Barrett Dorko
02-04-2006, 05:58 PM
It’s been a quiet week in Cuyahoga Falls…
Whatever understanding we might have of war comes from imagining and affirming the presences that give war its inhumanity.
James Hillman in A Terrible Love of War
Before I left Tulsa and headed west toward Oklahoma City on Thursday afternoon I was warned several times to watch the sky. High winds and hail were moving in that direction and one guy even described to me how Route 44 acted like a funnel eastward for the tornados that regularly threaten this region, and I-44W was my proposed route. “Keep the radio on AM,” said one young woman. “They’ll warn you sooner than anyone else.” She was smiling sweetly, and that really affected me more than anything else – or maybe it was the prospect of 120 miles of AM radio. Talk about scary.
As it turned out, I never saw a raindrop or even much of a cloud the whole way. I turned on an oldies station after a while and sang along with the FM signal for fifty miles. This is my version of a courageous act. As it turned out, the high winds that had an effect on me were far, far away.
I’ll admit that I’ve been missing him more acutely lately. My son’s difficulty getting to the computer from which he can send email has resulted in no messages for a couple of weeks. Now the phone service from Baquba is unreliable and he understandably saves that time for Melissa as he can. On this last trip especially I felt detached from the reality of his life in Iraq, but the high winds in Chicago changed that, as you’ll see.
Alex sent us a power point slide show earlier this month. It contained images and commentary and I’ve only looked through it about a hundred times. He had one of his men take a photo of him as he returned from hollering at an Iraqi citizen for following his convoy too closely. He took several quarters of Arabic while at Ohio State and knows how to say, “One more time and it will be a shame for you!” which he says “sounds a lot tougher when you say it in Arabic.” The look on his face would scare anyone no matter what language was used, and I am strangely relieved to see that he’s learned how to do this so well.
My departure from the Oklahoma City airport was delayed by almost five hours on Friday and I discovered that I wouldn’t be able to catch a connection to Cleveland until Saturday morning. They told us that high winds off of Lake Michigan had delayed our plane in Chicago and this is where I simply planned to spend the night.
I know that once he returned from sharply warning the Iraqi with his fierce demeanor (to say nothing of his weapon) Alex would return to the command vehicle. It's good for making it down those roads but not so good at accommodating tall Buckeyes dressed in armor on a hot day. He spends long hours crammed into the back on the radio to his men and peering through binoculars for an enemy provided cover by the local citizenry and for explosive devices already covered by the road beneath him. By comparison, after I left Tulsa I just had to look up occasionally and endure some talk radio. Not quite the same thing.
As fathers and sons do, Alex and I share a number of things, and an appreciation for the performances of Tom Hanks is one. In The Terminal Hanks plays a foreigner trapped in an airport because of a conflict on another continent. He searches for a place to sleep and in one particularly funny scene he’s shown trying to get comfortable on airport lounge seating. He fails spectacularly before he pulls out a screwdriver and gets to work modifying it completely.
I arrived in Chicago just before midnight to find many, many others who had been similarly delayed, and we all had the same idea; find a room for the night. Unfortunately, I began my search a couple of hours too late. At 12:30 AM I found myself in the shuttle bus terminal lounge, three heavy suitcases beside me and nothing but rows of hard plastic seats for a bed. It occurred to me that the word “lounge” didn’t actually describe this place though the word “terminal” seemed about right. I thought of Tom Hanks. I thought of Alex, and then I decided to simply endure the night where I was. Dismantling the chairs wasn’t an option, so I folded my large body in a variety of ways throughout the night and waited out the darkness, hoping the high winds wouldn’t keep me from returning home for very long.
Another movie staring Hanks that Alex and I both like is Cast Away, and I’ve written in the past of how it is a perfect metaphor for the work I’ve come to do. This is pretty much a solo performance by Hanks but anyone familiar with the movie would also recognize that “Wilson,” a volleyball fashioned into a head complete with hair and a face composed of Hank’s own blood and sweat, is also a major character. Alone in a dangerous and unforgiving place, Hanks creates this silent partner and then begins to talk to him. Subsequently he survives. Clearly, Wilson is something inside of himself that inspires and directs him. Only by pursuing this internal conversation does he create and endure and eventually succeed in escaping those things that keep him from returning home.
One of the slides sent by Alex is of a simple wooden rack the soldiers construct to hold their gear. For everyone else it’s just a small body with arms and legs but my son has added something else, something that should remind him of who he is aside from the constant warrior he’s become. Perhaps because of this he’ll return to us and find it possible to look at the world without the suspicion and aggression that keeps him safe and will become again the man his mother and I raised rather than always the one this war has created.
Atop the wooden rack my son has placed a volleyball with a palm-print face and I know he has small conversations with it each day. This is so like Alex, and I know it will help.
I thought of this through the night in the shuttle bus terminal lounge, and now I welcome whatever hardship my life might offer.
These things remind me of my son.
Whatever understanding we might have of war comes from imagining and affirming the presences that give war its inhumanity.
James Hillman in A Terrible Love of War
Before I left Tulsa and headed west toward Oklahoma City on Thursday afternoon I was warned several times to watch the sky. High winds and hail were moving in that direction and one guy even described to me how Route 44 acted like a funnel eastward for the tornados that regularly threaten this region, and I-44W was my proposed route. “Keep the radio on AM,” said one young woman. “They’ll warn you sooner than anyone else.” She was smiling sweetly, and that really affected me more than anything else – or maybe it was the prospect of 120 miles of AM radio. Talk about scary.
As it turned out, I never saw a raindrop or even much of a cloud the whole way. I turned on an oldies station after a while and sang along with the FM signal for fifty miles. This is my version of a courageous act. As it turned out, the high winds that had an effect on me were far, far away.
I’ll admit that I’ve been missing him more acutely lately. My son’s difficulty getting to the computer from which he can send email has resulted in no messages for a couple of weeks. Now the phone service from Baquba is unreliable and he understandably saves that time for Melissa as he can. On this last trip especially I felt detached from the reality of his life in Iraq, but the high winds in Chicago changed that, as you’ll see.
Alex sent us a power point slide show earlier this month. It contained images and commentary and I’ve only looked through it about a hundred times. He had one of his men take a photo of him as he returned from hollering at an Iraqi citizen for following his convoy too closely. He took several quarters of Arabic while at Ohio State and knows how to say, “One more time and it will be a shame for you!” which he says “sounds a lot tougher when you say it in Arabic.” The look on his face would scare anyone no matter what language was used, and I am strangely relieved to see that he’s learned how to do this so well.
My departure from the Oklahoma City airport was delayed by almost five hours on Friday and I discovered that I wouldn’t be able to catch a connection to Cleveland until Saturday morning. They told us that high winds off of Lake Michigan had delayed our plane in Chicago and this is where I simply planned to spend the night.
I know that once he returned from sharply warning the Iraqi with his fierce demeanor (to say nothing of his weapon) Alex would return to the command vehicle. It's good for making it down those roads but not so good at accommodating tall Buckeyes dressed in armor on a hot day. He spends long hours crammed into the back on the radio to his men and peering through binoculars for an enemy provided cover by the local citizenry and for explosive devices already covered by the road beneath him. By comparison, after I left Tulsa I just had to look up occasionally and endure some talk radio. Not quite the same thing.
As fathers and sons do, Alex and I share a number of things, and an appreciation for the performances of Tom Hanks is one. In The Terminal Hanks plays a foreigner trapped in an airport because of a conflict on another continent. He searches for a place to sleep and in one particularly funny scene he’s shown trying to get comfortable on airport lounge seating. He fails spectacularly before he pulls out a screwdriver and gets to work modifying it completely.
I arrived in Chicago just before midnight to find many, many others who had been similarly delayed, and we all had the same idea; find a room for the night. Unfortunately, I began my search a couple of hours too late. At 12:30 AM I found myself in the shuttle bus terminal lounge, three heavy suitcases beside me and nothing but rows of hard plastic seats for a bed. It occurred to me that the word “lounge” didn’t actually describe this place though the word “terminal” seemed about right. I thought of Tom Hanks. I thought of Alex, and then I decided to simply endure the night where I was. Dismantling the chairs wasn’t an option, so I folded my large body in a variety of ways throughout the night and waited out the darkness, hoping the high winds wouldn’t keep me from returning home for very long.
Another movie staring Hanks that Alex and I both like is Cast Away, and I’ve written in the past of how it is a perfect metaphor for the work I’ve come to do. This is pretty much a solo performance by Hanks but anyone familiar with the movie would also recognize that “Wilson,” a volleyball fashioned into a head complete with hair and a face composed of Hank’s own blood and sweat, is also a major character. Alone in a dangerous and unforgiving place, Hanks creates this silent partner and then begins to talk to him. Subsequently he survives. Clearly, Wilson is something inside of himself that inspires and directs him. Only by pursuing this internal conversation does he create and endure and eventually succeed in escaping those things that keep him from returning home.
One of the slides sent by Alex is of a simple wooden rack the soldiers construct to hold their gear. For everyone else it’s just a small body with arms and legs but my son has added something else, something that should remind him of who he is aside from the constant warrior he’s become. Perhaps because of this he’ll return to us and find it possible to look at the world without the suspicion and aggression that keeps him safe and will become again the man his mother and I raised rather than always the one this war has created.
Atop the wooden rack my son has placed a volleyball with a palm-print face and I know he has small conversations with it each day. This is so like Alex, and I know it will help.
I thought of this through the night in the shuttle bus terminal lounge, and now I welcome whatever hardship my life might offer.
These things remind me of my son.