"I care," Calliope says to me, and I fall in love with her all over again. "I just don't have the lingo." We're having lunch in what I have just learned is a vegetarian hash-joint, a bistro in which you can order breakfast for lunch. It is Iowa City, a crunchy college town, and about as urban and urbane as you can get in Iowa. Anyplace else in the state, bacon would be mandatory.
I am having some sort of mystical-and-many-armed mac-and-cheese, one dusted with a hot curry powder or other Indian spice. In the glow of a slow-burning heat, I am become death to all other forms of comfort food. I am ruined, subsequently destined to discard at home pot after pot of failed experiments of duplication.
Callie is having some sort of sandwich that involves brie. Not exactly a standard sandwich cheese, I suppose, but I'm normally a Kraft slice kind of guy myself.
Callie's former college roommate Urania--call her "Rainey," although she'll probably hate that--is having the waffles. Blond and lithe and single, Rainey is a doctor of pharmacy and the world-traveler among us. She has visited places like the Galapagos, Vienna, and India, for no other reasons than that they exist.
I have known Rainey since junior high school. In some ways, she has known me longer than I have known myself. Ask Rainey to critique any of my former romantic relationships--any of those before I met and married Household-6, of course--and she'll give you a surgically succinct piece of my mind.
Callie is an assistant professor of English at a nearby liberal arts college. Back in the high-school day, she and I dated for awhile. At the same time, I was dating Thalia, a gleeful and sarcastic short-haired girl who would eventually come to share an Iowa City apartment with Callie and Rainey.
Confused? So was I.
As a younger man, I would've called them the Three Furies, but now they're probably like the Three Graces--or, even better, the Three Muses. Our individual and collective history together gives them surprising insights--and implicit permission to share them without concerns about hurt feelings. Getting together with them now is like a high-school reunion, a talking cure, and a motivational life-coaching seminar wrapped into one package.
I should note that, in terms of love, Greeks were like Eskimos are allegedly with snow, in that they have 17 or 31 or a similarly ungodly number of flavors of love. I'd have to say that, after more than two decades of dating and not dating, talking and not talking, my affection for these three is equal parts agape and philia: holding each other in high esteem; virtuous, familiar, loyal.
Still, what do I know--it's all Greek to me.
"I care," Callie says to me, her long brown hair framing her wide, open face. "I just don't have the lingo."
She is talking about the military, and my half-life in it. And, without knowing it, she has just confirmed for me that I need to figure out a way to resolve my various identities--citizen, soldier, friend, husband, father--into one.
I have spent years not talking about military stuff with my civilian friends and business colleagues, just as I have avoided talking about civilian stuff with my military buddies. I have a foot in each door, a boot in each camp. I love my crunchy, Earth-hugging, poetry-reading, vegetarian-waffle eating friends. I love my gun-toting, FOX-news-watching, conspiracy-theory consuming friends.
They don't understand each other, but I think maybe I understand them. Maybe I can find the words. Maybe I can help translate.
03 February 2010
02 February 2010
Why I Love Army Life
Sherpa realizes he hasn't been bringing the funny much recently. Instead, he's been heartfelt and reflective. I cannot allow this to continue.
So, in celebration of being back on "indefinite temporary full-time stateside military duty" as of yesterday, I thought I'd share with you some of My Favorite Things about Army Life:
- You never have to dither over what to wear in the morning.
- There is always coffee. Not necessarily good coffee, but there is coffee. Coffee that you can chew.
- Provided you don't spill coffee on yourself, the daily maintenance of the digital sage-green-and-tan Army Combat Uniform (ACU) is pretty minimal--there's no more spit-shining your boots anymore, or pressing and starching your uniforms. Of course, you do have to wash the ACU in Woolite, but that's weekly maintenance, not daily.
- Gore-Tex desert boots are nice and toasty, if not exactly slip-resistant.
- The Army cattle-prods you into doing regular physical training (PT), but also gives you the time during your duty day in which to do it.
- People are generally friendly, and focused on solving problems, rather than on creating them. I cannot say this of every place I have ever worked.
- You have regular access to the Reserve Component Automation Systems (RCAS, and pronounced "ar-kaz"). This is the computer network that all the full-time National Guard personnel use. Now, when a full-timer says "well, the file is available on the RCAS," you can actually get that file. The Great Firewall of China is nothing compared to how the Army has successfully secured information access away from the traditional "M-day" Joes-at-home. I'll probably expound on that theme later, but for now, let's just say that it's like upgrading from dial-up to cable-modem, access-wise.
- You get to keep a knife or multipurpose tool on your person at all times. And size matters.
- Everyone knows your name, because you're wearing it.
So, in celebration of being back on "indefinite temporary full-time stateside military duty" as of yesterday, I thought I'd share with you some of My Favorite Things about Army Life:
- You never have to dither over what to wear in the morning.
- There is always coffee. Not necessarily good coffee, but there is coffee. Coffee that you can chew.
- Provided you don't spill coffee on yourself, the daily maintenance of the digital sage-green-and-tan Army Combat Uniform (ACU) is pretty minimal--there's no more spit-shining your boots anymore, or pressing and starching your uniforms. Of course, you do have to wash the ACU in Woolite, but that's weekly maintenance, not daily.
- Gore-Tex desert boots are nice and toasty, if not exactly slip-resistant.
- The Army cattle-prods you into doing regular physical training (PT), but also gives you the time during your duty day in which to do it.
- People are generally friendly, and focused on solving problems, rather than on creating them. I cannot say this of every place I have ever worked.
- You have regular access to the Reserve Component Automation Systems (RCAS, and pronounced "ar-kaz"). This is the computer network that all the full-time National Guard personnel use. Now, when a full-timer says "well, the file is available on the RCAS," you can actually get that file. The Great Firewall of China is nothing compared to how the Army has successfully secured information access away from the traditional "M-day" Joes-at-home. I'll probably expound on that theme later, but for now, let's just say that it's like upgrading from dial-up to cable-modem, access-wise.
- You get to keep a knife or multipurpose tool on your person at all times. And size matters.
- Everyone knows your name, because you're wearing it.
01 February 2010
This is the Way the World Ends
This is the way my civilian world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.
There was no formal "Red Bull" alert message this time around, rippling through the herd by telephone. Instead, the message was relayed by Archer, who had just happened to be copied on an e-mail my new boss had attempted to send to me, forgetting or not knowing or not caring that my military e-mail account was broken. I hope that's not an omen.
"Hey, Sherpa, you might want to give Lt. Col. Xavier a call ... He's trying to get ahold of you."
So, today is the first day of another tour of active-duty. My orders, when they finally catch up with me, will be a patchwork of funding sources and time periods: a couple of weeks of Annual Training money, a couple more of school money, then finally a couple of months of "Active Duty for Operational Support (ADOS)." The acronym is pronounced "ay-dahs."
The unit is months away from Mobilization-Day--what we call "M-day," a parallel concept, I suppose, to what our grandfathers called "D-day." M-days can always change, shifting to the left or right on the calendar. And they have been known to suddenly disappear altogether. But I'm not betting on it, and I've asked my family to stop betting on it, too.
The Red Bull is a big herd, after all, and once roused, is as hard to stop as any bureaucracy. We have little doubt that we'll be put to use, sometime soon, and somewhere in the world. Right now, according to what's already been put out to the public, that place is Afghanistan.
Back in 1997, when I was assigned to a different unit than what I am now, there had been more-than-rumors about a possible deployment to Bosnia back. That was the same year that Household-6 and I were planning to get married. That wasn't a true Red Bull message, but it was our first deployment "scare"--although "scare" isn't exactly the right word for the mess of conflicted feelings you get in your gut when you get the call.
First, there's the immediate urge to drop everything, pick up your rifle, and run to the sound of the guns. The U.S. National Guard predates all other U.S. Armed Forces for a reason: We trace our lineage back through the Minutemen and Minutewomen (Yes, there were some) of the American Revolution, and the necessity of quick, effective local military response is bred into us. One of the things I love about the National Guard is that you get to help your neighbors. I have had the honor of being called to state duty many times in the past two decades, responding to blizzards, floods, and tornados. "The other guys and gals only have 'God and Country,'" I like to say. "We've got 'God, Country, and Community.'"
Then, there's the idea that doing our military jobs is what we signed up for, what we train for. This is why we spend time away from friends and family "one weekend a month, and two weeks a year." (Admittedly, this phrase is so out of date and reality that soldiers just roll their eyes at it. Recently, drill weekends have sometimes grown to 4-day-long affairs. There's even a much-photocopied-and-passed-around-the-armories cartoon from a few years back, in which one National Guard Joe says to another, 'One weekend a month, my a--!") I guess what I'm saying is: You don't train for years to be a tank driver, and aspire only to filling sandbags or running generators during 100-year floods. You train as a soldier, and some part of you looks forwarding to finally doing your job.
I should note here that the American taxpayer invests tens of thousands of dollars on the training of just one soldier, then spends even more thousands for his or her individual equipment. It will cost a million U.S. dollars per soldier to send 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, one media report says. We just want to give the taxpayer a good return on their investments, not only of dollars, but of faith. We are "your tax dollar at work."
My first "Red Bull" message (by the way, I've changed the traditional semi-secret code slightly here, for reasons that can wait for a future post) was in 2003. Another buddy of mine just happened to be working in the Iowa National Guard personnel office, and gave me a call. "Hey, Sherpa, there's only two of you left in state of Iowa, and they can't find the other one. You want to volunteer, or to be volunteered?" I got the official Red Bull message later that day:
"Sherpa, this is a 'Red Bull' message. You have been called to active duty for the purposes of ... You are to report at This Place and This Time ..." And so on.
On that first message, I packed my bags on Friday, and was told to wait until Monday for further instructions. The call never came. Over the drill weekend, the unit that had needed me reshuffled its organizational structure, and suddenly needed one less Sherpa.
After that, however, the writing was pretty much on the wall. The very next unit moving out to Anywhere Else that needed someone with a Sherpa's skills would be giving me a call. I was the very last buffalo.
So, shortly thereafter, I got my second Red Bull message. And that's how I found myself transferred with a couple days' notice and wearing the Red Bull shoulder patch for the very first time. I deployed on a short, less-than-12-month mission in 2003, to a desert country that you've probably heard about but wouldn't guess in a hundred years. I'll write about that some other time, too. I've got to maintain some suspense or mystery, you know ...
Since I got back, I've been trying to juggle the joys of self-employment with a few temporary full-time National Guard tours. All in all, I've logged about 21 months of active duty since 2004 working various jobs in the Iowa National Guard. Strangely, I've developed something of a unique skill in that time, something that blends my civilian expertise and my soldier skills. I'll be darned, however, if the Army hasn't recently come up with an official job title for what I do. There's even a field manual, albeit one that's considered half-baked "emerging doctrine."
For the past couple of years, I haven't really known what to do with the Army, and the Army really hasn't known what to do with me.
Until now.
There was no formal "Red Bull" alert message this time around, rippling through the herd by telephone. Instead, the message was relayed by Archer, who had just happened to be copied on an e-mail my new boss had attempted to send to me, forgetting or not knowing or not caring that my military e-mail account was broken. I hope that's not an omen.
"Hey, Sherpa, you might want to give Lt. Col. Xavier a call ... He's trying to get ahold of you."
So, today is the first day of another tour of active-duty. My orders, when they finally catch up with me, will be a patchwork of funding sources and time periods: a couple of weeks of Annual Training money, a couple more of school money, then finally a couple of months of "Active Duty for Operational Support (ADOS)." The acronym is pronounced "ay-dahs."
The unit is months away from Mobilization-Day--what we call "M-day," a parallel concept, I suppose, to what our grandfathers called "D-day." M-days can always change, shifting to the left or right on the calendar. And they have been known to suddenly disappear altogether. But I'm not betting on it, and I've asked my family to stop betting on it, too.
The Red Bull is a big herd, after all, and once roused, is as hard to stop as any bureaucracy. We have little doubt that we'll be put to use, sometime soon, and somewhere in the world. Right now, according to what's already been put out to the public, that place is Afghanistan.
Back in 1997, when I was assigned to a different unit than what I am now, there had been more-than-rumors about a possible deployment to Bosnia back. That was the same year that Household-6 and I were planning to get married. That wasn't a true Red Bull message, but it was our first deployment "scare"--although "scare" isn't exactly the right word for the mess of conflicted feelings you get in your gut when you get the call.
First, there's the immediate urge to drop everything, pick up your rifle, and run to the sound of the guns. The U.S. National Guard predates all other U.S. Armed Forces for a reason: We trace our lineage back through the Minutemen and Minutewomen (Yes, there were some) of the American Revolution, and the necessity of quick, effective local military response is bred into us. One of the things I love about the National Guard is that you get to help your neighbors. I have had the honor of being called to state duty many times in the past two decades, responding to blizzards, floods, and tornados. "The other guys and gals only have 'God and Country,'" I like to say. "We've got 'God, Country, and Community.'"
Then, there's the idea that doing our military jobs is what we signed up for, what we train for. This is why we spend time away from friends and family "one weekend a month, and two weeks a year." (Admittedly, this phrase is so out of date and reality that soldiers just roll their eyes at it. Recently, drill weekends have sometimes grown to 4-day-long affairs. There's even a much-photocopied-and-passed-around-the-armories cartoon from a few years back, in which one National Guard Joe says to another, 'One weekend a month, my a--!") I guess what I'm saying is: You don't train for years to be a tank driver, and aspire only to filling sandbags or running generators during 100-year floods. You train as a soldier, and some part of you looks forwarding to finally doing your job.
I should note here that the American taxpayer invests tens of thousands of dollars on the training of just one soldier, then spends even more thousands for his or her individual equipment. It will cost a million U.S. dollars per soldier to send 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, one media report says. We just want to give the taxpayer a good return on their investments, not only of dollars, but of faith. We are "your tax dollar at work."
My first "Red Bull" message (by the way, I've changed the traditional semi-secret code slightly here, for reasons that can wait for a future post) was in 2003. Another buddy of mine just happened to be working in the Iowa National Guard personnel office, and gave me a call. "Hey, Sherpa, there's only two of you left in state of Iowa, and they can't find the other one. You want to volunteer, or to be volunteered?" I got the official Red Bull message later that day:
"Sherpa, this is a 'Red Bull' message. You have been called to active duty for the purposes of ... You are to report at This Place and This Time ..." And so on.
On that first message, I packed my bags on Friday, and was told to wait until Monday for further instructions. The call never came. Over the drill weekend, the unit that had needed me reshuffled its organizational structure, and suddenly needed one less Sherpa.
After that, however, the writing was pretty much on the wall. The very next unit moving out to Anywhere Else that needed someone with a Sherpa's skills would be giving me a call. I was the very last buffalo.
So, shortly thereafter, I got my second Red Bull message. And that's how I found myself transferred with a couple days' notice and wearing the Red Bull shoulder patch for the very first time. I deployed on a short, less-than-12-month mission in 2003, to a desert country that you've probably heard about but wouldn't guess in a hundred years. I'll write about that some other time, too. I've got to maintain some suspense or mystery, you know ...
Since I got back, I've been trying to juggle the joys of self-employment with a few temporary full-time National Guard tours. All in all, I've logged about 21 months of active duty since 2004 working various jobs in the Iowa National Guard. Strangely, I've developed something of a unique skill in that time, something that blends my civilian expertise and my soldier skills. I'll be darned, however, if the Army hasn't recently come up with an official job title for what I do. There's even a field manual, albeit one that's considered half-baked "emerging doctrine."
For the past couple of years, I haven't really known what to do with the Army, and the Army really hasn't known what to do with me.
Until now.
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