Back

Back from self-imposed exile this Tuesday morning. Wondering how to get all those blog entries I moved to "draft" during my pique of temper back onto the page. It says my only option is to move to trash. A significant chunk of our life is there, basically all of 2022 to date. I'd hate to lose all that. We'll forget.

I warned Jimmy as much when we exchanged messages on Telegram a couple days ago. He and Anna are safely in Turkey, their only source of conflict a surly Russian landlord in their little tourist village who's demanding a month's rent up-front.

"I hope you're keeping a journal", I suggested. "This is going to be one of the great adventures of your life, good or bad. You'll forget."

I know whereof I speak. My memories of the war have become polished smooth with time, such that I can't experience those moments in any tactile way. I'm watching a movie, not a very good one, and a person who looks like I did long ago is there in the midst of the action. During the actual shooting war I wrote almost nothing, too busy and tired and thinking during the first few sorties every day might be the last day. I made a little chicken scratch in a note pad with a date, target, composition of the strike package (i.e., "4 Tornadoes, 4 F-4Gs, 2 EF-111s, 4 F-15s"), and maybe our callsign and a couple descriptive words recalling the experience. "Runway bombing at Al Salman. Light AAA. Pitch black." It was the best I could do at the time.

So, I hope Jim takes the time to write it all down, or sends someone back home a description of how he spent any given day. Do people even write letters in 2022? My mom kept all of mine from my seven months in Saudi Arabia. They're in a box somewhere at her home, or her former home now that she's been consigned to assisted living.

"When are you going to come see me?" I get that every week, cringe at the request because the answer is always the same. "Work, Mom. I have to work. So does Peg. We were just there a few weeks ago. We'll be back when we can shake loose, I promise, but it's incredibly expensive."

Seven days later we have the same conversation. Rinse and repeat.

So, why'd I go silent, and why are all those blog entries that are a diary of this fraught moment hidden, apparently permanently, behind the "drafts" wall? I just sort of bonked last week. Jim and Anna made it out of Moscow, barely, on what sounds like the last flight out of there bound for the UAE. The NY bar ended with a whimper on Thursday, leaving me wondering why I worked so hard to prepare. The uniform exam was pretty tough, however, so we'll see how all that goes. I knew I was slated for a week or two down here in Florida, which is always a source of unhappiness at the prospect of leaving P in Corning.

All that culminated in me crawling into the Columbia on Thursday afternoon and flying in solitude down here, ostensibly to beat the weather but more accurately because I just needed to think. They always warned us in the Air Force not to fly when we were emotionally overburdened--for instance, guys getting divorced were routinely yanked off the schedule for a time--and there I was last Thursday, breaking that rule by flying while emotionally wrung out by the Russian debacle, zoning out at 6,000 feet as the snow-capped ridges of the Shenandoah gave way to the southern coastal plain. Thankfully, it was an uneventful ride.

On Friday I drove over to Wyldswood for the weekend, grounded by severe weather forecast to hit right around the time I was leaving Panama City. The condo still has no kitchen sink (or, more accurately, no hardware--the sink sits there emasculated and useless, with no faucet), so the farm at least provided a place where I could do dishes and live a somewhat more normal life.

But Wyldswood is thick with ghosts, and even as my state of mind improved I saw Peg everywhere, went and stood in the Good Place and the fish house, read the paper in the sunroom, all the while hoping to catch a little of how it felt to have her there, maybe a scent or a dent in the couch cushion where she sat next to me shopping on her phone not so long ago. I felt like a widower, but not really because a widower has no hope except the children's tale of the sweet by and by. I still travel with hope, get to talk with P every day. Friday's coming.

This past Friday night brought nearly six inches of rain in Taylor County, thwarting my plan to go play golf after spending Saturday in the home office. The course was a vast lake, and accessing the fairway would have required a snorkel and flippers. It was also quite cold and windy, which would've made for an unpleasant round.

On Sunday I inexplicably bumbled into St. James Episcopal Church, far-and-away the youngest person there. Nineteen in the sanctuary, counting the priest. They seem to have lost their organist, so whatever bad and muffled singing we attempted was a cappella.

I watched the priest go through the motions of the Eucharist, his back to us in this old church with its altar pushed against the wall, and remembered.

"Blessed he is who comes in the name of the Lord." We all cross ourselves, and I smile at the recollection that this tradition finds its roots in peasant congregations who only slightly understood the Latin Mass. "Benedictus qui venit in nomine domini" . . . They'd hear "benedictus", know it meant a blessing, and not understanding the word in context reflexively cross themselves. We still do today, without knowing exactly why.

"This is my blood of the New Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins . . ." I used to substitute "all" for "many", a bit of theological subversion born more of hope than of good scriptural theology. Origen and I were and are good universalists, believing that the love of God transcends the worst of human evil, that a loving God is not in the business of eternal punishment, and through grace alone even a Hitler or Putin will share in the Heavenly Kingdom, whatever that is. "Many" suggests not everyone will make the cut.

Of course, I knew better. That was our systematic theology question on the GOE in fact, whether universalist soteriology was scriptural. I acknowledged that it wasn't, said the Gospel didn't lend itself to wishful thinking, and got all the points on the question. It's not what I believe, however. Not at all.

After church I finally shoehorned a soggy nine holes into my weekend, sharing a cocktail on the porch of the club with Mike, Audie, and Christopher before heading west for work. I drove the coast road, with P on the phone pretty much the entire way. She was contemplating buying an expensive, three hundred year old oil painting that was advertised to have actual holes in it. I counseled that if it spoke to her heart as she said it did, she should buy it. I understand it will arrive in the next few weeks.

Along the way I stopped at the Gibson Inn in Apalachicola and had another toddy in the bar, visiting with Peg's longtime friend Betsy the bartender and talking up a couple on the next two barstools, he from Port St. Joe and she his recent live-in squeeze from Atlanta.

I figured on finding supper when I arrived back in Panama City, but it was late and I ended up just crawling into bed with a book and falling dead asleep shortly thereafter.

Now I'm in my second day of a very, very busy work week. My first call, a witness interview for a hearing on Friday, is in just a few minutes. Time to get at it.