The Things We Choose To Care About

An incredible thing has happened recently – what my good chum Dave Bowman would describe as, "Something Wonderful". Every year about this time (The Ides of March) I am reminded of my long lost brother. This invariably leads to thoughts of his mother (who was in every way another mother to me) and his little sister. When the wifey and I last saw them, they were living in the old neighborhood in Olivehurst, CA and seemed to be as happy as could be expected. My wife and I saw them briefly in early 1998 during a layover between GE and TX. Half an hour later, we packed up our things, gave our hugs and our goodbyes and then made our way back across the country to see what awaited us at Ft. Hood. My wife gave birth mere weeks after our arrival and so began another chapter in our lives.

And that was it.

The entire span of my children's lives and they never saw or heard about some of the most important people in my background.

I have no excuse- I am terrible at keeping in touch. My affections stay fresh and genuine and yet it's far too easy for me to simply take for granted that they will always be there, constant and yet just out of eyeshot. I was reminded earlier this week that is not always the case.

I found that in 2001 my friend's mother died. My friend was 27 and his sister was only as old as my oldest son is today. There is literally nothing in my life's experience that can help me imagine what it was like for them.

This year as I went on my annual hunt to find my brother, I got a hit on a social networking site- not my brother but a young woman in her freshman year at a state university. I was terribly excited and yet wary of coming off as some sort of online weirdo- I think we can all agree that that full-grown men shouldn't chat up 19 year old strangers as a matter of course… Call me old-fashioned but it seems like one of those general rules that fall in the 'no-brainer' category, especially in this day and age.

So, after some deliberation, I wrote to this person. And she wrote back! She is indeed my friend's sister, my surrogate mother's daughter and she seems happy and outgoing and quirky and well-adjusted and she remembered me! Hell, she remembered my wife whom she met perhaps four times!

Now, the way I form bonds has been brought into question recently by the behavior of some of my friends who are going through their own ordeal at the moment. Just as an example, I don't think you can live in close quarters with someone without them becoming a part of you forever. I think this is especially true with children- I don't think you can learn and grow and share with someone without them taking up residence in your heart. It's never occurred to me before last week that I could be unusual in this respect.

As for this young woman, I was there when she took her first steps. I was there when she nearly bit her tongue in half after falling off a chair. I lived with her and watched over her while her mother ran errands.

I've said before that my affections do not require anything from the people I care for. It's nice, don't get me wrong but my feelings don't require validation or even reciprocation. I could be perfectly happy knowing that a person is doing well so long as they were happy.

Luckily for me, she seems genuinely excited about knowing someone who adored her mother and has expressed interest in meeting my wife and I to talk.

I've also said before that I believe the Cosmos is about balance. Well, mostly about balance- there's also a large part of my belief system that involves Alanis Morissette "irony" and Monty Python-esque humor which tends to favor synchronicity over coincidence. Here's an example:

I share my birthday with two other people in my life- a previous girlfriend and my Evil Twin, There4. One of the places we would frequent (my twin and I) was a shake joint called Rick's Cabaret in San Antonio while we were stationed at Ft. Sam. My only souvenirs from this time are a lasting friendship with one of the performers and her husband, a lingering respect for the voraciousness of some of the dancers and a small matchbox with the establishment's logo on it.

Days before my birthday I was contacted by my unit and instructed to be prepared to deploy on a possible mission to Chile. While going through my gear on my birthday, I happened to come across the matchbox (strangely bereft of burnable matches… why would anyone keep that?) and it was such a day-brightener that I felt I had to share it with my twin to our mutual pleasure on our special day.

Honestly, what were the chances that I would have reason to go through my kit at all, much less have a tiny, unlikely keepsake pop out that reminds me of a place I used to share with someone whose birthday it also was?

Alright, I'll concede that it isn't Hurley-winning-the-lotto-with-the-mysterious-numbers-on-"Lost" unusual but it was interesting and significant to me nonetheless.

Here's another:

The day before I found this young lady on the internets, I watched the trailer for the Tron sequel coming this December. This led to fan-boy nostalgia which led to watching the original Tron the next day. Suddenly I was 11 years old and sitting on my friend Alan's living room floor, watching a VHS copy. I could smell his mother cooking in the kitchen and I could hear his father sitting in an armchair behind us, reading the paper. That afternoon I found, wrote and heard back from his sister- after years of trying.

I cannot express how much this pleases me=) I don't know how this is a-gonna turn out but I'm hopeful. Family is the most important thing in my world and the people I love are all my family by default.

Words’ Worth

Last night was the Academy Awards and if you paid any attention at all, you found that Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" was the winner for best picture. I enjoyed THL and I appreciate any attempt to raise awareness of our ongoing war(s) on a mainstream/personal level but Best Picture?

Now, I'm a movie buff so movies with big, glaring holes stand out to me and I'm a soldier so military inaccuracies also stand out to me and this one had its share of both. I'm not talking about little nit-picky things like patches and awards or whether unit X was in theater between such and such dates: I'm interested in these things but they don't color my enjoyment of a story. I'm talking about cliché plot devices and dramatic elements writers and film makers use to move along a story, seemingly without thought to the simultaneous eye-rolling going on in the movie-plex. Just as an example, my wife and I went to see the remake of "The Crazies" recently and were pleasantly surprised by its clever writing, austere visual style and its heavy emphasis on paranoia (rather than gore), especially in the critical third act. Only once did sloppy writing stand out enough to jar my wife and I out of our immersion and it was a time-honored horror movie doozy, the whole "Wait here, I'll be right back" bit.

/sigh. And they were doing so well up till that point. It was as if the creators/storytellers wanted to throw an extra helping of tension into the last reel and simply couldn't come up with a plausible way to separate the two surviving characters and so they dug into the big book of clichés and drew up that one, a gimmick that's so tired and hackneyed that its been lampooned famously by other genre movies.

Needless to say, that one little problem didn't at all ruin the movie for me but it was glaring enough to be picked up on by nearly the entire audience (especially the VFH kids behind us, lol).

The same was true for THL. Military-centric errors/lapses abound along with more than a few conventional ones. Did they further the story? Sure, each and every one. Did they ruin my enjoyment? Nah, overall I gave it a B. Was it a no-holds-barred, adrenalin-fueled thrill ride? Nope. Was it the most innovative, entertaining piece of storytelling released in '09 (which is what I assume the criteria are for Best Pic)? No.

What it did (and it does this admirably) was to assuage America's guilt over largely ignoring the ongoing conflict by raising awareness in a non-threatening way. Horrors on CNN are gauche and voyeuristic; horrors on celluloid (even ones portrayed in mediocre fashion) are interesting and laudable.

The thing is, you don't need to resort to poor storytelling and predictable plot devices to accomplish either of these two goals. Pick up a copy of "They Fought for Each Other" by Kelly Kennedy if you require proof. Or wait for it to filmed, I'd bet a dollar it's already been optioned- hopefully it'll be treated with the same respect "Band of Brothers" got.

That was really my only beef with the Oscars. I find the whole process interminably boring but I like it when people are honored for their hard work.

Here's one that was tragically overlooked:

Award for Best Golden Globes: Christina Hendricks.

Holy cow, that woman can fill out a gown.