Things About This Week

The Important Things.

The first week of October used to be a good one. 15 years ago on October 3rd, I gave birth to my fourth and final kid, and for once, I was in a hospital with a real doctor. I even had drugs. Granted, I was afraid of being paralyzed by an epidural (nobody messes with my CSF!), so I opted for something else that I had never tried. The doc gave me Stadol when I got to The Best Part of Labor (clearly sarcastic), and while the painkiller never seemed to touch the pain, I was transported to this alternate reality wherein I was some ultra-hot and feisty Latina Gangster, bossing my minions around the birthing room in my flippant New-York-Hispanic accent.

Luckily my delusion didn't transfer over since the nurse later said I was just glaring at her really meanly the whole time, but I remember having very fancy fingernails while Montgomery Gentry's "Hell Yeah" blared from the little alarm clock radio, followed by Faith Hill's "Breathe," which I remember thinking was ironically appropriate, even though I could not express that to the people in my room because I was far too busy telling off my putas (don't look that up, mom) and making drug deals in my head.

But that was 15 years ago.

And then 8 years ago, the first week of October became something else. My sister and her (then) three kids were in a terrible accident, and we were about THISCLOSE to losing most of them. She was almost full term with her fourth child and her first daughter. The baby didn't survive the wreck.

I got a call from an EMT friend with a scanner who knew it was my family. I'll never forget that call. I lived in Bend at the time, and I remember rounding up my kids from their various and assorted schools and leaving town in a big hurry. Kizzie still had her Volleyball knee pads on when we left town. We drove like hell to get there, because the only thing I knew was that it was bad. We weren't even sure we'd get to say goodbye. My sister and one of my nephews had been flown by fixed-wing air to Spokane and the other two boys were in the hospital in Colville in various stages of being transported south for treatment of multi-system injuries.

I'm an EMT, right? I've been on some bad wrecks, I've dealt with the blood, the guts, the limbs postured in unnatural ways, even the dead bodies that I've had to work on, to try - just try, for families. But nothing could have prepared me for the sight of my own sister, an unnatural shade of greenish white, bruises all over her body only hours after the wreck, in that hospital bed. Before I could even say hi, I had to step back out of the room and put my head down by my knees. The whole hospital hallway was spinning out of control. It took me a couple minutes to be able to stay upright long enough to hold her hand and weep with her.

In the days and weeks and years leading up to that event, my large, very close and very opinionated family had seen turmoil. Division and hurt and events that give even the most loving families pause in their close-knit relationships. That moment erased all the petty differences that had created wedges between us. The reality of life's brevity and the tiny instant that can change everything suddenly make nothing as important as loving others and knowing you are loved by them. No points to prove, no issues to discuss, not even being right is important in a moment like that. We are all stripped to a level of equality that is based entirely on the humble experience of the fragility of life. None of us has got shit to defend. Period. There is nothing so important that it should break love - death does that soon enough.

A couple years later, a close friend was badly injured in a fall during the first week of October. The sole provider for his family, it sent all of us close to him back to the trenches, pulling together to get them through some of the scariest moments of that we've had to endure. These moments, when our human frailty is paramount to our goals and plans and dreams, are the moments when the truth of who we are as humans prevails.

Since then, the first week of October has brought us mass shootings in Roseburg, Oregon in 2016 at a community college, and last year the murder of 58 people in Las Vegas at the Route 91 Harvest Festival. If a random slaughter isn't enough to make you stop and think, then you're doing it wrong. For many people, the first week of October changed forever 25 years ago today, when one of the most intense 15-hour battles in U.S. military history took place in Mogadishu, Somalia. One hundred American Soldiers held a force ten times their size off in an attempt to rescue the crews of two downed Black Hawk helicopters. 17 Americans were killed, and the bodies of slain soldiers were dragged through the streets. The violence was captured on film and changed the landscape of our recent military memory forever. A new generation of heroes was born when those images infiltrated living rooms across America.

The first week of October has become, for me, a moment to remember what's really important. And maybe I am overly dramatic, but even that thought process triggers an avalanche of conflicted emotions for me. I'm about 36 hours home from 80 days on fire assignments this summer, a record for me, but even as the paycheck posts to my account I reflect on the summer and I wonder if I am doing it right. Should I be here more? What am I missing out on? How would I pay the bills otherwise?

I listened to Warren Buffet's 5/25 principle, the idea that if you don't focus all of your energy on the five most important things to you, all of your efforts and investments get watered down and diluted to the point of ineffectiveness. I sat kind of dumbly after listening.

What five things are the most important to me? Making sure my last kid gets turned loose into adulthood with a reasonable hope of success? Traveling? Not being in debt? I feel like the truest answers to the Five Important Things question are maybe the irresponsible ones. What if the most important thing to me is saving all the dogs? Can I put my kid up for adoption to facilitate that? Or what if my Number 1 priority is not being alone? Then I'd have people lined up to counsel me about the Joy of Loving Myself and offering to pay for therapy. I realize I am off on a total rabbit trail here, but it's been a Very Long Time since I wrote anything for myself, and there's a lot of words bound up in this head.

Anyway, today is my first and maybe only "day off" in awhile. Obligation free, other than some cupcakes that need making, a few articles I want to write, and a doctors appointment to see if they make a drug that helps one discern the Five Important Things. Is that Adderall? If it is, I want it.

But for today my five things include: Loving My People, Taking the Steps, Making the Birthday, Fixing the Broken and a lot of quality couch time with my one Tiny and Insecure Dog. What are your Five Things Today? I hope at least one of them includes some cuddling.

Things Lately

It's been a rough couple of months. I feel like I keep saying that over and over and the months get rougher rather than better. The sun is out now so that helps - it almost looks like we might have a spring after all, now that it's summer.

A few weeks ago I said goodbye to one of my all-time besties, my old hounder Truck. Truckles. Trucker. Truckladite. Even now, sitting in a conference room on the last few minutes of a lunch break at some sort of fire training, listening to my classmates talk about sales on RVs, I find myself choking back tears. Even now it's still too soon to talk about it. Maybe it always will be.

Since then it has been a marathon of work hours, training hours, writing deadlines, softball games, track meets, doctor appointments, surgeries, conference calls, multi-hour drives, etc, etc, etc, and never less than two of those at once, all day, every day.

And then there was the day that my romantic entanglement became disentangled. One day I have a boyfriend and Big Plans, and the next day I am single and not a plan on the horizon. I swing wildly back and forth between feeling the most lost I have ever felt and feeling wide open to new adventures, what ever they may be. Something big is coming. Something good is coming. Life is never what you expect.

In all of that, I am still learning. Or maybe I am learning more. I am learning that it's ok to not be ok. I am discovering that no matter how important and necessary you feel a person is in your life, the power they have is really your choice. I am finding out that absolutely NOTHING is so important that it should keep you from being true to yourself, proud of the path you've carved and honest to the people around you.

I am learning that I have a herd of badass kids that are more awesome than even I know, and I am truly grateful. I am learning that you can't underestimate the power of the love of Good People. And there are lots of Good People.

Things About The Good Ones

Even though I am an EMT, I haven't been around death all that much. I like to think I am one of the lucky ones, a "white cloud," narrowly missing the gruesome calls that are so hard for responders to shake off. Not that I haven't been on some horrible scenes, and not that I haven't seen death, and grieving, but in both my personal and professional life, my exposure has been less than that of many people I know, and I am grateful for that.

In the last few weeks, two people that I know have passed away unexpectedly. Two people who were too young. Two who were, in my memory and experience, good people. One was an exchange student who graduated with MacKenzie's class and then went back to Brazil. He killed himself two weeks ago. There couldn't have been a more unlikely kid.

The first day I met Felipe, I was the subbing for the high school science teacher, during the very first week of school in 2014. When I got to my classroom there was a tall man standing in the back of the room with the other students. He was over 6 feet with a beard and a tattoo on his bicep. I asked him if he was a TA. He looked confused and told me, with a suave Portuguese accent, that he was Felipe. Turns out Felipe was almost 18. He was a senior in high school, a model and on top of all of that, a genuinely kind, good guy. Felipe went snowboarding with us that winter, the one thing that he had been most excited to do in Washington during the winter. He loved it. He was a good friend to MacKenzie, when most high school boys used her adolescent insecurities to their advantage, he encouraged her and praised her without using her or capitalizing on her great beauty and soft heart. He played Kristoff in the World's Worst Production of Frozen, and while the other high school boys rolled their eyes, wrestled back stage and broke props, Felipe diligently memorized his lines and played his part faithfully without complaint in what was ultimately a great lesson in humility for all involved parties. He was one of the good ones. He was back home in Brazil, he had just turned 21, and was going to college when he took his own life. I will never understand how such a permanent, irreversible choice seemed like the only one to a boy who had everything going for him.

The other day I heard that another friend passed away. He was one of the first professional wildland firefighters that I met when I was pregnant with Aspen in 2003, going through Guard School with the Forest Service. Lynn was a gentle giant. He was a jolly soul with a sandy blonde beard and some sort of beach-boy laid back confidence. He reminded me of my Uncle Leonard, which was funny to me since Uncle Leonards' wife is Aunt Lynn. But Lynn the firefighter talked to me about fire, about fire boots, about hot shots and fire stories as I ran into him over the years. I considered him one of my mentors in the fire world. One night in Kettle Falls, back when I was learning all about who I was, I had too many drinks and Lynn drove me to a friend's house to keep me from driving. He was always kind, funny, helpful, encouraging. Lynn died last week. He was only 55. Just last fire season I was teasing him about getting me signed off on a new qualification. He seemed ok. But I think that the good ones usually do.

Lynn Bornitz

Neither of these guys were close, intimate friends of mine. They were more acquaintances, but both of them touched my life enough to make me know that there were many, many other lives they touched even more profoundly. I am sure the people closest to them could fill in the blanks about their flaws and weaknesses, and maybe the signs leading up to their disappearance from this world. I cannot. I knew only good, kind men. Ones that I would, and did call, when I needed help. Ones that would come. I was talking to a friend who knew Lynn, and I told him that sometimes the ones that seem the strongest and give the most aren't the best at taking care of themselves. I wish that I had known them well enough to be around when they needed help. Because I would have come. It breaks my heart that they are gone now. Too soon and too young. But they gave the world something, and they gave me something, and for that I am grateful.

Losses like this give death a whole new significance for me. It's such a heartbreaking reminder of the permanence. It's such a stark wake-up to the brevity of life and the realization of how much we impact one another, even the distant circles. I have struggled in the Dark Places at different seasons in my life. I have fought to find reason to go on. Sudden loss is a great reminder of how precious each day we are given truly is. It gives me a new and deeper gratitude for the second, third, tenth chances I am given. I makes me profoundly thankful that I have not made permanent choices that would forever change the ones I love. And it makes me more determined than ever to see the hurting ones,  especially the ones without voices for their pain. The strong ones who need help without knowing it.

The world, and my life, was brighter for having held these two souls and it was dimmed just at little at their loss. If I could have one wish in the whole world it would be to rewind time and to ask them how I could have helped. To hear what their heart cry was. To be there for them and with them in the Dark Places. But that was not my place, or my time. My place and time is here, with others who have their own Dark Places. So I will be here, and now, listening and asking.

Things About Commitment

We lost part of our family today. Somebody that came into our lives almost by mistake. Somebody that almost wasn't one of us. Somebody that we chose, in spite of all of the very good reasons not to.

We lost a friend that was unconditional. One that was always thankful, always loving, always kind. She was optimistic in spite of every obstacle in her way. She was dedicated and up for anything. She was the one that you knew you could count on to back you up in any crappy spot - as long as you could help her get there. 

We spent the better part of 4 years with Penny after we found her eating herself to death with no hope of escape. She came to live with us, and learned to love rabbits (or at least barking at them), to love long walks (or at least all the naps she took along the way) and to share her food. Penny lost a few pounds while she was with us, but in spite of the physical limitations of a belly that hung lower than her legs, she kept up with us and became part of our silly family. 

She made us laugh every day with her constant cheerfulness, her heroic attempts to climb stairs and her respectful begging for more food. She made us appreciate the heart that's inside an imperfect body, and even when she lost her eye sight she seemed to have a better idea of what was going on than a lot of humans. She knew when somebody needed a chin on their knee for comfort. Or an excited Cadillac dance for no reason. She knew the power of a good snuggle and the value of a squishy bed. 

She was Dagny's scolding grandmother, Emmy's comrade, Nattie's confidant and Truck's lower bunk. Penny took nothing for granted but loved every minute of her life. Her little stubbed tail was always working in thankful circles. We loved that silly obese dog. She's in her next home now. Probably chasing chickens and flopping down for a quick rest in the tall grass. Wearing angel wings like a flying pig, some of us think. And it would only make sense. 

There were times after we adopted her that we wondered if we'd made the right choice to commit to a dog with so many struggles and imperfections. Really, we were the ones that needed rescuing. We needed Penny's blind, unconditional love of all people, and her steadfast faith in her family. Her willingness to ask for help and offer affection. We needed to be reminded that beauty is what we give to each other, not how we look. We needed Penny, and thank goodness she chose us.