the things my father saw

yesterday i had two thoughts running through my head, like separate trains, unaware of each other. i was talking on the phone with my sister, then my mother, then cari. the whole time i was focused on the person with whom i was speaking. then i chatted with dan for a bit, and then hit the pillow.

originally, when i got home, dan was watching tour of duty, a show from the early 90s about a group of soldiers in vietnam. i sat down for a few minutes and had a sandwich before making phone calls and carrying on the things that needed doing.

and all the while, all while carrying on conversations and planning days and finding a pair of capris to wear today--all that while, i thought about the things my father saw, while he was a soldier in the same place.

i thought about his hatred of flies and enclosed spaces. i thought about the years he spent at the bottom of a bottle when he returned, i thought about redemption and forgiveness. i thought about the fact that someone, somewhere, is grieving yet for a family member that was removed from the planet by my father's bullets. i think of my father, grieving for being asked to kill in the name of country. i remember the pain in his voice when we were watching an action movie, once, and my brother was counting the bodies as they fell. "the first time i killed a man, i threw up," he said.

in all honesty, that is something i carry with me, too. perhaps it is the catholic guilt. i think of how tender my father was in raising his children, of caring for my mother. i think of dad, mowing the lawn, working on a car, drinking milk at dinner, and it feels like it cannot be the same man and the same body that for a year walked through jungles overseas, swatting flies and balancing his need to protect with his need to serve. it's hard, to think of your father in that manner.

i know that it must be difficult for a man who values every life and every living thing on earth to think that when someone asked, he did without question. my father is a true patriot, a man who would have given his life for his country willingly and gladly, in the name of protecting that which he holds dear--family, friends, freedom.

i just dwelled for a long time, probably until now, on the things my father saw. i think about the things he saw when he was here at home, and the things he witnessed in green swooping jungle, pressed close to ground. the noise must have been unbearable.

i read a tim o'brien book again recently, "if i die in a combat zone, box me up and ship me home." and watching the tour of duty show with dan has cemented this ongoing loop in my brain about the nature of forgiving yourself for things that you have done, things that you may not have meant to do. is there a degree of forgiveness? is there a line that is crossed, at some point? i want to ask him how he can live with himself, when he learned how to do so, but i know that often it is still an ongoing process, and always will be.

personally, i can forgive anything he did, based on the simple fact that he came home. the situation in which those soldiers were put, that any soldiers are put, is one of save your own skin, or that of your comrade--kill or be killed.

i think about all the things i have seen in my short life. i think about my father's being nearly twice as long as mine thus far, the knowledge he carries in his marrow about the life he has lived. i think about all these things and it becomes a story of healing and living, and learning how to do both simultaneously.

the things my father saw include his children being born, slipping a ring on my mother's finger, dancing a polka with my sister--and all these things bring tears to his eyes as quickly as the thought of being in vietnam, and how difficult that was.

does he replay images in his mind, over and over? does he dream about combat boots and the smell of rice paddies, at the same time as he dreams of grandchildren?