Barrett Dorko
25-05-2006, 05:25 PM
It’s been a quiet week in Cuyahoga Falls…
I sat perfectly still in a chair beside the pool at the Luxor in Las Vegas last Friday afternoon and fixed my gaze on the door leading from the hotel one hundred yards away.
I already had three books in my luggage at the Cleveland airport two weeks ago but found myself in the bookstore absolutely certain something was waiting for me there. I went directly to the science fiction section and picked up a copy of Orson Scott Card’s classic, Ender’s Game. It would be the fourth time I’d read it.
My eyesight has always been poor and I don’t ordinarily trust it, but I knew I’d recognize him after just a few steps. To me, my son’s walk is as familiar as my own image in the mirror. Now that he’s home for a few days his new bride Melissa surrounds him like some kind of beautiful light and I knew they’d come through the door together. I didn’t want to miss it.
In Card’s novel, Ender is a young boy who rises to command an entire army against a dangerous and aggressive enemy from another solar system. He struggles to understand their motives and methods of communication with very little success. One day his mentor addresses this problem specifically. He says, “There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do.”
I think that the way Alex walks helps. There’s something thoughtful and easy in it that I find calming, and I suspect his men have seen this during the past few months on the road he patrols daily. Back and forth on this 80 kilometer stretch through the Iraqi desert he commands a convoy responsible for finding the explosive devices hidden there. He arranges for their removal, returns to his quarters, goes out again and repeats this process the next day. The bombs grow like weeds here, and the roots are too deep to eliminate them entirely. Because of the way he is, with each step he makes this dangerous and uncertain path his own. Alex knows his enemy, and those who follow him do so confident that he’ll keep them as safe as he can. I know I’d follow him.
But I have to stay here and live my own life. For me, my teachers have always been my patients and as I think of what Ender’s mentor said I begin to understand them as a kind of enemy as well. This doesn’t mean I don’t like them or respect them, but I am always wary of the traps they set for me and how hard they work to hide the truth. They don’t do this maliciously – it’s just our nature to communicate in this way, especially when pain makes us vulnerable. I can’t compare the perils of my road to Alex’s, of course, but I see their similarities.
I’ve been told that Alex walks like me and I suppose that’s true. He learned to do this long before he strode that road so far away and so full of danger. Part of this is genetic and part of this he’s learned by simply watching me.
As he leaves next week and returns to his eighty kilometer path all I have to offer is the walk, I guess, but I know it’s no small thing.
It has to be enough.
I sat perfectly still in a chair beside the pool at the Luxor in Las Vegas last Friday afternoon and fixed my gaze on the door leading from the hotel one hundred yards away.
I already had three books in my luggage at the Cleveland airport two weeks ago but found myself in the bookstore absolutely certain something was waiting for me there. I went directly to the science fiction section and picked up a copy of Orson Scott Card’s classic, Ender’s Game. It would be the fourth time I’d read it.
My eyesight has always been poor and I don’t ordinarily trust it, but I knew I’d recognize him after just a few steps. To me, my son’s walk is as familiar as my own image in the mirror. Now that he’s home for a few days his new bride Melissa surrounds him like some kind of beautiful light and I knew they’d come through the door together. I didn’t want to miss it.
In Card’s novel, Ender is a young boy who rises to command an entire army against a dangerous and aggressive enemy from another solar system. He struggles to understand their motives and methods of communication with very little success. One day his mentor addresses this problem specifically. He says, “There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do.”
I think that the way Alex walks helps. There’s something thoughtful and easy in it that I find calming, and I suspect his men have seen this during the past few months on the road he patrols daily. Back and forth on this 80 kilometer stretch through the Iraqi desert he commands a convoy responsible for finding the explosive devices hidden there. He arranges for their removal, returns to his quarters, goes out again and repeats this process the next day. The bombs grow like weeds here, and the roots are too deep to eliminate them entirely. Because of the way he is, with each step he makes this dangerous and uncertain path his own. Alex knows his enemy, and those who follow him do so confident that he’ll keep them as safe as he can. I know I’d follow him.
But I have to stay here and live my own life. For me, my teachers have always been my patients and as I think of what Ender’s mentor said I begin to understand them as a kind of enemy as well. This doesn’t mean I don’t like them or respect them, but I am always wary of the traps they set for me and how hard they work to hide the truth. They don’t do this maliciously – it’s just our nature to communicate in this way, especially when pain makes us vulnerable. I can’t compare the perils of my road to Alex’s, of course, but I see their similarities.
I’ve been told that Alex walks like me and I suppose that’s true. He learned to do this long before he strode that road so far away and so full of danger. Part of this is genetic and part of this he’s learned by simply watching me.
As he leaves next week and returns to his eighty kilometer path all I have to offer is the walk, I guess, but I know it’s no small thing.
It has to be enough.