Stress, the One-Eyed Demon & his Friend, the Fifty-Fingered Darkness

Liane Kupferburg Carter wrote an article at Autism after Sixteen entitled "Seeing Clearly" regarding one sneaky way that stress has affected her physical health; vision damage.  This is a big subject in our house--stress and its many manifestations--and our family has long been stressed past our healthy boundaries.  The most stressful part of all is letting go of our unrealistic expectations for living the lives we were given and accepting that there are some parts of life we cannot control and loving them for what they are.

And recently, one of my favorite bloggers, Leigh Merriday from Flappiness is... updated her blog post titled "Somebody's Knockin'" regarding the  effects of the stress of parenting a special needs child and the depression that lingers in the corner beside it, waiting for an  opportunity to reach out a hand and lead us into the darkness.

It inspired me to write this post.

Scratch that; I have needed to get this out for a long time.  Leigh Merriday's post inspired me to find the energy and the will to write this post. I knew this had to be said.  Out loud.

I need to write this post.

I need to write this post.

Stress, the One-Eyed Demon and his Friend, the Fifty Fingered Darkness...

I used to be smart.

I used to consider myself a woman of utmost competence.

But just now, I typed confidence instead of competence.

I was thinking competence, but I wrote something else.

I deleted that word.  Found myself frustrated at my mistake.

A mistake that four years ago, I never would have made.  And would have cringed if it was made by someone else.

I used to have a MENSA level IQ.  I was gifted, really, and I had the scores to prove it.  I considered myself a competent, capable young woman.  There was very little I considered off limits to what I could do as long as it was something that was physically in my power.  I made a habit of pushing my boundaries regularly and would flourish well in a respectfully competitive environment.  I could hold my own.

I never minced my words.  Never mispronounced or mispelled a thing.  And I cared for the religion of clear speaking enough to help others if they found themselves woefully mispronouncing words.  Always used the holiest standards of syntax and grammer.  Always doing my duty by scaffolding others when their grammer and syntax showed want because I cared; I really cared enough to be helpful and lead them grammatically through the straight and narrow. I was an English teacher's dream student, a literature master's best friend.  Once, I was an editor, an award winning in-house literary journal designer and editor for a community college.  I took home editing and literature awards alike at the state level.  I was an accomplished speaker.  Presenter.  Socialite.  Student.  Worker.  Woman.

Capable.

And then we got the news that we were expecting.  It was unexpected, a surprise if you will. (I have always loved the utterly silly use of the word expecting when really for us, it was quite unexpected).  A super surprise, as I wasn't expected to be able to have children.  In the preceding years, my womb had been ravaged by health issues.

I was doing 21 hours of coursework plus my editorship plus a leadership forum when I was in the process of treating my reproductive issues.  It was a couple years after Katrina; the Gulf Coast town I called home was still  quite base.  In between my busy college schedule, at my job, which thanks to broken infrastructure was an hour and a half from my college, I was seeing my doc for my angry womb.  Things were crazy.  Hectic.  Stressful. Especially since my now-husband and I were a fledgeling couple still trying to navigate some rough waters of our own.  And then suddenly, there we were, unexpectedly expecting.

It wasn't really an easy pregnancy. I spent many hours of this pregnancy in tears.   I ended up on bedrest.  Had two scares.  Some placental shearing.  Separately, Piggledy and I began seeing therapists to get ourselves ready for the forthcoming responsibiliy of parenthood.   That we were expecting was certainly our top priority. We attended classes.  We read the books.  We did our research. I brushed up on the curriculum of the development courses I had taken, Associates Degree now under my belt.  I was confident that this, too, I could master.

Eventually, we found our rhythm, Piggledy and I.  Our son was born a couple of months later.  He was beautiful, fair and blue-eyed to our darker features.  He had ten beautiful fingers and ten lovely little toes.  He performed well on his APGAR.  We were utterly thrilled.  For the next twelve hours, we could do nothing but smile through the fatigue as we caressed our new baby's skin.

Twelve hours later, our peace would disappear.  Our son began screaming.  Intense, piercing wails that rocked us to our core.  I was so exhausted.   I had just given birth not twenty four hours before and my epidural hardly worked (scoliosis, anyone?).  Piggledy was right there through it all with me.  He, too, was exhausted.  We tried everything.  Eventually, the other babies in the ward were wakened by our screaming, squealing baby and the nurses began popping their heads in to assure themselves that we weren't slowly gutting our newborn son.  None offered us anything beyond what we had already tried.  "Swaddle him."  "Rock him."  "Burp him."  "Rub his belly."  "Try formula with your breastmilk."  "Relax, he can feel your tension."

Then she came in.  We thought at first she would be Nurse Save-a-Mom  and that she was coming to help.  By this time, several hours of crying, we expected someone would spare a shred of humanity and step in to guide us through.  I laid in bed, my baby crooked under my arm while I rubbed him and patted him expectantly, and I looked up at her with imploring eyes.  I saw her mouth open and I clung to every word;  her sage wisdom that day: "..Should have known it would be you to give in and spoil your baby." 

It rocked me to my soul.  Every ounce of confidence I had in my parenting skills bled to my toes and down through the floor at that very moment.

It has never fully returned.

And the crying?  It didn't stop either.

We spent two years of utter hell trying to figure out what was wrong with our child.  Upon bringing him home, he screamed wickedly all through the night.  We brought him to his doctor who said "gas!" And sent him home.  At six weeks old, he screamed one night for ten unrelenting, torturous hours.  By this time, he'd vomited  at almost every feeding.  "GERD!" she swore.  His sleep schedule was awry; we were lucky to get three hours of sleep a night, barely functioning at home and on the peripherals at our jobs (once I left maternity leave).  "Bad parenting!" She claimed.  At nine months, a new phenomemon of parasomnial awakenings began that threatened to wreck what little sanity we had remaining; he would wake screaming like someone was repeatedly stabbing him. Each episode would last for up to an hour and it wasn't uncommon to have as many as six episodes in a night.  I would sit on the floor, wait till my baby was conscious enough to touch (for when he wasn't, he would not recognize us and he would kick and thrash), then rock him with tears in my eyes and my body shaking with adrenaline and fear.  My baby is hurting and I feel so helpless, I would think. "Bad jobs!"  the doc exclaimed.    We were living in a recession period in a town hit by several disasters including Katrina and the BP oil spill.  Our choice was either to quit work and draw government assistance or keep working despite that we both were in the service industry, working until ten PM some nights.  We wanted more for our son.  While I did quit work (but continued in college), we found no reprieve from our son's symptoms.  At around ten months, I remember thinking...there is something definitely wrong with this picture. I tried to put my finger on it.  I told close family and friends about my concerns and of what I thought we were seeing.  I think I know what this is...but then I was chastised by everyone.  How dare you judge your child that way!  Love him unconditionally for who he is; don't be that mom who compares her kids!  The thought that I could be not loving my child right quickly shut me up.  They made us feel like incompetent, overprotective, unloving parents. 

At one year, we figured out that his "baby bowel movements" were not normalizing either, evolving instead turning into malodorous, wet, constant explosions.  We kept thinking to ourselves, this can't be right, it can't be healthy.  My baby is hurting and we are helpless to stop it!  "LACTOSE INTOLERANCE!" the doc prescribed.  "Give baby less milk!" We tried to tell her the Lactaid wasn't working and nor was switching to soy.  She told us that our son's bowel movements were his version of normal.  Normal.

By this time we had slept maybe a total of 20 hours a week for a year. The pediatrician was sick of seeing us, sick of our "ignorance."  (Have I ever mentioned that I have a MENSA level IQ and that my husband, too, is brilliant, or that my college core was human development....with a pronounced emphasis on the critical first years of a child's life?)

Why didn't we change health providers?  Well, I wasn't working for one. We didn't have enough money to start over.  We were barely making ends meet as it was. And even if we did have the money to start over, our confidence in ourselves as parents was utterly shot.

It took us until my son was two and a half to start getting answers.

I saw it there on the internet one night.  While working on an assignment for school.  On a You-Tube video of a child who looked, jabbered, and played just like my son.

Autism.

With severe gastic disturbances including ulcers (which we now know for a fact have caused him pain all those screaming nights).  Casein intolerance.  Peanut allergy. Asthma.  Hay fever allergies.  Night terrors.  Sensory processing difficulties.  Delayed development.  Dysgraphia.  Hypotonic muscles/difficulty with long walks.

Autism.  Like I suspected so early on.  When out of love for my child, my worries were hushed by everyone else.

He is now a couple of months shy of five years old.

My memory is only a fraction as effective as it once was.  My recall mechanisms are pretty-well shot, I have difficulty transferring information from my short- to long-term memory.  I have lost a profound amount of my once vast vocabulary.  I struggle sometimes to make coherent thoughts.  I stutter sometimes because words and thoughts just leave me in mid-speaking.  My ability to multi-task has diminished significantly.

I feel lucky somedays to still be verbal, even if I am not nearly so effective anymore. 

I lose everything.  Everything.

I often forget dates, important tasks, and things that people tell me.

I am lucky to remember to brush my hair somedays. 

I feel rather silly when I try to have conversations somedays.  In fact, I think I'd go so far as to say I feel stupid.  Very stupid.  Incapable.  Incompetent.  A shell of my former self.

I have several health problems.  I spend more time than I'd like being sick or feeling unwell enough to function as I need to in order to be an effective person.  I feel awkward in social situations sometimes, more awkward in work situations on those days when I am lower functioning.

I had gone back to work after graduating college only to realize that a career may be a dream I never realize.  We live in constant fear of our son falling into his bad sleeping patterns (ala overstimulation); when he does fall into those patterns, it's like PTSD to think relive the fear that they will worsen.  Our son is still not BM potty trained.  We are ever vigilant that our son not see bad behaviors from other children.  We filter everything for him instead so that when he does see bad behaviors he does not see them as something to emulate, but rather something he is informed about as being inappropriate.

Parenting is important to us.  Although I never recovered my feelings of being as capable as I once felt, my husband and I have at least learned that we are effective right now.  We practice Conscious Discipline (Dr. Becky Bailey).  Everything is a lesson.  Every moment is a learning moment.  Every moment is a moment for us as parents to learn how to be better models for our son.

Which is why I needed to write this post.

I had to own the stress and its presence. 

I had to acknowledge the Darkness so that I recognize it when it appears.  I had to own the new person I am so I can be the best parent for my son and best wife I can be.

It hits me sometimes.  Very, very hard.  Sometimes, when I have seen my son off to school, I go back to sleep.  Sleep until I pick him up.  Sleep for hours.  Because the only thing that gets me out of bed is making sure he is well-cared for.  Sometimes, I struggle to be social, even with my own friends and family I know who love me because I just don't have the energy it takes to think about what to say anymore and because I feel like I have nothing worthy to say.  My life is consumed by parenting.  I don't have cool news about my job.  My son's school schedule keeps me from making true community committments that might be fodder for conversation.  I don't always have the effort to wear anything but my pajamas from the night before, riddled with hair from my kitty who likes to sleep in the crook of my arm when I am down.  No make-up on my bad skin.  Hair a mess.  I look like I might look like a crack-head.  Actually, if I were to be more accurate, like a methamphetamine user.  My eczema and psoriasis has worsened under the stress.  I am spotty with zits and blackheads from head to toe.  I just turned thirty but have Bride of Frankenstein gray streaks peppering my hair.  I naturally have a gap in my teeth so when I'm unkept, I just look like someone scary.  And then I open my mouth and the words don't come like they used to.

And the Darkness will be present.

And sometimes, I have clarity and perspective and I feel just fine.  Like today.

It is now taking me two and a half weeks to write this post. 

Because it is emotional for me.

It is painful.  Cathartic.  Happy. Sad. 

Because I need to be okay with taking baby steps. 

I don't hate my life and I don't hate autism.  And despite being disillusioned by what stress has done to me, I don't  hate my life and am not bitter.

Actually, I feel blessed beyond what I could write.  I love my son.  I love everything about him.  He is actually quite happy and well-adjusted.  Autism has brought my family closer together, despite the stress.  My husband and I are a team.   Best friends.  On the same page.  Not to say we don't have our moments, but we have had to get our priorities straight early on with our son's needs and so we don't waste our energies on pettier things. And I like my life per se', and would be quite okay if stress didn't actually affect us this strongly.  And knowing that feeling vulnerable to stress has made us more vulnerable to Dark days.

I know that the Darkness is a product of stress, not my son's autism.  My son could have been born a million other ways and it would still be stressful.  He could have been born with Cystic Fibrosis (a diagnosis I have always feared), could be blind, could have Down Syndrome, could have a metabolic disorder, could have juvenile diabetes, could have a rare disorder that could kill him before age ten and there still would be stress.  And although parenting a child in a world not made for my child is stressful, so is a world not made for individuals with addictions, with depression, with Fibromyalgia, with Lupus, etc.  My son could have had any of those diagnoses and the stress would still be with us. He could never have been born at all and I could have this stress.

I know that allowing the Darkness to take over helps no one, least of all my son. 

So I write this post.

Last year I made a set of New Years Resolutions, including mostly ways to de-stress ranging from forcing myself to do things that I don't feel I have the energy for, to painting my toenails again, to feeling less guilt when I do take time for myself and most importantly, including to go back to writing, once an avid passion of mine.  Something I could be good at.  I told myself, I would write a blog without stress, without feeling like a failure, thus is born, Higgle-E-Piggledy, the first-draft rantings of an autism mommy.  Proofread if I have time.  If I want to.  If I feel like it.  And not feel bad about my grammar.  About incomplete sentences.  About misplaced modifiers and dangling participles.  Because this isn't about what I don't do the way I used to.  This is about getting it out and talking about it.  Sharing.  Connecting.  Even if it's imperfect.

It's about finding myself now and loving me regardless. 

Taking steps to get there.  Baby steps.

Letting the world know so I can be held accountable to reestablishing my person and so the world can, too.  So they can understand the journey. 

So I can be the best person, parent, wife, daughter, friend I can be.  Even if it means I'm not the best student, speaker, writer, woman, presenter, socialite. 

Because even if I'm not who I used to be, I'm worthy. 

And my son and my husband deserve to know that they are worthy, too.

American Cooze

While you get a 24 hour reprieve from your daily grind, from your 9-5 and you barbeque or boil crawfish or make your way to the beach or nearest swimming hole, remember that this "national" holiday isn't a holiday for everyone. 

In fact, those who really deserve this holiday are bound to still be "working" today. 

Policemen will be patrolling the roads to keep the rabblerousers in check.  Firemen will be on call or in wait for a holiday emergency.   In some far off land are soldiers desperate for a day reprieve from the loneliness and tragedies of war.  
 
And here in your own neighborhood, there will be families wishing they had loved ones home to share their joy, families wishing that those who are home weren't suffering so immensely with wounds both obvious and unseen desperate for just done day reprieve from incredible scars, or worse, families wishing that those who did come home to them weren't six feet under, getting their reprieve in a pine box.

In your twenty-four hours of "reprieve" today, I ask that besides visiting the graves of those who have served, that you make at least one hour to dedicate to understanding the burden of those who have earned our reprieve.  No one visits this subject with such clarity and vision as Vietnam Veteran and writer, Tim O'Brien.  Please, first take a minute to read this short story.


***NOTE:  Graphic Content.***
Here is where you can find "How to Tell a True War Story," the full text version.


“How to Tell a True War Story” (1990)  --Tim O’Brien

from Paula Geyh, et al., eds., Postmodern American Fiction: A Norton
Anthology (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), 174-183.

This is true.

I had a buddy in Vietnam. His name was Bob Kiley but everybody called him Rat.

A friend of his gets killed, so about a week later Rat sits down and writes a letter to the guy’s sister. Rat tells her what a great brother she had, how strack the guy was, a number one pal and comrade. A real soldier’s soldier, Rat says. Then he tells a few stories to make the point, how her brother would always volunteer for stuff nobody else would volunteer for in a million years, dangerous stuff, like doing recon or going out on these really badass night patrols. Stainless steel balls, Rat tells her. The guy was a little crazy, for sure, but crazy in a good way, a real daredevil, because he liked the challenge of it, he liked testing himself, just man against gook. A great, great guy, Rat says.

Anyway, it’s a terrific letter, very personal and touching. Rat almost bawls writing it. He gets all teary telling about the good times they had together, how her brother made the war seem almost fun, always raising hell and lighting up villes and bringing smoke to bear every which way. A great sense of humor, too. Like the time at this river when he went fishing with a whole damn crate of hand grenades. Probably the funniest thing in world history, Rat says, all that gore, about twenty zillion dead gook fish. Her brother, he had the right attitude. He knew how to have a good time. On Halloween, this real hot spooky night, the dude paints up his body all different colors and puts on this weird mask and goes out on ambush almost stark naked, just boots and balls and an M-16. A tremendous human being, Rat says. Pretty nutso sometimes, but you could trust him with your life.
And then the letter gets very sad and serious. Rat pours his heart out. He says he loved the guy. He says the guy was his best friend in the world. They were like soul mates, he says, like twins or something, they had a whole lot in common. He tells the guy’s sister he’ll look her up when the war’s over.
So what happens?

Rat mails the letter. He waits two months. The dumb cooze never writes back.

*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*
A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things they have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. Listen to Rat Kiley. Cooze, he says. He does not say bitch. He certainly does not say woman, or girl, He says cooze. Then he spits and stares. He’s nineteen years old—it’s too much for him—so he looks at you with those big gentle, killer eyes and says cooze, because his friend is dead, and because it’s so incredibly sad and true: she never wrote back.

You can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don’t care for obscenity, you don’t care for the truth; if you don’t care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war,they come home talking dirty.
Listen to Rat: “Jesus Christ, man, I write this beautiful fucking letter, I slave over it, and what happens? The dumb cooze never writes back.”

*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*

The dead guy’s name was Curt Lemon. What happened was, we crossed a muddy river and marched west into the mountains, and on the third day we took a break along a trail junction in deep jungle. Right away, Lemon and Rat Kiley started goofing off. They didn’t understand about the spookiness. They were kids; they just didn’t know. A nature hike, they thought, not even a war, so they went off into the shade of some giant trees—quadruple canopy, no sunlight at all—and they were giggling and calling each other motherfucker and playing a silly game they’d invented. The game involved smoke grenades, which were harmless unless you did stupid things, and what they did was pull out the pin and stand a few feet apart and play catch under the shade of those huge trees. Whoever chickened out was a motherfucker. And if nobody chickened out, the grenade would make a light popping sound and they’d be covered with smoke and they’d laugh and dance around and then do it again.

It’s all exactly true.

It happened to me, nearly twenty years ago, but I still remember that trail junction and the giant trees and a soft dripping sound somewhere beyond the trees. I remember the smell of moss. Up in the canopy there were tiny white blossoms, but no sunlight at all, and I remember the shadows spreading out under the trees where Lemon and Rat Kiley were playing catch with smoke grenades. Mitchell Sanders sat flipping his yo-yo. Norman Bowker and Kiowa and Dave Jensen were dozing, or half-dozing, and all around us were those ragged green mountains.
Except for the laughter things were quiet.
At one point, I remember, Mitchell Sanders turned and looked at me, not quite nodding, as if to warn me about something, as if he already knew, then after a while he rolled up his yo-yo and moved away.
It’s hard to tell what happened next.

They were just goofing. There was a noise, I suppose, which must’ve been the detonator, so I glanced behind me and watched Lemon step from the shade into bright sunlight. His face was suddenly brown and shining. A handsome kid, really. Sharp gray eyes, lean and narrow-waisted, and when he died it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms.

*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*

In any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed. When a booby trap explodes, you close your eyes and duck and float outside yourself. When a guy dies, like Lemon, you look away and then look back for a moment and then look away again. The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed.

In many cases a true war story cannot be believed. If you believe it, be skeptical. It’s a question of credibility. Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t because the normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness.

In other cases you can’t even tell a true war story. Sometimes it’s just beyond telling.

I heard this one, for example, from Mitchell Sanders. It was near dusk and we were sitting
at my foxhole along a wide, muddy river north of Quang Ngai. I remember how peaceful the twilight was. A deep pinkish red spilled out on the river, which moved without sound, and in the >morning we would cross the river and march west into the mountains. The occasion was right for a good story.

“God’s truth,” Mitchell Sanders said. “A six-man patrol goes up into the mountains on a basic listening-post operation. The idea’s to spend a week up there, just lie low and listen for enemy movement. They’ve got a radio along, so if they hear anything suspicious—anything—they’re supposed to call in artillery or gunships, whatever it takes. Otherwise they keep strict field discipline. Absolute silence. They just listen.”
He glanced at me to make sure I had the scenario. He was playing with his yo-yo, making it dance with short, tight little strokes of the wrist.
His face was blank in the dusk.

“We’re talking hardass LP. These six guys, they don’t say boo for a solid week. They don’t got tongues. All ears.”
“Right,” I said.

“Understand me?”

“Invisible.”

Sanders nodded.


“Affirm,” he said. “Invisible. So what happens is, these guys get themselves deep in the bush, all camouflaged up, and they lie down and wait and that’s all they do, nothing else, they lie there for seven straight days and just listen. And man, I’ll tell you—it’s spooky. This is mountains. You don’t know spooky till you been there. Jungle, sort of, except it’s way up in the clouds and there’s always this fog-like rain, except it’s not raining—everything’s all wet and swirly and tangled up and you can’t see jack, you can’t find your own pecker to piss with. Like you don’t even have a body. Serious spooky. You just go with the vapors—the fog sort of takes you in....And the sounds, man. The sounds carry forever. You hear shit nobody should ever hear.”
Sanders was quiet for a second, just working the yo-yo, then he smiled at me. “So, after a couple days the guys start hearing this real soft, kind of wacked-out music. Weird echoes and stuff. Like a radio or something, but its not a radio, it’s this strange gook music that comes right out of the rocks. Faraway, sort of, but right up close, too. They try to ignore it. But it’s a listening post, right? So they listen. And every night they keep hearing this crazyass gook concert. All kinds of chimes and xylophones. I mean, this is wilderness—no way, it can’t be real—but there it is, like the mountains are tuned in to Radio Fucking Hanoi. Naturally they get nervous. One guy sticks Juicy Fruit in his ears. Another guy almost flips. Thing is, though, they can’t report music. They can’t get on the horn and call back to base and say, ‘Hey, listen, we need some firepower, we got to blow away this weirdo gook rock band.’ They can’t do that. It wouldn’t go down. So they lie there in the fog and keep their months shut. And what makes it extra bad, see, is the poor dudes can’t horse around like normal. Can’t joke it away. Can’t even talk to each other except
maybe in whispers, all hush-hush, and that just revs up the willies. All they do is listen.”

Again there was some silence as Mitchell Sanders looked out on the river. The dark was coming on hard now, and off to the west I could see the mountains rising in silhouette, all the mysteries and unknowns.

“This next part,” Sanders said quietly, “you won’t believe.”
“Probably not,” I said.

“You won’t. And you know why?” He gave me a long, tired smile. “Because it happened. Because every word is absolutely dead-on true.”

Sanders made a little sound in his throat, like a sigh, as if to say he didn’t care if I believed it or not. But he did care. He wanted me to believe, I could tell. He seemed sad, in a way.
“These six guys, they’re pretty fried out by now, and one night they start hearing voices. Like at a cocktail party. That’s what it sounds like, this big swank gook cocktail party somewhere out there in the fog. Music and chitchat and stuff. It’s crazy, I know, but they hear the champagne corks. They hear the actual martini glasses. Real hoity-toity, all very civilized, except this isn’t civilization. This is Nam.

“Anyway, the guys try to be cool. They just lie there and groove, but after a while they start hearing—you won’t believe this—they hear chamber music. They hear violins and shit. They hear this terrific mama-san soprano. Then after a while they hear gook opera and a glee club and the Haiphong Boys Choir and a barbershop quartet and all kinds of weird chanting and Buddha Budda stuff. The whole time, in the background, there's still that cocktail party going on. All these different voices. Not human voices, though. Because it’s the mountains. Followme? The rock—it’s talking. And the fog, too, and the grass and the goddamn mongooses. Everything talks. The trees talk politics, the monkeys talk religion. The whole country. Vietnam, the place talks. It talks. Understand? Nam—it truly talks.

“The guys can’t cope. They lose it. They get on the radio and report enemy movement—a whole army, they say—and they order up the firepower. They get arty and gunships. They call in air strikes. And I’ll tell you, they fuckin’ crash that cocktail party. All night long, they just smoke those mountains. They make jungle juice. They blow away trees and glee clubs and whatever else there is to blow away. Scorch time. They walk napalm up and down the ridges. They bring in the Cobras and F-4s, they use Willie Peter and HE and incendiaries. It’s all fire. They make those mountains burn.
“Around dawn things finally get quiet. Like you never even heard quiet before. One of those real thick, real misty days—just clouds and fog, they’re off in this special zone—and the mountains are absolutely dead-flat silent. Like Brigadoon—pure vapor, you know? Everything’s all sucked up inside the fog. Not a single sound, except they still hear it.
“So they pack up and start humping. They head down the mountain, back to base camp, and when they get there they don’t say diddly. They don’t talk. Not a word, like they’re deaf and dumb. Later on this fat bird colonel comes up and asks what the hell happened out there. What’d they hear? Why all the ordnance? The man’s ragged out, he gets down tight on their case. I mean, they spent six trillion dollars on firepower, and this fatass colonel wants answers, he wants to know what the fuckin’ story is.
“But the guys don’t say zip. They just look at him for a while, sort of funnylike, sort of amazed, and the whole war is right there in that stare. It says everything you can’t ever say. It says, man, you got wax in your ears. It says, poor bastard, you’ll never know—wrong frequency—you don’t even want to hear this. Then they salute the fucker and walk away, because certain stories you don’t ever tell.”

*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*

You can tell a true war story by the way it never seems to end. Not then, not ever. Not when Mitchell Sanders stood up and moved off into the dark.
It all happened.

Even now I remember that yo-yo. In a way, I suppose, you had to be there, you had to hear it, but I could tell how desperately Sanders wanted me to believe him, his frustration at not quite getting the details right, not quite pinning down the final and definitive truth.

And I remember sitting at my foxhole that night, watching the shadows of Quang Ngai, thinking about the coming day and how we would cross the river and march west into the mountains, all the ways I might die, all the things I did not understand.
Late in the night Mitchell Sanders touched my shoulder.
“Just came to me,” he whispered. “The moral, I mean. Nobody listens. Nobody hears nothing. Like that fatass colonel. The politicians, all the civilian types, what they need is to go out on LP. The vapors, man. Trees and rocks—you got to listen to your enemy.”

*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*

And then again, in the morning, Sanders came up to me. The platoon was preparing to move out, checking weapons, going through all the little rituals that preceded a day’s march. Already the lead squad had crossed the river and was filing off toward the west.
“I got a confession to make,” Sanders said. “Last night, man, I had to make up a few
“I know that.”

“The glee club. There wasn’t any glee club.”
“Right.”

“No opera.”

“Forget it, I understand.”

“Yeah, but listen, it’s still true. Those six guys, they heard wicked sound out there. They heard sound you just plain won’t believe.”
Sanders pulled on his rucksack, closed his eyes for a moment, then almost smiled at me. I knew what was coming.
“All right,” I said, “what’s the moral?”

“Forget it.”

“No, go ahead.”

For a long while he was quiet, looking away, and the silence kept stretching out until it was almost embarrassing. Then he shrugged and gave me a stare that lasted all day.
“Hear that quiet, man?” he said. “There’s your moral.”

*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*

In a true war story, if there’s a moral at all, it’s like the thread that makes the cloth. You can’t tease it out. You can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning. And in the end, really, there’s nothing much to say about a true war story, except maybe “Oh.”
True war stories do not generalize. They do not indulge in abstraction or analysis.
For example: War is hell. As a moral declaration the old truism seems perfectly true, and yet because it abstracts, because it generalizes, I can’t believe it with my stomach. Nothing turns inside.
It comes down to gut instinct. A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe.
This one does it for me. I’ve told it before—many times, many versions—but here’s what actually happened.

We crossed the river and marched west into the mountains. On the third day, Curt Lemon stepped on a booby-trapped 105 round. He was playing catch with Rat Kiley, laughing, and then he was dead. The trees were thick; it took nearly an hour to cut an LZ for the dustoff.
Later, higher in the mountains, we came across a baby VC water buffalo. What it was doing there I don’t know—no farms or paddies—but we chased it down and got a rope around it and led it along to a deserted village where we set for the night. After supper Rat Kiley went over and stroked its nose.
He opened up a can of C rations, pork and beans, but the baby buffalo wasn’t interested.
Rat shrugged.

He stepped back and shot it through the right front knee. The animal did not make a sound. It went down hard, then got up again, and Rat took careful aim and shot off an ear. He shot it in the hindquarters and in the little hump at its back. He shot it twice in the flanks. It wasn’t to kill; it was just to hurt. He put the rifle muzzle up against the mouth and shot the mouth away. Nobody said much. The whole platoon stood there watching, feeling all kinds of things, but there wasn’t a great deal of pity for the baby water buffalo. Lemon was dead. Rat Kiley had lost his best friend in the world. Later in the week he would write a long personal letter to the guy’s sister, who would not write back, but for now it was a question of pain. He shot off the tail. He shot away chunks of meat below the ribs. All around us there was the smell of smoke and filth, and deep greenery, and the evening was humid and very hot. Rat went to automatic. He shot randomly, almost casually, quick little spurts in the belly and butt. Then he reloaded, squatted down, and shot it in the left front knee. Again the animal fell hard and tried to get up, but this time it couldn’t quite make it. It wobbled and went down sideways. Rat shot it in the nose. He bent forward and whispered something, as if talking to a pet, then he shot it in the throat. All the while the baby buffalo was silent, or almost silent, just a light bubbling sound where the nose had been. It lay very still. Nothing moved except the eyes, which were enormous, the pupils shiny black and dumb.
Rat Kiley was crying. He tried to say something, but then cradled his rifle and went off by himself.
The rest of us stood in a ragged circle around the baby buffalo. For a time no one spoke. We had witnessed something essential, something brand-new and profound, a piece of the world so startling there was not yet a name for it.
Somebody kicked the baby buffalo.
It was still alive, though just barely, just in the eyes.
“Amazing,” Dave Jensen said. “My whole life, I never seen anything like it.”
“Never?”

“Not hardly. Not once.”

Kiowa and Mitchell Sanders picked up the baby buffalo. They hauled it across the open square, hoisted it up, and dumped it in the village well.
Afterward, we sat waiting for Rat to get himself together.
“Amazing,” Dave Jensen kept saying.

“For sure.”

“A new wrinkle. I never seen it before.”

Mitchell Sanders took out his yo-yo. “‘Well, that’s Nam,” he said, “Garden of Evil. Over here, man, every sin’s real fresh and original.”

*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*

How do you generalize?

War is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.
The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty. For all its horror, you can’t help but gape at the awful majesty of combat. You stare out at tracer rounds unwinding through the dark like brilliant red ribbons. You crouch in ambush as a cool, impassive moon rises over the nighttime paddies. You admire the fluid symmetries of troops on the move, the harmonies of sound and shape and proportion, the great sheets of metal-fire streaming down from a gunship, the illumination rounds, the white phosphorous, the purply black glow of napalm, the rocket’s red glare. It’s not pretty, exactly. It’s astonishing. It fills the eye. It commands you. You hate it, yes, but your eyes do not. Like a killer forest fire, like cancer under a microscope, any battle or bombing raid or artillery barrage has the aesthetic purity of absolute moral indifference—a powerful, implacable beauty—and a true war story will tell the truth about this, though the truth is ugly.

To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true. At its core, perhaps, war is just another name for death, and yet any soldier will tell you, if he tells the truth, that proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life. After a fire fight, there is always the immense pleasure of aliveness. The trees are alive. The grass, the soil—everything. All around you things are purely living, and you among them, and the aliveness makes you tremble. You feel an intense, out-of-the-skin awareness of your living self—your truest self, the human being you want to be and then become by the force of wanting it. In the midst of evil you want to be a good man. You want decency. You want justice and courtesy and human concord, things you never knew you wanted. There is a kind of largeness to it; a kind of godliness. Though it’s odd, you’re never more alive than when you’re almost dead. You recognize what’s valuable. Freshly, as if for the first time, you love what’s best in yourself and in the world, all that might be lost. At the hour of dusk you sit at your foxhole and look out on a wide river turning pinkish red, and at the mountains beyond, and although in the morning you must cross the river and go into the mountains and do terrible things and maybe die, even so, you find yourself studying the fine colors on the river, you feel wonder and awe at the setting of the sun, and you are filled with a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always should be, but now is not.
Mitchell Sanders was right. For the common soldier, at least, war has the feel—the spiritual texture—of a great ghostly fog, thick and permanent. There is no clarity. Everything swirls. The old rules are no longer binding, the old truths no longer true. Right spills over into wrong. Order blends into chaos, love into hate, ugliness into beauty, law into anarchy, civility into savagery. The vapors suck you in. You can’t tell where you are, or why you’re there, and the only certainty is absolute ambiguity.
In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it’s safe to say that in a true war story nothing much is ever very true.

*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*

Often in a true war story there is not even a point, or else the point doesn’t hit you until twenty years later, in your sleep, and you wake up and shake your wife and start telling the story to her, except when you get to the end you’ve forgotten the point again. And then for a long time you lie there watching the story happen in your head. You listen to your wife’s breathing. The war’s over. You close your eyes. You smile and think, Christ, what’s the point?

*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*

This one wakes me up.

In the mountains that day, I watched Lemon turn sideways. He laughed and said something to Rat Kiley. Then he took a peculiar half step, moving from shade into bright sunlight, and the booby-trapped 105 round blew him into a tree. The parts were just hanging there, so Norman Bowker and I were ordered to shinny up and peel him off. I remember the white bone of an arm. I remember pieces of skin and something wet and yellow that must’ve been the intestines. The gore was horrible, and stays with me, but what wakes me up twenty years later is Norman Bowker singing “Lemon Tree” as we threw down the parts. *
You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let’s say, and afterward you ask, “Is it true?” and if the answer matters, you’ve got your answer.
For example, we’ve all heard this one. Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast and saves his three buddies.
Is it true?

The answer matters.

You’d feel cheated if it never happened. Without the grounding reality, it’s just a trite bit of puffery, pure Hollywood, untrue in the way all such stories are untrue. Yet even if it did happen—and maybe it did, anything’s possible—even then you know it can’t be true, because a true war story does not depend upon that kind of truth. Happeningness is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth. For example: Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast, but it’s a killer grenade and everybody dies anyway. Before they die, though, one of the dead guys says, “The fuck you do that for?” and the jumper says, “Story of my life, man,” and the other guy starts to smile but he’s dead.
That’s a true story that never happened.


*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*

Twenty years later, I can still see the sunlight on Lemon’s face. I can see him turning, looking back at Rat Kiley, then he laughed and took that curious half-step from shade into sunlight, his face suddenly brown and shining, and when his foot touched down, in that instant, he must’ve thought it was the sunlight that was killing him. It was not the sunlight. It was a rigged 105 round. But if I could ever get the story right, how the sun seemed to gather around him and pick him up and lift him into a tree, if I could somehow recreate the fatal whiteness of that light, the quick glare, the obvious cause and effect, then you would believe the last thing Lemon believed, which for him must’ve been the final truth.

*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*

Now and then, when I tell this story, someone will come up to me afterward and say she liked it. It’s always a woman. Usually it’s an older woman of kindly temperament and humane politics. She’ll explain that as a rule she hates war stories, she can’t understand why people want to wallow in blood and gore. But this one she liked. Sometimes, even, there are little tears. What I should do, she’ll say, is put it all behind me. Find new stories to tell.
I won’t say it but I’ll think it.
I’ll picture Rat Kiley’s face, his grief, and I’ll think, You dumb cooze.
Because she wasn’t listening.
It wasn’t a war story. It was a love story. It was a ghost story.
But you can’t say that. All you can do is tell it one more time, patiently, adding and subtracting, making up a few things to get at the real truth. No Mitchell Sanders, you tell her. No Lemon, no Rat Kiley. And it didn’t happen in the mountains, it happened in this little village on the Batangan Peninsula, and it was raining like crazy, and one night a guy named Stink Harris woke up screaming with a leech on his tongue. You can tell a true war story if you just keep on telling it.

In the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It’s about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It’s about love and memory. It’s about sorrow. It’s about sisters who never write back and people who never listen.



*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*



(I do not take credit for any of the photos in this blog.  Each belongs to their respective owners).

Call me a cheerleader for the underdog and you probably wouldn't be far off.  Or Mama Hen.  I have been called that one many times before.  Hurting, wounded, or those in pain break my heart.  Like, make me want to vomit and cry simultaneously break my heart.  Like, turning my head to graphic violence and it staying with me night after night sort of heartbreak.  So when I saw this, I can't even begin to tell you how sick it made me:

Sure We're Cute, but have you Seen our Parents?

I am ashamed.  Ashamed that this happened in my home state.  I am ashamed that someone, a man of God of all people, would find this to be okay.  Ashamed that people are so self-absorbed that they support such practices without ever asking questions.

I have heard all the reasons against adopting from the local animal shelters:  they shelters are dirty, the dogs are untrained, the animals are mutts, they are not always healthy, they aren't papered, the animals are fixed, they cost too much. 

I think we should have an enlightenment talk.  That purebred you dropped at least a couple hundred on?  Tell me about the shelter it came from?  How clean is that shelter?  How trained are those dogs?  How healthy are these animals?


Would you board your precious Fido in a shelter that looked like this?  Brought him to a veterinarian that treated him this way?  Would YOU be okay allowing Fido to live like this?  Because when you don't pick your breeder carefully, THIS is what you are paying to happen.

I'm not against animal breeding.  I know a few reputable, dignified, and kind breeders.  Their breeding pairs are treated like pets, not property.  They assure that the health of the animals they are breeding is priority and they place great import on assuring that the pets they are breeding do not propagate further genetic problems.  I am not against all breeders, let me make that clear.

Puppy Mill dog who lives in perpetual darkness

But I do take high offense to those who care more about breed than about care.  Those flea market/backyard breeders will breed and re-breed as often as they can.  They will often own several pairs of pets/breeding parents to continue the output.  The over-bred parents often breed several unhealthy pups/pets; those pets when unfixed and sold, go on to propagate unhealthy breed lines, resulting in significant deficiencies in life quality for these animals.  Many end up in humane shelters anyway because their buyers were anticipating a pretty face and a brag-worthy breed title, not a life-time commitment to a dog with heart problems,cancers, hip problems, liver problems, etc.  What of the unsold puppies, healthy or not, the overstock and manufacturer's defects?  Well, they go to shelters, too.  They over crowd shelters and increase the chances of getting euthanized or causing other animals to be euthanized by taking up that space.  And if there is no room in shelters, they either lament and die in enclosures or they end up in a sack in the river. 

From The Canine Behavior Series:

        "Puppies produced in this situation have the wrong start in life. Experiences in the early weeks are critical to a dog's development. Commercially bred puppies miss vital experiences they need during this time, and they are exposed to experiences that harm their emotional stability for later. One experience many of them have is to leave the mother and littermates far too early in order to be in the pet shop on display for sale at the 'cutest' time.

           Behavior problems you may experience with a puppy from this source include house-training issues because the puppy has been confined too close to feces and urine. This causes damage to the pup's natural instincts to keep the den area clean. These pups have also typically missed important conditioning to appropriate surfaces for defecation and urination. They may never have even been on grass.

      A frightened mother dog can transmit her fears to her pups. Leaving the mother and litter-mates too early can result later in biting problems, since the pup has missed early bite inhibition that needs to happen in the litter.

        Breeding dogs who have lived normal lives will have been observed around children, men, other dogs, cats, strangers, unexpected situations and other things that some dogs cannot handle. If the temperament of either parent isn't safe around humans, a responsible breeder will not use that dog for breeding. Dogs in a commercial breeding operation do not live normal lives, so the breeders do not know whether the dogs they use for breeding have reliable temperaments for family life. Decisions about which male to use with which female are based on profitability (how many puppies they can get in how short a time), leaving genetic issues for the unsuspecting puppy buyers to worry about later.

          The physical problems that result from a poor start in life as well as poor genetic selection of the parent dogs can also profoundly affect the behavior of a puppy bred by a commercial breeder. Pain and fear cause dogs to react defensively. Dogs don't show their pain in the same ways that people do, and often a change in behavior is the first sign-sometimes the only sign-that the dog is ill or has a genetically based health issue."

Is that what kind of pet you want?  Is that the price you are willing to pay? 

Before you buy, do your research.  You wouldn't wish to buy high quality meat from a dirty store would you?  Ask to visit the breeder's work area.  Visit the pet parents.  Make regular visits to the puppy/pet you are sponsoring.   And please remember, animals should never be given to children as gifts.  Rabbits, chickens, puppies, and kittens are lifetime commitments on which adults decide. 

A recent raid in Kiln, Mississippi resulted in several unwanted dyed chickens being taken into custody and rabbits that had to be cut from their cages.  I don't imagine their Easter was jolly.

"Leftover" dyed Easter chicks.

Check out this wonderful article from www.PAWS.org:

Buyer Beware: The Problem with Puppy Mills and Backyard Breeders

Choosing to bring a pet into your life can be a tough decision, especially when deciding where to get one. You might also have concerns about "puppy mills" or "backyard breeders," and want to know how to steer clear of them. Perhaps you don't even know what these are and need more information. As you begin your pet research, here are some things to consider.

Puppy mills

Puppy mills are commercial breeding facilities that mass-produce dogs (and cats in cat mills) for sale through pet stores, or directly to consumers through classified ads or the Internet. Roughly 90 percent of puppies in pet stores come from puppy mills. Many retailers who buy animals from such facilities take the wholesaler's word that the animals are happy and healthy without seeing for themselves.
In most states, these commercial breeding kennels can legally keep hundreds of dogs in cages their entire lives, for the sole purpose of continuously churning out puppies. The animals produced range from purebreds to any number of the latest "designer" mixed breeds. Cat breeding occurs under similar conditions to supply pet stores with kittens.

Animals in puppy mills are treated like cash crops

• They are confined to squalid, overcrowded cages with minimal shelter from extreme weather and no choice but to sit and sleep in their own excrement.
• Animals suffer from malnutrition or starvation due to inadequate or unsanitary food and water.
• Sick or dying animals receive little or no veterinary care.
• Adult animals are continuously bred until they can no longer produce, then destroyed or discarded.
• Kittens and puppies are taken from their mothers at such an early age; many suffer from serious behavior problems.

Backyard breeders

Backyard breeders are also motivated by profit. Ads from these unscrupulous breeders fill the classifieds. Backyard breeders may appear to be the nice neighbor next door-in fact, even seemingly good-intentioned breeders may treat their breeding pairs as family pets. However, continuously breeding animals for years to produce litters for a profit still jeopardizes the animals' welfare.
Some backyard breeders may only breed their family dog once in awhile, but they often are not knowledgeable on how to breed responsibly, such as screening for genetic defects. Responsible, proper breeding entails much more than simply putting two dogs together.

Look for these red flags:

• The seller has many types of purebreds or "designer" hybrid breeds being sold at less than six weeks old.
• Breeders who are reluctant to show potential customers the entire premises on which animals are being bred and kept.
• Breeders who don't ask a lot of questions of potential buyers.
• No guarantees-responsible breeders make a commitment to take back the pet at anytime during the animal's life, no matter the reason.

Because puppy mills and backyard breeders choose profit over animal welfare, their animals typically do not receive proper veterinary care. Animals may seem healthy at first but later show issues like congenital eye and hip defects, parasites or even the deadly Parvovirus.

Taking homes away

When puppy mills and backyard breeders flood the market with animals, they reduce homes available for animals from reputable establishments, shelters and rescue groups. Every year, more than 150,000 cats and dogs enter shelters in Washington State-6 to 8 million animals enter shelters nationwide. Sadly, only about 15 percent of people with pets in the U.S. adopted them from a shelter or rescue group, leaving so many deserving pets left behind.

Help stop the suffering by taking these steps:

1. Be a responsible, informed consumer-if you do buy from a breeder, go to a reputable one who:
   • Will show you where the dogs spend their time and introduces you to the puppy's parents.
   • Explains the puppy's medical history, including vaccines, and gives you their veterinarian's contact info.
   • Doesn't have puppies available year-round, yet may keep a waiting list for interested people.
   • Asks about your family's lifestyle, why you want a dog, and your care and training plans for the puppy.
   • Doesn't use pressure sales tactics.
2. Adopt from a shelter or breed-specific rescue group near you-typically 25% of the animals in shelters are purebred.
3. Support laws that protect animals from puppy mill cruelty-tell your elected officials you support laws which cap the number of animals a person can own and breed, and establish care standards for exercise, housing, access to food and water and regular veterinary care.
4. Urge your local pet store to support shelters-animals are often used to draw consumers into stores. Encourage pet stores to promote shelter animals for adoption instead of replenishing their supply through questionable sources.
5. Donate pet supplies to local shelters to help those rescued from the puppy mills and many other homeless animals in need.
6. Learn more at:
   • StopPuppyMills.com (The Humane Society of the United States)
   • PrisonersOfGreed.org
   • CAPS-web.org (Companion Animal Protection Society)