Liquid happy

Because I’m 10,000 words behind. Because my dining room is torn apart from water damage. Because my husband and father-in-law are tiling this weekend. Because horrifying messes always get worse before they get better. Because I’m looking forward to the day when my father-in-law can come over to my house and not either (a) tear my house apart or (b) evaluate how he’s going to tear my house apart.

Because not twenty minutes after my father-in-law called this evening to say he was coming over to tile this weekend, our friends Mike and Sherye called to say they’re coming to visit this weekend. Because our guest room? Torn apart! Because as it turns out, November is an inconvenient month to write a novel.

Because of all the photos I looked through on my search for calm, these are the only ones that spoke to me. Because the holiday season is approaching with the grace and mildness of an avalanche. And they make these mood-enhancing substances for a reason.

Dear Dad, Chief Petty Officer, US Navy, retired

I found a photo in a box, tucked away with a hundred other photos of family and old friends, places I’ve gone to which I may never return, things that must have seemed important at the time but now have lost all meaning. But this one,

it tugged at my heart. Not because I remember this moment at all; I don’t know how old I was, exactly, but clearly I was more interested in the action going on around me on that rainy day, than in that first long embrace from a sailor returning home to his young family after months — his daughter’s lifetime — at sea. Did I know who you were?

My dad is a retired United States Navy Chief Petty Officer.

I say that out loud and I feel my heart glow with a warm, golden light; it feels like a badge of honor on my soul. I’m so proud.

I’ve listened to your stories with awe and delight, and in doing so I’ve realized that it’s an incredibly brave act to enlist in the military: to voluntarily put aside the life you’ve always known, to leave your parents, to arrive by train in Great Lakes late at night with shipmates you barely know, not knowing where to go or what to do, to try to function on too little sleep, too little time to eat, too little time to think, just trying to make it through, trying to do the right thing. Trying to do the right thing.

Does that make it any easier — the discipline they teach you? Focus. Fortitude. Fraternity. Is that what makes it possible to stand courageously at the ship’s rails, watching your family and your homeland fade into the horizon? Is it the salty wind on your face, the uniform of your country on your back, the colors flying proudly above your head — are these the things that give you faith that the world will be better for your sacrifice? Non sibi sed patriae.

You’ve instilled those core Navy values in me, whether you know it or not. But never through words. Your life has taught me — shown me — no matter who is sitting in the Oval Office and whatever battles we are waging at home and abroad, that patriotism — the unconditional love of country — manifests in the selfless commitment to actively making this world an easier place to live: trying to do the right thing. And to do it requires honor to recognize what needs to be done, the courage to do it, and the commitment to see it through. Though the world is thick with storm, you keep your eyes to the sun. And that is the standard by which I try to live.

But what is the right thing to do? What’s the difference between trying to make the world better as we, individually, believe it should be, and making the world better as it, at the moment, needs to be? Your career of selfless service to others has offered me that lesson, too: Doing the right thing has little to do with what I think is right. It is, rather, what’s right for those who need my help. Not for self, but for country. Not for myself, but for those who need me.

The reach of your commitment, your service, and your patriotism extends much, much farther than you know.

So I’ll let another shopper with fewer items (or more kids to corral) get in front of me in the checkout line; I’ll be friendly with an exhausted and grumpy cashier; I’ll keep trying to be patient and understanding, trusting and kind. Though it will never live up to the service you’ve given to your community — your country — I know, deep down, that it stems from the same place. I know because it was you who planted it there. And though my acts may be infinitesimal, you should know that when I do them, I do them in honor of you.

“I hope my achievements in life are these: That I will have fought for what was right and fair, that I will have risked for that which mattered, that I will have given help to those who were in need… that I will have left the Earth a better place for what I’ve done and who I’ve been.” – C. Hoppe

With love,
The proud daughter of a retired United States Navy Chief Petty Officer

Unbounded and all twinkly

There’s a little glimmer of excitement inside my chest, like a little ball of butterflies and feathers that tickles my stomach and orbits my heart. I can’t explain it.

Something inside of me knows that something else –something big – is going on, or is about to go on, and it can barely contain the secret but knows that the joy of the surprise will be worth the squirmy wait. And it’s giggling with anticipation.

This weird feeling of sensing but not knowing leaves me terribly conflicted. My scientific mind thinks it’s silly, it’s nothing, probably just a combination of stuff like my birthday, and a shiny new set of cookware, and NaNoWriMo, and moving ever closer to the Oomphasis launch, and the holidays zooming in on top of me — all at once! Creating this little euphoric glowy heart flutter. Stress, good stress, the likes of which my body just isn’t used to.

But then there’s still that glowy heart flutter. And the scientific other mind that imagines — knows — there must be something else that physics can’t explain yet. The unknown forces that act upon the universe. The sub-sub-sub-atomic energy that binds us with everything else, that whispers to us in our dreams to remind us that we are of the stars. We are of the stars. It connects matter to other matter and matter to energy and matter to the fabric of space-time. Something’s going on, it says, trust me.

I don’t listen to it often. Nonsense, I say back, you haven’t proved that you exist: How can I trust you?

And then I think about the stars. When I was little, when every other kid wanted to be a veterinarian, a teacher, a lawyer, or a fireman, I wanted to be an astronaut. A month ago, and this week, and tomorrow, I want to be an astrophysicist. Unfortunately, the cosmos speak math, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be a part of them, learn their secrets, ponder their mysteries, shape their future. We are of the stars. I’m finally understanding that I’ve always imagined my world without horizons, though for a while I forgot it. When I started to see that my boundaries were ones I had created, when I began to peer into the vast possibility beyond my self-imposed boundaries, the glimmer appeared. And now it just won’t go away.

Science Mind One’s voice is loud and clear, calling my attention back down to Earth. It’s safe here. Oh shush, SM1, “ships in harbor” and all. I’m beginning to like this twinkling in my spirit. Please take your lingering fear of disappointment and go. For suddenly there is more light in the universe, and something pushing me – pulling me? — up, out, away from your tenacious logic. Something, invisible and real, is expanding my universe. The world is more precious than I ever dared to imagine; life is far richer. And when this whirling glittery feather ball of butterflies bursts into wings, I shall need you for nothing more than to simply hold my feet.