Into 2006 I creep.
A soapstone turtle sets on the dresser a few feet from my bed. The turtle once belonged to my son. A couple of nights ago, I was thinking about this small piece of art with part of its face missing. Carved in various geometric shapes, protection of its top half stems from nine small and distinct pieces of shell. Only one fat foot is intact and a damaged head protrudes forth with a full neck and swollen eyes. The stalwart turtle incurred these airborne injuries due to the haste of a third grader.
Through the Department of Defense Dependents Schools, Aaron attended third grade at Fort Kobbe , Panama
He usually geared-up in my Battle Dress Uniform and black combat boots from Basic Training. These boots were a size three, doublewide. Perhaps my feet were swollen the day I was fitted for them. Because later, a near-tourniquet lace job was the only thing that kept the boots on my feet, so for my eight year old, they were huge. He slid around in them pretty good when he was cammied-up for warfare, hiding from the pretended enemy in the jungle, saluting a superior, his little-boy voice barking, “Yes, sir!” to another nine year old soldier.
But most likely, I grinned because he was there. With me. Our separation was over. Destruction had halted. Re-construction was the new mission.
I’m cold just now, remembering the unrelenting 0430 alarm. Never five or ten more minutes of snooze, but instead, my left foot following my right, each planting their surprise against the cold ceramic tile early in the mornings after the refrigerated air had been pulsing away at a cool sixty degrees all night, cooling the faces and the oxygen of those slumbering—sleeping well within their layering of bed covers. Then, in the dark, I’m up dressing, sipping strong hot café before slogging into the humidity of a day not yet producing its light, applying bug juice to exposed arms and legs, stretching for P.T. while dodging a bat perpetually flying about the government-issued washer and dryer in my driveway. Then, at last, striding halfway across the slope of a single field between my house and Headquarters Company for the 0600 P.T. formation—Physical Training, the beginning of every good soldier’s duty day—except during occasions of war.
Dark red ceramic tile covered the top two floors of our three-story tropical home. Ground level, the maid’s quarters, its walls and floors, all constructed in concrete. It was only one room, complete with showerhead. Aaron’s dad and I stored our artificial Christmas tree and trim, sports gear, and Aaron’s busted bicycle there. Things like that. Never a person.
We enjoyed the convenience of a maid, though she never lived with us. We also had someone to wash our truck and clean and shine my jungle boots. The maid’s services ran about sixty to eighty dollars a month for a five-day workweek of housekeeping and babysitting until Doug or I made it home from work.
Minerva mopped the floors all five days, cleaned the bathroom on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. She would’ve cooked for us too, but we declined. During our quasi-interview, she told me she would not iron BDU’s. I didn’t blame her. I hated ironing them myself, all those pockets, buttons and pleats. That’s why I splurged and had my work uniforms dry cleaned and heavy starched—with creases that could cut. For a female, not exactly salubrious, uniforms starched that way. Moisture trapped in. Air shut out.
Anyway.
Services provided by these laborers came after the war for me. Well, except for the boot man. I enjoyed his services before and after the war. For ten dollars a month, I sported a high shine every day. I wonder now how he made his living during the short war.
The stone-carved figure feels cold to my touch just now, but it looks almost perky, even with a chunked-up head. The broken face of a tiny turtle carved in stone. The color resembles that of cooled café y leche, chocolate masculino caliente, or the same creamy color as the skin tone of those who’d mined it, then carved it.
I’ve read of a rural community located in the highlands of Panama Panama City
I once stayed in bed and stared at this turtle and other things on my dresser for a half-hour or so after I woke up. I don’t do that anymore. I let my eyes gaze over them for a moment, then get up and creep into my morning. Throughout the day, I find myself walking in and out my bedroom, glancing at the turtle, yielding to the pain, pausing. Staring. Sometimes I tear up, other times I just stare, blink, and leave out the room. Look and leave. Look and leave.
While thinking about this turtle the other night, I tried to recall where, nearly two years ago, I’d rediscovered this keepsake. Was it in Aaron’s Memory Box or inside something else of his? He collected so many things for short spurts of time. He used to ask, “Can I get the whole collection of…?” The collections varied as much as the requests.
He had the whole collection of everything from Matchbox cars to The Flying Lure: a collection of slippery shades that felt and looked like gummy worm candy. There were about seventy or eighty of the lures, and I’m not sure if the fish ever nibbled or even appreciated the costly colors. Aaron’s real sport was the collecting and preparing of things for the journey rather than the actual sport itself. Fishing requires hush. Tranquility. For Aaron, unknown nouns. Once upon a time.
He was The Keeper. He stored any number of things in the attic after he graduated high school. He’d left our attic full of old tennis shoes, small trophies, ribbons and the mutable collections. Aaron usually saved everything given to him by his family and friends in what he called his Memory Box. Memories in the form of cards, pictures, letters and other relics from the past.
As I sat there wondering where I’d located the turtle, I suddenly knew with certainty that it had not been found in the box brought back to me from Iraq Iraq
This tiny loss of memory startled me, moved me back to the keyboard. To write something a loved one could read to me, should I begin to forget. Should I develop dementia, Alzheimer’s or just stroke-out, even though I’m only fifty-one. Suddenly there is urgency to record. Something to capture for later. So I scribe for me. Word souvenirs.
I learned the word cosas nine years after I left Panama
Strange how such verbs, are and were, was, and is, linking verbs they’re called, bland-but-essential-time-clues spoken instinctively and without deep thought, strange how these links are almost carelessly sprinkled into conversations. Into simple sentences that without italics just pass off the tongue, barely noticed. Simple links that are life changing.
Someone asked me once, “What was your son’s name?”
And I thought to myself, his name is Aaron. It will always be. I still have a future with him. That future is everything to me. It means more than even the past.
Though the future of my family tree has hastened to a dead end, I still find myself undeterred from my mission. The collection of memories. And I remain the sole narrator to what was. Others may tell what should have been or what could have been, but it is only me, Mom, who can pull apart or weave together, put a date, name or face, a genealogy to much of the paraphernalia left behind.
I’ve asked my husband to read the words to me, should I begin to forget someday. Read later what I will write now. To me. So I can visualize the full and beautiful life I will begin to leave behind. So I'll never forget what was. What is.
The remains. The things. Things a mother must sort through sometime after she becomes a “survivor.” Frantically at first, then slower. Much, much slower. And finally, the rest, the redundant, put away. Pushed away, hidden back into the attic. “I’ll go through it all later, Greg,” I had said to my husband one day. Then said again a few months later.
This baggage still waits on me. Other belongings are in every room of my deluged home. Old photographs once tucked away, now, retrieved, re-framed.
My bedroom wall has his name painted on it. I’ve rubbed my fingers across the raised letters, visualized him as he paints Austin
The blue paint he got everywhere. The old spatters on the fireplace. We won’t expunge these spats of blue, once hideous to our sight, now precious. Another something to preserve. Pens, dog tags, things he chewed on. Greg called Aaron the Chewing Boy.
There seems to be a common belief that “things” remind survivors of their loss. That these things must ladle on extra portions of grief. This rings true to some extent, but it’s not so much the stored-up or displayed stuff itself. No, it’s the unexpected things. The GNC catalog with Aaron’s name on it. The offers and rewards from Southwest Airlines. Free miles that won’t be redeemed. His AT&T bill. Each month it’s a credit for around a dollar and eighty-seven cents from a Soldier-Save program or some reward for our troops. The phone credits don’t accumulate. Some sort of use or lose thing I guess. At first, I wanted his name removed from their mailing list, but by the time I pulled the credit for the following month out of the mailbox, I’d already decided that I’d be happy if mail arrived with his name on it for the rest of my life.
Don’t they notice he’s missing? Hasn’t their revenue plunged in some verifiable way? After all, he was the one burning up fourteen hundred dollars of minutes a month, then wearing down the customer sales rep before settling on half the amount, either by temporarily switching plans or mentioning an upcoming second trip to Iraq. More than once I’d heard him say Hey, I’m on my way to Iraq or I’m on my way back to Iraq
It’s not committed to memory, if this toss of the word Iraq
On May 3, 2004, Chuck’s daughter read the same passage at Aaron’s funeral from a small Bible I’d given Aaron. Size small, he carried it aboard the USS Rushmore his first trip to Iraq West Texas sand and hard-leathered. A small clasp guarded the manuscript’s delicate pages. His name, engraved in the same gold as the pages edge.
I gave the Bible to Robbie on that day, exactly seven days after Aaron’s death. I can’t remember now if it was before or after she read.
My mom says Aaron was just like my grandpa, a man he never knew. But Grandpa was my mom’s hero. It’s funny how both Aaron’s grandmothers are still reminded of the men they loved most in their lives when they speak of my son, even now, nearly two years after he was killed in action. In action. Yes, he always was that. In action or asleep, nothing in between.
I often wonder if he sleeps now. Does he actually rest? Or is his soul and spirit still so busy?
But the things, the objects, the ordinary, no. No, they don’t cup the grief. My son’s photographs, no longer interchanged with a more recent one, there are no new letters or articles to discuss, no new stories to share. The photographs and the words are all aged. It’s only the old we have left of Aaron. Every word, read or told, more than once, but still, I hope the words will remain with me forever.
What a long time.
I think it’d be sadder without them. The things and the words.
My thought patterns are still a little shot, still a bit fragmented, but too, gelled in a strange way. There is a certain stasis in this stage of grief. I’ve certainly grown. I know I’ve grown in some indefinable, almost secret way. Maybe suffering is redemptive to me in some searchable way. There are things I can put my finger on.
There are also other times.
I’ll carry on a conversation with someone important or not important to me, shake my head and smile at them. Partially hear what’s said. Respond in some intelligent manner. And all the while, this ethereal image (who hides from the controlled me) shrinks in and out of the shadows. She startles me, then stays for just a bit and flees. Like a leper she shouts, “Unclean, Unclean!” and dips away. Back into hiding, imagining the reality of herself to be so hideous to the outside world. She mustn't be observed; she can’t even look at herself.
The Leper Lady won’t talk to me. She just wants me to know she is there. I try to make her understand she mustn’t be intimidated by my wholeness. That I’m not as whole as I appear. But she just blinks, bends her head, hides her eyes deeper within a crimson scarf and then disappears. My unrequited purge.
Our bodies, created to deal with only small doses of grief at a time. Lisa refreshes my mind on this thought. To sustain. Otherwise, we’d break for sure. It’s all too overwhelming. If this is true, then I am normal. I’m normal for a new thing, for a new position in this life. Survivor.
Only the news of his death is less new to me now. Thank God, I don’t hear "He's been killed!" over and over. I haven’t forgotten for even one easy second, Aaron has physically left us. Is gone. It’s my first thought in the morning, the last at night. I function more coherently now than previous months. But I never quit missing him. Mourning him. Often in a very contemplative manner. My breathing sets the pace for these times. They are not deep breaths, but shallow. Just enough oxygen. Overpowering grief, oxygen, ten cc’s at a time.
But I no longer search for him, listen for his loud voice (that embarrassed me more than once), no more sniffing for his even louder cologne. That laugh.
No discovered new moment with the child that I loved and birthed nearly twenty-four years ago. But I do so badly yearn for the familiar, the old. For the past. He manages to charm me still—at times. Other times I want to choke him.
I wonder if charm is a part of heaven. I hope so much that it is.
A couple of days ago, watching TV or reading, something, it struck me that I’d gone a few seconds, micro though they were, without thoughts of Aaron on my brain. What an ambiguous line of deliberation this led to.
I can write, read, pay bills, any number of things, and still think of Aaron. I had wondered if these reflections would decelerate, so when this lazy second occurred, I worried that Aaron-absent-times might begin to happen more frequently. Since then I’ve put an effort of thought into it and what I realize is this: I don’t want complete healing. Not from this loss. Other losses—maybe, but not this one. I don’t want to ever lose another part of Aaron. What is left of this strange sweet sorrow is mine. It has replaced the Aaron I once had as mine.
Right after April 26, 2004, I thought I would die. When I didn’t, I wanted to heal, to fully heal, and quickly. I longed for rescue. Removal from the fog I lived in so intensely. I willed myself to examine it, to hurt hard quickly, so that maybe suffering would cease and desist. I’d replay the horrible words that came—snap, that quick, without notice. Your son was killed. . . .
I presented myself to God: Here I am. You and Aaron are there, and here I am. There’s no going back. I can’t undo this thing. Would you undo it if I believed hard enough? I know I’ll live and die in this same suffering. What is this for? I want to be with Aaron. Yes. And with You too, Father.
I’ve since heard of one mother dying from a heart attack when she first viewed her son’s body in his casket. His body, like Aaron’s, returned from Iraq
I know I’ll most likely live for a while. As far as I know, disease has not set in. I smile again, take part in life again. On good days, I obtain a new purpose in life. I don’t go out depressed, try not to whine too much. I speak of the good things, but I am without the necessary accoutrements for which I am accustomed. Not naked, but unembellished. I no longer share in the exclamations of motherhood. The trimmings and trappings, shorn.
Though I believe I’ve journeyed to the acceptance stage, not everyone agrees with me, but it’s becoming more real. I no longer wake up in the mornings and think, no, this can’t be true. I’m no longer shattered. But still looking for the pieces. Pieces that exploded within me and without me when I received the news.
There must be a million pieces of heart scattered all over this planet.
I bought Aaron the turtle and a small bureau box during my preparations for him and his dad to join me in Panama. Gifts from mom to son. Vivid colors for his new bedroom. Small accent pieces to contrast with the white concrete walls of his room (such were the walls of the whole house) and to complement the Mickey Mouse sheets and blue comforter purchased for his bed.
Mountains appeared eye-level and luminous outside the third-story windows of his room. This lookout point sized the Mango trees as that of plastic toys. But down below, they proved living instead. They first shaded the fruit of their branches, then suddenly dumped it to the fertile ground.
Days later, mangos lying-in-state rotted into the earth, shared their stringy meat with stingy, swarming flies one more time. The tree’s fruit would then be raked-up and dumped into the abyss of the metal cans near our front curb.
Cotamundi could be heard from the window when they foraged for food within that same deep hole. Undaunted by humans, these large raccoon-like animals roamed at will. Palm trees and wild grasses prospered as far as the eye could see. Military quarters looked out of place with their manicured lawns and buildings of fresh painted white.
What a picturesque room for a third grader from Texas
The indigenous people of Panama Panama
Rich with color.
Yes. Startling.
The other night I asked my sister if she still had the wooden figurine of a bus I’d brought back to her from Panama. The bus had a sign that said Taxi on its front or back, maybe both. Within the bus, anxious chickens flapped their wings against the heads of passengers who fit snugly into crammed seats. Wooden crates appeared half-full of weathered straw and a few fresh eggs.
Men and women, painted in vivid detail, leaned to and fro; they appeared genial and undisturbed while their maniacal driver, a man with a full mustache, imitated the cheerful, the unruffled. His right foot and leg, fashioned to look as if he pushed hard on the gas pedal. He appeared determined. To get somewhere. Despite the ruckus. I think a floppy hat covered his head, but perhaps not. While some details are drawn in my head of the hysterical imitation, it’s the colors of the comedy I can visualize best. The embellishments of the bus, painted with the same primary colors as those of the box I’d given Aaron.
Lisa shook her head. “No, I don’t have it anymore. Remember? I broke it a long time ago.”
“Did you throw it away?” I asked.
“I did.” She stared into the night, checked the traffic through her rearview mirror, blinked a couple of slow times, then continued, “I tried to fix it, but I couldn’t.”
“Does Zach still have his tiled boxes?” I’d given her son (Aaron’s forever hero) a nested set, almost identical to Aaron’s.
“I think so. I’m pretty sure they’re in our storage house.”
I stared out the car window a while, then turned my head toward her. “I want to look at them.”
That was all we said about the boxes, there in her car, as we sped down the road to our gym class or my niece’s ballet class—some place that imitated life and strength and good health.
Something far removed from death.
Someplace where self-involved people are at least physically active. We greet one another with our redundant answers and questions: I’m fine. How are you? We smile as the smell of our sweat reminds us we are living and rotting creatures. We push and pull and concentrate on restoration. Repel at the rotting.
Strange. I know. But I still want to. Look at Zach’s boxes I mean. I haven’t found Aaron’s.
Panama’s drivers were a little zany. They had to be I guess, because everyone drove so fast. They honked and swerved as they cut-off two or three vehicles at a time or waved off a street vendor. Panamanians are normally easygoing, but never behind the wheel of a dented Corolla or Datsun. Unlike me, the-born-in-Amherst-Texas-learned-to-drive-on-turn-rows-female-driver—they understood the intricacies of offensive driving.
Southern Command required all military personnel in Panama Panama
I boarded the buses several times during those last months of my twelve-month tour that had turned into three years. Experienced something I’d at first dreaded, then finally became excited about. As I waited that first time, I envisioned female communication on some gender-based term, a union of some sort, in some small way. Firm on a common ground. Riding with those women in clothing of bright color, speaking fast, hanging on tightly to one another inside the rusted bus.
We’d speak with our hands, our eyes, and just a few words. My son did so and so, I’d say.
Sí, mi hijo también they’d reply as their heads nodded up and down. We’d affirm the common knowledge of the strange perfection of our children.
But I wasn’t a part of them, and really couldn’t be in that chilled climate. We shared a country but not a culture. Not hostile. Not unfriendly. Just a courteous disregard for one another. My trips proved uneventful and my inadequate Spanish didn’t matter so much after all. The drivers understood English words like PX and Panama City
During the war, I learned the survival Spanish required of us: alto, alto o disparo, tiren sus armas al suelo, las manos sobre la cabeza, de la vuelta, camine hacia adelante, rindete ahora mismo, acuestate con la cara al suelo, camina or rapido. Respectively: halt, halt or I will shoot, drop your weapons, hands up over your head, turn around, march forward, surrender now, lie face down, move quickly.
I can record all those commands now because I still have my Survival Spanish for Guard Duty card. I never had to use these phrases. My duty was always boring. I practiced nouns pertinent to me: niño, hijo, jefe, café, leche, baño.
I learned the Spanish word for things in Texas
I’ve wondered about the phrases Aaron must’ve learned, how the foreign words fitted his tongue, if he butchered the tongue of the Iraqi in the same way his mother destroyed the Spanish roll of the ‘r’ in her West Texas drawl. I never thought to ask him. There were always so many other details occupying my conversations with him. I wish now I’d asked him what his war’s phrases sounded like. Heard him speak the words. Caught his smile as he stumbled over the language of a country where some loved him, some hated him, and others shot at him over and over.
I can’t put a face to his killer. There’s only been one blurred image created by me, for me, in one tired head. For some reason I’ve pictured the combatant’s head covered with an ‘imama, the color of a raven, his white teeth clenched together as he aimed his machine gun with great thought and precision at my son.
But did this enemy even realize his accomplishment? Aaron didn’t go down immediately, but instead, threw his grenade, one he’d put himself in harm’s way to aim. He stifled the attack.
My mind stops after Aaron goes down. The destiny of the enemy I can’t clearly imagine. I guess I’ve always thought one of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s henchman was alive and at home with his family. That he won and I lost. I don’t know. I just don’t know. I only know the Marines lost a warrior that day, one who’d first honed his skills in the jungles of Panama
Things we keep for ourselves, then record. The broken face of a tiny turtle carved in stone. Its soap the same color as the brown women there, who talked together then, arrayed in bright colors, spangles and hoops. Perhaps they are talking today, even now, bragging and exclaiming the deeds of their hijos, speaking fast, hanging on tight to the seat of some rusted bus.
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