Good Teeth

There are two words that I never like to hear in the same sentence. Those words are "root" and "canal". Today I had a surprise one of those.

Let me start this off by saying that I have good teeth. I go to the dentist twice a year for a good cleaning and even though I have had some cavities, the hygenist always comments on how good my teeth are. I have never smoked and other than chewing on ice constantly, my teeth get very little abuse.

Well, three or four days ago, I started having a toothache. I decided that if it should start keeping me up at night, I would go to the dentist. It kept me up last night so today I made an appointment. I was expecting to have an old filling patched up, nothing more, but "Surprise! Surprise! You're going to see Dr. Two-Words-Uglier-Than-Hillary-And-Clinton". And wouldn't you know it, he can squeeze me in TODAY. Don't give a person time to think or anything, noooooooo!

Anyway, I went and got the happy gas and of course, one of the nurses out in the hallway starts laughing about something which got me to laughing hearing her laughing and I couldn't stop. Hey, they don't call it "laughing gas" fer nuttin. I hardly ever drink or take mind-altering anything, so I get zonked pretty easy. By the time I left that place, I was drunker than Cooter Brown on a Saturday night after a good confession. I asked the girl at the counter if they always took checks written by drunk women...she said "yes Ma'am" and smiled just as pretty as you please. Then they let me drive myself home. Heck, even my right eye was numb. Are these people crazy? As soon as I get feeling back in my face and can smile with both sides of my mouth, I'm gonna sue them.

Somebody coulda got hurt. And I would have laughed till I couldn't laugh no more.

A Just Reward

And he groped in his pocket for his mobile phone, the one we had dared not use because it would betray our position. And then Lieutenant Murphy walked out into the open ground. He walked until he was more or less in the center, gunfire all around him, and he sat on a small rock and began punching in the numbers to HQ. I could hear him talking. "My men are taking heavy fire...we're getting picked apart. My guys are dying out here...we need help." And right then Mikey took a bullet straight in the back.

(snip) Only I knew what Mikey had done. He'd understood we had only one realistic chance, and that was to call in help. He also knew there was only one place from which he could possibly make that cell phone work: out in the open, away from the cliff walls.

from Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell

If there is one book that I should have avoided like the plague before my son deployed to Iraq, it was Lone Survivor. This is the story of Navy Seal Team 10 and the survival and rescue of the lone surviving member of that team after meeting Taliban fighters in Afghanistan in 2005. I had intended to post about this book as soon as I finished reading it a couple of months ago but it was too fresh and my son might too soon be among some of those same enemy fighters. It was just too hard to think about then. Today as Lt. Michael Murphy, who is mentioned in the passage above, is posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor by President Bush, it is a fitting day to write my review of this book.

I must admit that I began crying before I finished reading the prologue. But I read the book with an open mind. The first half of the book felt as though I were watching a rerun of G.I. Jane as it describes the Navy SEAL training. Not boring, but not captivating either. I mean, after the first thousand push ups, you sort of get the idea that it was hard. I had even begun to get a little mad at the author for starting his book sounding so...happy...considering what he had been through. The first half of the book is very upbeat as he describes becoming a SEAL. After reading all of the things they have to endure, I began to wonder what kind of wimpy soldiers we must be producing if they could all go through this rigorous training only to be killed off by a couple of Taliban.

THEN...

Half-way through the book, the real story began. As Marcus Luttrell describes the fire fight and how he and his three comrades fought off over FIFTY Taliban fighters, it quickly became apparent that I was one of those "foolish women" described so often in the bible. My idiot opinions before reading all the facts are embarrassing, if not downright retarded. What those four men went through on that beautiful mountainside is nothing if not heroic. And to realize that they fought off so many men armed with AK-47's and grenade launchers and still one of the SEALS survived, is absolutely jaw-dropping. The sheer numbers are astounding. This book should be required reading by every high school senior in this country so that they all understand just how valuable and precious our American soldiers are.

And while the description of the fire fight is almost heart-stopping (and will make a helluva scene in the movie) the best part of the book is the story of the Pashtun villagers who decide to protect the lone survivor with

"lokhay warkawal, an unbending section of historic Pashtun-walai tribal law as laid out in the hospitality section. The literal translation of lokhay warkawal is 'giving of a pot'. (snip)Lokhay means not only providing care and shelter, it means an unbreakable commitment to defend that wounded man to the death. And not just the death of the principal tribesman or family who made the original commitment for the giving of the pot. It means the whole damned village."

I came away from this book with a profound respect for these soldiers and a better understanding of the people of Afghanistan. This is a book another military mom might not have read but I am glad I did. Lt. Murphy is deserving of the Medal of Honor. It's a shame he is not alive to receive it.

Don't Go Breakin' My Heart

Since this blog is about Sprout and his military adventure, I don't post a whole lot about the rest of my family but sometimes I have to. Sprout's older brother, Sir Duke, is in the midst of a divorce. Though I hate that this is happening to him and his wife (who will always be my DIL as long as she's the mother of my grandkids), I especially hate how it's affecting the grandkids, Sgt. York and the Little General.

The saddest description of divorce came to me resently from the six-year-old logic of the Little General. We were talking and somehow the conversation turned to her parent's divorce. As tears welled up in those pretty blue eyes she said to me "When I'm with Mama, I miss Daddy. When I'm with Daddy, I miss Mama."

Sometimes you just have to hold them close.

Well He's Gone...To War

Any mother who has ever done it will tell you that sending a child into a war zone is as far from normal as anything she has ever done before. Walking into church buck naked with a tricycle on my head would feel more normal. Like any other mother species, we humans never stop protecting our young and doing anything so completely opposite of that is just plain weird. And to be honest, I have not sent my child to war. He just got up and went and there was nothing I could have done to stop it. It was his choice. True, he probably hoped when he joined the Army that he might somehow avoid the war, but he knew what his job would be. He knew that for all the sitting around and waiting and pretending and practicing and rehearsing that the desired end result would be that he would one day put his newly taught skills to the use that they were meant for...to win a war. While he hated to leave his new wife and the family he loves, he was admittedly excited about going. Finally getting to do what he is trained to do is somehow a relief. Now our long wait begins.

Since putting his boots on the ground, he has found that the land he is in is beautiful. Really hot, but really pretty. Joining the war five years after it began, his experience is a little different, so far, than that of his cousin who was there at the beginning of the war in 2003, the same cousin who was told to "guard the gate" even though the gate had yet to arrive. Things now are much better for our soldiers and I imagine they get better every day. Living quarters, bathrooms, dining facilites all are getting better. And Sprout is in a good place. I am not as terribly worried as I thought I would be. He has been in contact with Sproutette and she keeps us advised of his condition. So far, so good. To me, it seems as if he has already been there for fifteen months so the next year or so will likely pass by very slowly. As for Sprout, he says it is a lot of long, hard days but he has learned more about his job since arriving in Iraq than the entire three years he has already served. Last night, just before midnight he called us for the first time. I woke up from a dead sleep but gosh, it was good to hear his voice. It was good to hear for myself that he is okay, he sounds good and normal. Now, if I can just find some way to keep it that way for that next fourteen months.

I began this blog three years ago with a post titled
Well He's Gone just after Sprout left for basic training. I guess now we have come full circle. Hopefully the time will be short when I can finally post "Well, He's Home".

Why They Fight

While I'm still trying to find the right words to blog about my son going off to Iraq, a sister sent me this picture. The caption will kill ya. Go here to find the site where she found this.
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Photo couresy of David W. Gilmore Jr./U.S. Air Force

Comforting Embrace

Air Force Chief Master Sgt. John Gebhardt, of the 332nd Expeditionary Medical Group at Balad, Irag, cradles a young girl as they both sleep in the hospital. The girl's entire family was executed by insurgents; the killers shot her in the head as well. The girl received treatment at the U.S. military hospital in Balad, but cries and moans often. According to nurses at the facility, Gebhardt is the only one who can calm down the girl, so he has spent the last several nights holding her while they both sleep in a chair

BobbleHead Bin Laden

(AP Photo)


Is it just me or does the "new" Bin Laden (on the right) look like a bobblehead doll?
And the clothes? What are the odds of anybody wearing the same exact outfit in two videos supposedly made three or more years apart?


Fatima, you got 'splainin to do.

From Boy? to Man

When Sprout was in the first or second grade, he did not like to do his homework. He especially did not like to write sentences using his spelling words. One particular night, after having sat with him for a long time while he dilly-dallied and played instead of finishing his homework, I finally had had enough and I popped his little leg hard and threatened him with more harm if he did not finish writing his sentences by the time I returned. I then withdrew all my motherly help and began loading the dishwasher.

After a few minutes, I returned to check his progress, which was going very well due to a swift dose of corporal punishment. I forget now what most of his spelling words were, but they were simple words like home, from, came, with, wish, when, etc. He wrote his sentences and all was well until I read his sentence for the word "wish". As I read over his spelling homework, I realized that Sprout had gotten the last laugh. His sentence?

"I wish my mother would stop hitting me."

Even at that young age, he had a keen sense of come-back.

Very soon, that wise-cracking little boy-turned-soldier will be in a war zone. May he never lose his penchant for one-upism. May it serve him well when he needs it the most.