A Minor Event

Wow, it's been awhile since I've posted anything and revisiting the blog shows me to be more careful when trying to underline!

We received a call from the Ob nurse who tells me Dakota's mother has too high of a response to her glucose tests, so they want her back in asap for a three hour one. Okay. When she gets back from her last visit with Chris who deploys in March, we will go. Meanwhile, back at the ranch I am frantically trying to balance out my interviews, and personal appointments while maintaning the family in the comfortable tradition in which is is accustomed.

Dakota's mother-to-be tells me she had a nightmare this week and woke up with the fire flash in her dream...er...nightmare... as she witnessed in the abyssmal drama of the inner mind an explosion of great proportions, and the demise of her husband. The news stories and other sources of information have conditioned her already, and the worst case sceanarios are creeping silently into the recesses of her mind. Out they come, rudely disturbing her peace and daily living moments. Even in her sleep, her concerns are making their way into her consciousness, demanding attention from her. She was startled, and screaming out as she rolled over next to her young husband, and reached out for him to console her and assure her he is alive here and now, and he loves her so.

Rather than reposting articles that are already available to the general public or at least those who are fortunate to own a TV or computer (and there are many who still do not for a myriad of reasons) I will begin to use this medium as a sort of journal, if for nothing else, as a therapeutic way of venting and releasing my own demons. If no one reads, it doesn't matter.

Dakota is my grandchild, my first, a girl. Her reception into this world will be one of mixed joy and sadness, since only one parent will be available to welcome her. Her father will be in the sandbox for a year and leaves in a couple weeks now, for a still unknown destination. Already I see her existance as miraculous and a teacher of lessons yet to be learned. I worry about her future, and the immediate future of all mankind as we continue to blunder into depths unknown to all those who are not actually present.

I've inadvertantly stumbled onto things I wish now I never knew about. In my efforts to bring comfort to the disturbed I find parents of soldiers whose deaths are untimely and unexplained. Some feel the suicides are a last attempt at escape from the judgement of their peers. Others are certain the whole story has not been told, their circumstances unconvincingly putrid. The intuition always tells the truth, yet we are so conditioned to blow it all off as imagination. The most recent "theorist" I've met is a woman who's son died several years ago, and she is convinced that his death was a result of murder, and an elaborate cover up was set in place she explains. She has done her due diligence in my opinion. And she continues to hit wall after wall, and subsequently is reinjured, raped once again by what she identifies as an abuse of power. Perhaps it has become her addiction, the revictimization of a lone soul who can find no company.

I think we've all experienced abuse of power in one degree or another. Her case is an extreme one, and she has developed many metaphores to explain it all. She also has reached a point where she is so raw from the pain and ignorance shoveled on her by the "authorities" she once depended on for answers, that it is difficult to hear her, but if you strain and listen, her grief continues to haunt her, twisting her logic into contorted imagery and imagination. Yet she puts her heart on the line each time she reaches out and always comes up empty, angry, sick and tired. How much can a human bear as they struggle for vindication and completion?

We are such amazing creatures, always reaching for the light in our moments of darkness that too often stretch into minutes, hours, days and years. Humanity never ceases to delight me with it's good and bad, positive and negative, love and hatred.

I could go on, but I will stop for now and see if I can return and tease this out more. Meanwhile, I prepare to welcome Dakota, an American Indian name for "Friend". Will my sole preparation be enough to see her through her own moments of doubt and pain? At this point, I remain doubtful, yet I cannot and will not surrender.

"Even a minor event in the life of a child is an event of that child's world and thus a world event." (Gaston Bachelard) How wise we would be to heed these words!