Touching down on the tarmac I looked out my window noted passivly that we hadn't crashed in a giant fire storm of jet fuel and jagged metal scraps. Having not been granted my one wish upon returning to theater I sat back in my seat and pushed the slumbering ox of a staff sergeant off my shoulder for what I hoped would be the last time before we deplaned. The sour remains of what had once been 200 happy vacationing soldiers oozed into the fading afternoon sun light to begin the long and arduous process of getting from Kuwait to Baghdad International Airport and points beyond. There's likely no fix for it. Processing that many moving bodies is a nightmare. Compounded by the fact that we are salaried and that we get paid on the 1st and 15th regardless of output and that our movement liaisons likely acquired their position by being deemed unfit to serve in any other capacity, I had prepared myself to spend at least a week trying to get back to my unit. It gave me time to think back and unravel the last two weeks I'd spent in various stages of intoxication over the northern half of California.
Leave is fascinating, like a biopsy of the tissue of my friends lives. I get a little piece to look at a couple times a year and try to paint the bigger picture of their experience since I've been away. We're all growing older, finishing school, girls I use to date are getting married and even more frighteningly, reproducing. I get asked a lot about the war and my opinion on this and that. It bothers some soldiers to have to talk about work but I figure I'm the closest thing to a military expert that most people I know have. Why wouldn't you refer to someone with first hand knowledge? It was so nice to put on clothes that were appropriately designed for the weather, eat meat that I recognized, and of course get behind the wheel of a normal car... then turn the traction control off and put it in to a four wheel drift in skyline forrest on my way to Chipotle! (that absolutely never happened)
I was surprised to find that my tolerance for alcohol had stayed pretty much the same as before I left which either means I'm just genetically pre-dispositioned to party (highly likely) or that I've just pickled myself. I was reminded however that it is a terrible Idea to bar hop with people who are friends with the bar tenders. Taco's, however, are never a bad idea, especially on Tuesdays when they are a dollar at Chivo's in San Luis Obispo. In fact the seven $1 tacos I ate may have been what saved me from blacking out and dying in a gutter on Higuera St. I spent the next day recovered and buying ridiculous amounts of clothes from my favorite surf shops. I know I wont get to wear them until November but I don't care, retail therapy is still therapy.
One of my best friends got married and I got to finally wear my kilt. It was a big hit, except with the guy with the bored looking wife at my table who asked me if it was some kind of gag. Yes, centuries of tradition in the land of my ancestors is some pretty funny shit. Not so funny when a thousand drunk men in skirts come charging at you with the blades of their claymores glinting in the hazy morning sunshine of the last day of your life! Laugh then Mr. Stocks and Bonds. Several gin and tonics later I still could not be dragged on to the dance floor by my own mother and I thought how strange it is that I want attention so bad but am still so shy about certain things. She asked me if I was sad, it must have shown in my face that I was in a way. Beneath every joy I had while home there was always this tiny nagging voice telling me how temporary it all was. That every moment I spent took me closer to being far away again. The invincibility of youth wears off slowly and you start to see your parents as people who will not always be around and sometimes it just becomes too much to handle out of no where. Sometimes I feel like I sold off some of the best days of my life that I could have spent getting to know these people who have taken the last 26 years of their life doing everything they can to make my life easier. How do you repay that if you aren't around to go fishing or to eat lunch with?
Just before leave was over I went up to Alameda with my dad to see my grandmother and while I was at her house I walked upstairs and in to my late aunt Sue's old room. I don't think I'd ever really been in there before. When she was alive I felt like she was a woman who enjoyed her personal space. She fell ill and died during my first deployment while I was searching houses for weapons in the middle of the night. I looked at the books on the shelves and aging pictures of my aunt as a young woman competing at horse shows in full English style regalia. She was a breeder of champion standard poodles and I think in a way she liked them more than people which I used to think was odd but makes more and more sense the older I get. You can learn a lot about someone by what they leave behind. Bottles of herbal supplements, a calendar with pictures of old pagan runes, books on American history, small trinkets picked up from a life time of travel. A white plastic alarm clock with time becoming more the color of an egg shell, hands stopped at 4:31 with no one there to wind it. Everyday things now artifacts, clues to a woman who I never got to know in life. As I shut the door to go back downstairs it felt like waving goodbye to a friend who had already turned to walk away.
