish out a few pictures. And I told him I didn't mind about the story being cut. I assumed that Kirk would hardly be mentioned, which made sense to me since it was no longer a mystery.

Final thoughts tomorrow.

Rolling Stone Article - Thoughts part 1

It's taken a while to post this, partly because it took a long time to sort out my thoughts, partly because I knew it was likely to be a horribly wordy post. In fact, I think it's best to split it up into smaller, hopefully more digestible bits.

First - why I did the article.

My friends and family know how vehement I was about keeping the story secret at first. There was a logical reason for it - although I know there was also a strong, and more complicated personal reason as well - I was trying to keep Kirk safe. Even after months, even when it had become less and less likely that Kirk was alive, I still refused to let the story out. It was a means of control of course, and it made things very difficult for my family.

The problem was that after December 2003 it wasn't just our story any longer; it was now also Ryan Manelick's story. The Manelick's journey was a far different one than ours because of course they knew Ryan had been killed. They didn't know who, or why, but they did know how.

Since the two stories were linked, my stubbornness about publicity affected them as well. Ryan's father, who was working out of the country, was making enormous efforts to investigate Ryan's death, and of course this includes trying to get the press involved so people would know and care about the situation. Although he was always polite, I knew he was, at times, tremendously frustrated.

So when a friend contacted a reporter for Time Magazine, I agreed to be interviewed and even have a photographer come. This was a huge thing for me. It meant I had to tell my boss the story - before this only one person at work had known (and she knew only because she asked so many questions about my life I had to tell her or start actively lying). I had to loosen my grip on what had happened and admit that it was part of more than just my small family. It was utterly terrifying; I had no idea whether the story would be picked up and become a huge thing or not. Our experience with the media when Kirk's story first broke had left me almost unbelievably sensitive. I was relieved when nothing happened at all.

It didn't resolve anything though. It didn't help Ryan's family, it didn't get the spotlight on the situation that they, and many of Kirk's friends, wanted. I realized how selfish I was being, and I felt extremely ashamed. So when Daniel Halpern sent me an email about doing an article for Rolling Stone, I decided I should go ahead and do it.

I did write to the CID and let them know what I had decided. To my surprise, they said they wished I hadn't agreed. They knew it was my decision, but they weren't happy about it. It made me uncertain about the choice, but I had already given my word. I think some of Kirk's friends were nervous as well, about how the story would be portrayed, about the bias that might be brought, or the sub-voca hints that might be laid. These are people I love and respect; their concern added to my discomfort and fear.

More tomorrow.

Update

New from the BBC site -

Missing BBC reporter Alan Johnston is still alive, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says.

Alan Johnston

There is still no news on missing BBC reporter Alan Johnston. A previously unknown organization claimed several days ago that they had killed him, but no confirmation or further information has been received.

I have added an image and link to the sidebar. Please follow the link, learn about Alan's situation, and spread the word.

I know, at least as much as I can, what his family is going through right now. I urge you to read his story, and get involved if you can. If you have a website or blog, please consider adding the image to your own site. This page explains how.

Stories for Sale

This is a slight side-step from talking about the Rolling Stone article, but it does fit a little.

Right now there's a bit of an uproar in England, a minor one maybe, because the sailors who were seized and then released by Iran have sold their stories to the media. Naturally the one female sailor has gotten the most press, and possibly the highest price, but she's not the only one who had something to tell. I'm not sure if the outrage is because the stories were sold at all, or because there was some allegation that the government was involved in the sale somehow.

Then there was another article on the BBC news website that had a quote from a newspaper editor, a man who had paid for stories throughout his career. There should, he said, be an end to this sort of thing. People should not sell their stories at all. Since this is a guy who made his living profiting from the sale of other people's stories I find this just a little hypocritical.

I'm not sure how I feel about the rest of it though, about the sailors selling their stories. I'm not entirely clear about why there is a problem with them making some money out of what must have been an horrific and terrifying experience. I also don't quite see how this differs from getting a book deal. Or is there some idea that a book deal at least entails some effort, even if it's just talking at length to a ghost writer? Of course, I live in a country where far more money is paid out for far less pain and suffering thanks to our litigious obsessions; maybe if this had happened to Americans there would not be the same righteous indignation.

There was an experiment done somewhere that involved offering people money under several carefully constructed deals. The subject was told that there were several people who would be given money, and the deals involved various distributions of the cash. Most people, it turned out, would refuse a deal that gave them a sum of money (cash we're talking, money they wouldn't otherwise get) if it seemed someone else would profit more than they would. In other words, they'd rather give up something themselves than see someone else do better.

Maybe it's like what I was told about crabs. You can keep a bunch of crabs in a bucket without trouble, or so they said, because as soon as one gets close to clambering out, the others will reach up and drag it back down. It's probably apocryphal, and even if not I doubt the crabs are thinking beyond instinctive scrabbling for any escape. Still, there are moments of pessimism when it seems all too familiar.

When Kirk first went missing I went to every length to keep the story out of the press. I thought I had to; if his story was told it could endanger his life. Of course I was aware that things might be easier for us if enough interest was raised, but there was never any question of doing that.

Since then there have been three articles - a short one in Time, the Rolling Stone article, and Susie Dow's three-part article online. I agreed to those articles for various reasons; none of them were for money. But don't give me credit for some moral integrity - I certainly did not ask to be paid, but nothing was offered either.

Still, I have no problem with those young sailors making some money from their horrific experience. I know it won't erase those memories, or solve the problems they now face. But I do hope they get some happiness out of it, even if it's short lived. There are enough crabs down here at the bottom of the bucket. I hope they make it out.

Alan Johnston

Please take a moment to read the story of Alan Johnston, a BBC reporter who was kidnapped in the Gaza Strip on March 12th. (Thanks to Stuart Hughes from his blog Beyond Northern Iraq for the image and links)

The image above is a billboard which has been erected in central London, to draw attention to the situation.

Read the BBC article written on the three-week mark

In particular, read the poignant letter written to Alan by his family.

What About the Article

Someone asked below about the Rolling Stone article. Good question. I'm not quite sure how to answer it in fact. I've been mulling it over, and I still haven't worked out what to say. In the meantime, for those interested, the text of the article is here.

You might also be interested in the first of a three-part article about the Defense Base Act written by Susie Dow and published by ePluribus Media. Iraq, Contingency Contracting and the Defense Base Act.

I'll be back to comment on the RS article.

up in the air

I like airports. I like the whole idea of that sort of extension of reality. If someone asks if you've been to Grand Rapids, and you've only been to the airport you don't answer yes (well, unless you're hoping to bump up the resume of places you've been) because you've only been to that halfway place, the purgatory of travelers. I know you're supposed to whine about layovers, but I sort of like sitting in a place where you aren't really anywhere, and (after a cursory look around to ensure that all the reasonable outlets are taken) there's nothing more pressing to do than read a book for an hour or two.

However. Things I've recently experienced while flying that might not be so charming:

1. Woman with amazingly juicy cough - the sort that makes me see lovely animations of pink and purple viruses spiraling out of her mouth and dancing around the cabin and up my nose.

1 a. Same woman saying inexplicably to me that her husband refuses to be seen carrying THIS bag - then holding up THIS bag which is filled with what looks like cedar chips and Kleenex (tm). I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what horrible disease involved cedar chips and coughing. If you know, please email because I'm pretty sure I caught it.

2. It's a cliche - but babies. I had them, I had three of them. I traveled with them and so I feel I can complain legitimately when other people's infants howl for THREE DAMN HOURS with that sort of whiny, hiccuppy waa, waa, waa that starts to make your ears bleed after five minutes. Yes, it's petty. Yes, I know the parents probably felt more horrible than I. Yes, I almost certainly was lucky and not skillful in having children that never once cried on a plane. Still, parenthood should come with privileges and I'm claiming this one. Besides, I had been up since 5 am.

3. Smelly people. Having spent hours in three commuter sized planes in the last week I personally believe smelly people should have to be checked - you know, like oversized carry-on. There could just be a basic announcement at the start of boarding: "Those of you who have not opted to shower in the last 24 hours, or who have not yet been introduced to the wonder of deodorants will be issued a green tag at the aircraft door. Your traveling companions can claim you on deplaning."

Oh. And deplaning just sounds like it should come with a moisturizer.

Timing It

Why doesn't the world stand still? It should, I honestly believe it should. In fact, I believe it so deeply that I sort of assume it does stand still when I do something rash like go out of town or something* and so I'm always shocked at the emails and other little things that pile up while I'm away. So... yeah, I'm honestly getting back to you, I promise!

I know, what about just having the electronic world stand still, at least when I'm not able to easily access all those vital little internetty things?

*And as a totally unrelated side-note, the concept of time-zones? Very bad. I would like to have a private, brass-knuckle related moment with the time-zone genius. Sure, my way means that the lucky bastards on the coasts would have to cope with slightly bizarre sunrises and sunsets, but the positive thing (and I don't think this can be overstated) is that I would not be sitting here having gotten up at 5 a.m. (which is really 3 a.m. here, only it was there then if you know what I mean) completely exhausted but not able to go to sleep. I think I blame Ben Franklin. But that's just because I had a history prof who trained me to blame Ben Franklin for everything. I'll be fine. Just don't wake me up before 9... or is that 7? Maybe 11...