Levity *because* Gravity, pt. 3
young adulthood
As mentioned in part 1, this series of posts have been more difficult for me to write.
To recap: My shit hasn’t felt exceptional, and it’s certainly not “more/less” or “better/worse” than anyone else’s. And I love my life. I wouldn’t trade a moment. I am not better than anyone because of my experiences, or because of where I am having experienced them.
My stories of my parents, brothers, and others are just stories. I’m sharing this series because part of me struggles with the light-hearted content of my posts. Given the political climate, the meta-crisis, the cognition crisis, the state of the planet as a living being crawling with living creatures, my posts could come off as tone deaf. Or arrogant. Out of context and context-less. In fact, in a way, they just do, it’s the nature of bites.
But I wanted to share some of how I got here, where I am, why I’m sharing levity, unapologetically; each path matters, each pather matters. Mattering. Gravity.
It’s levity because gravity, not despite it. In the end, may I have contributed to love with love.
I joined the Army while I was still in high school; I needed my mom’s signature, and boy, did that tear her up. But she did it, because that’s what love does - it lets people find their own way. I don’t know how many years I potentially took off her life with that decision. She (mostly silently) anguished over each deployment (I understand this now, even as I used to think she was overreacting, even as much as she repressed her expression to me).
I had a few close calls with loss of life. Once, while snowboarding, which was considered my assigned duty for the Army that day — it was a morale, welfare, and recreation day, and we weren’t required to partake of the activities, but we did have to be at the slopes. It was my first time, and I let my buddies convince me to do the black diamond route (the other paths were closed due to the quality of the snow being so poor – feel free to read “so poor” as “icy as fuck”).
The path had short banks on either side to keep boarders from falling into the ravine. You know – experienced boarders, who know about things like quality of ice, and cutting left, and cutting right, and just going down the mountain… Well, a little way down, I went to cut left, and I just kept on my trajectory, and went up and over the bank, down into the ravine, smashing into trees chaotically on the way (which luckily slowed my fall).
At one point I was jerked to a stop, my head facing down the hill. I lifted my head to see my board caught between two trees, but it was bending badly, as though it were going to break in half! Then it snapped back to straight and I was in perfect snow silence. I let my gaze travel “up” (which was technically down, below me, since I was nearly upside down) and saw an enormous boulder within arm’s reach. I touched the jagged edges of the rock. It was so surreal. I don’t really have more words about it, but if there are such things as guardian angels...
Another close call, quite different, happened during a deployment to Kosovo. My team and I had gone out to “the field” (which was just some farmer’s property) to work off base. We set up our vehicles and tents, and I had to pee. We were on the top of a gentle hill with very low shrubs. Not a lot of concealment. I walked a little ways so I could still see the site but not much else, and squatted down happily. It’s not easy to squat and pee wearing full battle rattle – first off, I’m really short, and all of the vests were too big for me in height, so I couldn’t actually bend over well. I had to lift the vest from the bottom, pushing up in a way that it covered the lower part of my face. On top of that there’s the helmet, the 210 rounds, the weapon, and four quarts of water in three canteens (at a bare minimum). I was very involved in managing my body.
As I stood up to get myself re-situated I almost immediately heard frantic shouting. I have no idea how long it was going on. I looked around and saw a farmer with some sheep standing a ways off, waving his arms. I started to move toward him but he made gestures that clearly indicated I should stop. I did. My team leader had heard the noise and came toward us, but the farmer started gesturing again, so he stopped. My team leader got our interpreter and they all gestured to each other about where to meet and how to get there.
I don’t know if you can see where this is going. At the time, I couldn’t.
At some point my team leader shouted to me to not move an inch. Then he relayed that I was standing in a minefield. He told me the farmer told him to tell me to just retrace my steps. My exact steps. *Exactly*. Yeah. Right.
I think I floated back. I’m not really sure, because I was in a kind of serene flow state. The farmer probably thought I was delusional, smiling like I was. I’m guessing you want a bit more than that for the “end” of the story. We had to call in an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team to scan the area so we could tear down our site and move to another one. While we waited for them to arrive, we were told to all get into one vehicle (six-person team, we traveled with two vehicles) and drive out following our exact tracks. Our exact tracks. (Sorry, this still cracks me up.) So we did.
And then we waited. We waited, crammed in this vehicle together, for about 15 hours. We didn’t drink much… (‘cause, you know, peeing…) It was a bit of a bummer that we didn’t get to do the mission. It was not at all a bummer that we were sent to a base of the Norwegian brigade and had to suffer their gourmet meals, their lively banter and socializing rooms, their luxury restrooms, their ridiculously comfortable beds… that was definitely worth 15 hours in that vehicle. I even made a penpal, we wrote to each other for a couple of years.
So not bad, that one, really. Enough to get a visceral sense of mortality coursing through my veins. But very life-friendly, in the end. For me. Apparently many sheep had lost more than their wool in those parts...
Nearer-life experiences like these have increased the gratitude and quality I feel for the moments that follow. Feeling lucky to have more moments permeates my existence. It’s not to say nothing else matters as long we’re alive and breathing; it’s precisely that things do matter, and only through *truly living* that we get to express the mattering.
More about other Army experiences in the next part. Feel free to leave comments, or ask questions, or share what’s alive for you.