Time with the doodlers

Gracie loves the movie, "Annie" so, when the final song began and I offered to dance with her, she leaped into my arms, and we sang together: "I don't need anything but you." 

It's taken a few days for her to warm up to me. I haven't seen her or her sister Marie since July. But I'm quite in love with them now. 

I'm learning things I thought I'd never have to know. I used to think I would have my own children so I didn't pay much attention to loving other people's kids. Now I feel there is no real chance of having my own kids, so I let myself love and care for the children who will launch themselves into my arms. 

Analysis

I can't write about San. I talk to her. I write messages to her. But nothing I can do will take away what happened and that is untenable. She's taken a leave of absence from work. She asked to stay with me for a while. I'm glad she asked. It feels like there's a future.

I'm with Corinne and her daughters for Christmas. I won't do another Christmas alone. Christmas 2012 was awful.  So I will always be around people during the holidays. I love my sister and I love her daughters, and that is good. Today, we went walking through the wetlands and spotted endangered bird species and watched out for gators, and I gradually earned the trust and confidence of the young doodlers. 

I'm using the break as a chance to finally write the analysis I've meant to do for months. I thought it would be easier after I let some time pass, but I think it will always be difficult, so I'm just writing the damned thing. I've begun with a literature review of the traditional role of intelligence operations and their modern evolution in an asymmetric battle-space. I'm picking apart the assumptions. I want to ensure that, when the editor gets back to me, I'll have a cohesive product to submit. 

memorium

I want to write about the past three days. There is something significant that needs to be said. But I feel her grief too much and it clouds my ability to think or process properly. My heart is broken for her. I wish I could take her pain.

In between spaces

While I was in Utah, S and her husband gently declined my offer to carry their child. This was difficult for me for a few days. I had to be really ready to do this thing before I could make the offer. I'd prepared myself mentally and emotionally, projecting a future where I could give my body to this. So it took me a while to re-write the next year without a pregnancy in it. I feel good about it now. I think there is something important about saying "yes" to things, particularly when there have been so many "no"s in recent memory.

It is very sweet that S now feels warmly towards me. I'm moved by the way she reaches out more frequently than before, wants to meet for sushi, go to galleries. I worried she'd feel awkward around me, but she seems really happy about what I offered.

It's been a difficult couple of weeks. Ten days ago, I contracted the zombie flu which hurt like hell and effectively ate my brain for days. I'm still coughing and weak, but I think it's going away.

Since my return from Utah, I've met with good people, been invited to office parties in the Pentagon; had drinks and pizza with my friends in national and international law enforcement, and continued the dialogue with contractors. Next week, I start a project with the Navy. These are good, positive things.

I met earlier this week with Lyon, a man I've known for nearly a year. He was in town for a conference and we met for sushi. He's a lovely person, a father of three teenage daughters. He's a big deal in a big community, but whenever we spend time together, I feel like I'm the most important person in the world.

last day with the fam

These past weeks and months have been difficult to write. These past days with my family are also difficult to put down. Some events and feelings have the ability to short circuit language and metaphor for me. I can describe an occurrence but lack the skill or objectivity to convey what it means for me.  

Mom and dad and I visited Lee in St. George. She's doing surprisingly well: working two jobs, living in her own apartment, running, and taking yoga several times each week. We went for several decent jogs, a yoga class, and a hike up Snow Canyon. We went to a movie, and celebrated her birthday and Thanksgiving early. In the evenings, mom and dad showed us the digitized 8mm films they'd made of my infancy and early childhood. It was a peculiar sensation for me, but particularly difficult for Lee who didn't have particularly functional nor protective parents when she needed them. 

So it was no surprise that she talked a lot about the way I stepped in and raised her. She still thinks of me as her mother. I suppose that I was her mother in nearly every way that counted when she was young. And now, I think I love her more than I love most people. I'm glad she's off the drugs and doing alright. 

Dad needed time to go hiking and biking with me. Which was fine, since I like to do these things and I like him. We hiked up Rattlesnake Ridge, and he found a "short-cut" down the mountain. Two days later, we took J's boys up Big Cottonwood canyon for a hike, too. 

I spent a lot of time with the boys on this visit: reading stories, rough-housing, playing make-believe, and tucking into bed. In the evenings, after a tuck-in, I stayed up with J and we chatted. 

I took Mom shopping, and we bought a bicycle trainer, to get her healthy. 

I've taken things a day at a time. And today was my last day. I'll miss them. 

Bicycle ride with dad

Dad took the day off of work because I was in town and he wanted to spend time with me.
"I feel like my best friend just came into town," Dad told me when he collected me at the airport last night. Me too.

I let him pick the day's activities. If he had his preference, it would have been hiking and biking all day long, but he had a flight of his own to catch at 1700 so there was a cap on the fun.

It's really freezing here. From what I hear, it's freezing all over CONUS. But this doesn't stop dad from wanting to ride. So we bundled up, and let the various exposed bits freeze off in little chunks during the two hours riding trails in the biting wind. We rode completely shit bikes with crummy helmets and wore enormous coats dad bought second-hand from Deseret Industries two decades ago. Dad rides this crappy bicycle every day for his PT because his knees won't let him run anymore. But he loves it. I will absolutely not tell him that his bike is crap because he looks at it fondly as he puts air in the tires and says, "you know, this has been a really good bike."

One of the things I like about dad is that he's game for anything. Anything. Ask him to Zip-line from the Eiffel Tower or hike in the Himalayas and the answer is yes. Doesn't matter if he's never done it before or even trained for it. Doesn't matter if he may not have the right gear. No problem. We'll figure it out. When I was younger, this embarrassed me because the lack of appropriate gear felt like amateur-hour and hick-ville. Rich and attractive people always were suited up to look like some magazine version of an expert climber or hiker while we had mismatched pieces assembled from the local second-hand shop. In college, I dated the son of the CFO of a major corporation and was mortified when he took me skiing - because his ski gear was perfect and olympic-grade and matched while absolutely nothing I brought looked like it had ever belonged to the same decade, let alone the same closet. But it's always been about the adventure for dad - never about the appearance. He skis because he loves to soar down the slopes, yodeling as he goes, not because he gives two shakes about what anyone else thinks about it.

For the past few years, my parent's church "calling" has been to hold religious meetings in the mental health unit in the nearby women's prison. This calling completed three weeks ago and its driving dad crazy because nobody else has been selected to fill the role. He worries about the women he's been ministering to. He talks about them, about their issues and their families and their sorrows. He worries that they will think nobody loves them since they've been left alone for three weeks. It doesn't occur to him to feel pleased that his new church "calling" is as the Elder's Quorum President - one of the biggest and most important positions in a Mormon congregation. If he was looking for accolades, he would stop thinking about those mentally ill women in the prison and get to work being an important person.

Dad had just arrived in Italy in July 2013 when the shit MIVD threw at me actually stuck and I lost my job. I was in shock, horrified, and saddened to lose my programs and work. It was also embarrassing to know that my father, who had come to witness my success and to learn about the work I'd accomplished, had to see this awful destruction instead. But, true to form, he didn't give a shit what it looked like to anyone on the outside. He was proud of me because I maintained my integrity. In fact, he's so proud of me for the way I stood up for the truth, he gets choked up when he talks about it. Fucking amazing.

As I get older and see the world for all its games and arbitrary rules, I realize now that it was probably the best preparation to have dad as my example. If people are trying to use shame and innuendo and social pressure to get you to do what they want, it helps to be raised by a man who doesn't give a shit about these things, and who plunked his 11-year-old daughter on a beat-up snowmobile and said, "this is the throttle. Turn this when you want to go faster. This is the brake. Pull this when you want to stop. Follow me."

Today, I was totally happy to get on that crap bike and wear that beat-up coat and mismatched helmet and gloves today and follow dad up the mountain.

surrogate

I offered to be a surrogate for S. I've thought about this for some time. I may not have the opportunity to be a mother myself, but I can give her and her husband the chance.