the Lair

Kayla woke with a start. It was almost as if she heard the blast of a gun, but she knew that she had no more heard one now than she did eight months ago when Mark was shot and killed. You never hear the sound of a sniper's shot. You only feel it. You only die from it.

She had had the dream again. It had been coming to her less frequently, but each time she dreamt it, it became more vivid. Atlanta had fallen quickly. Everyone, all the medical professionals, the news media, those in the know, said that the virus had been contained. The talking heads all agreed, there was no cause for alarm or even worry. The CDC assured the populace that the odds of anyone in the United States contracting the virus were slim to none. It was not an air borne disease. Unless one submerged oneself in an infected individual's bodily fluids, you were safe. So everyone thought that since the government assured us that we were safe, we were safe.

The infected patient had been brought to Emory under cover of darkness. It was reported that he had walked into the hospital on his own strength. Therein was the problem. Security was lax because he was a doctor. A strong doctor with the Ebola virus, a non-airborne virus, was not a threat they assured the public.

What was not reported was the hospital had allowed his partner unsupervised visitation. A one time visit was all it took for the virus to escape the confines of the quarantine. What was also not reported until it was too late was that the virus had mutated, as viruses often do. And now, it was airborne. And it spread. And it spread quickly until those same officials who had earlier reassured the people that all was safe, were walking up and down the streets, wearing hazmat suits, yelling, "bring out your dead. Bring us your dead." The dead would be collected, wrapped in a medical-like Saran Wrap, almost like last night's leftovers, and burned on the pyre that had been built in the middle of the square.

There had been rumors that the CDC had an antidote to the original Ebola Virus. Conspiracy theorists believed that the government had vaccinated it's own employees against possible germ warfare as long ago as 1973, which included its military personnel.

Mark Thomas, his wife Kayla, and their two year old son, Jaxson Raye, were a very few of the lucky ones who did not contract the virus and had survived. Mark had been in the Army since he graduated high school, and Kayla was his high school sweetheart. Mark had been deployed to Iraq for 13 months and still had sand in his teeth when he was brought back to the states to be part of the police action, and to help take care of the growing insurrection. The thing was, dying people don't insurrect for long. It was his decision to go AWOL and flee the City when it seemed the end was coming. He and Kayla had gathered weapons, freeze dried food, gathered water, and headed South toward Quitman. They had hoped that a remote area would be their hideaway and safety.

You never know how stranded and alone you are until there is no one else who is stranded and alone. Mark and Kayla were stranded and alone. But they walked, hid, fed their son, fed themselves when they could. The travel was slow going and exhausting and, as it was the middle of August, also exceedingly hot and humid, so they tried to only travel in the coolness of the morning or early evening.

Mark was beginning to feel the fatigue of this day's travel and was about to suggest they find shade to rest under until dusk when he turned a bend and saw the farmhouse up ahead.

Excitedly he said, "Kayla, I think this is the place we have been lo

Mark dropped like a stone and was dead on the spot.

Kayla threw her body over Jax and buried her face deep in the dirt.

Earlier in the day, David had positioned himself in the attic as before; camp chair, loaded Springfield, strap wrapped around his left arm for stability, barrel pointing ever so slightly through the attic vents that he had enlarged giving him a better vantage point. He panned his rifle to the left and back to the right, searching for any movement through the scope. He would not take any risks. He would not allow his camp to be contaminated.

He saw the man first, and as he sat with his finger on the trigger, he saw he was sweating. This is a dead man walking, David thought to himself. But, hey ho, who is this lovely along side? This was an easy decision for him to make. He could use the woman for his own needs, the man would be a liability, but this child would give him control. David squeezed the trigger.

"Hello? Hay! Walk toward my voice. You and your boy! You are safe here. My name is David."


She lay there in her own sweat soaked sheets cursing the fact that the dream had come back after three months. But she knew why it had. She rolled over and saw that David had already gotten up. She knew that he would be taking care of Jaxson until she went downstairs.

Jaxson. My boy, Jax, she thought. Kayla had been hanging the laundry out the day before when Jax came running up. "Mama, wuk wha I fund! I gots a new toy!" "Jax, baby boy, let me see." In his three year old hand was a 30-06 cartridge. She knew what it was. She and Mark had reloaded those many times.

"Baby Boy, honey. Where did you find this? Where did you get your new toy?"

"Iss mine, Mommy."

"I know, sugar. Show me and we'll get another."

Jax, knowing a fun game had started, ran back toward the house. "Catch me, Mommy!"
"I will, buddy. Let's go get your new toy!"

Jaxson, little chubby feet running as fast as they would go, headed toward the house. Kayla followed silently. Up the stairs. Into the crawl space that lead to the attic.

"Mommy! Here,"

Kayla followed her boy up into the attic.

"Mommy! Here. Me sees more toys!"

Her eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness as she walked up the attic stair. When she reached the top rung of the attic ladder, Kayla saw a light to her right. Sun rays streaming through an enlarged vent window, light from the morning sun. Strange shapes shrouded in sheets covered in dust. Her son's new foot prints mingled with the older ones he had obviously left before on his first trip up into the attic. But also larger, booted prints. Brass objects lay scattered helter skelter on the floor.

"Jaxson, come here to Mommy. It's naptime."

As she led her son back down the attic steps, and she looked over her shoulder and saw the sniper's lair, she knew what had happened. She also knew what she had to do, now.

photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zakh/365573975/">Austin & Zak via http://photopin.com">photopin http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">cc

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

What do you do when you feel guilty about something you've done or not done, said or not said? Do you confess? Do you ask for forgiveness? Or do you keep the guilt inside and hope, through time, it will be diluted like iced tea on a hot summer day, that it will float away like smoke in a breeze?

What do you do if the person you feel the need to confess to is dead? Do you go to a gravesite where there is nothing but a marble headstone, get down on your knees, and ask for forgiveness? Or do you sit, alone with your thoughts, and hope that somehow the person you feel you have wronged knew you meant no malice?

My childhood was normal, uneventful by my way of thinking. Both sets of grandparents lived close by, I was raised with my cousins as my playmates, my parents were married to each other until the day my Mother died.

My Mother and I had a typical mother daughter relationship. Before I started school, I wanted to be her. As a teenager, I didn't want to have anything to do with her. As a young woman, I sometimes sought her advice. When I was older, I understood her suffering, but was impatient with her.

My Mother had osteoarthritis, which is a chronic breakdown of cartilage in the joints. Her spine had compressed so much, her vertebrae were bone on bone. She was in constant pain. Her list of pain meds was long, but at the same time, she would always say that she didn't want to get hooked on them. "Mother, you're 70 years old. Who gives a shit if you're addicted to painkillers or not."

Honestly I cannot imagine the type of pain she was in. She was in the path of pain where there is no end in sight. The grip of It where she would have done almost anything to escape, anything. Pain that made her not think of anything else but her pain, her misery, her suffering. And that kind of pain makes one lash out at those whom you love most, because they are the closest to you and they should understand, but they don't.

And because of her overwhelming depression, she was prescribed Prozac, Valium, Xanax. She would take them as prescribed, until she thought she felt better. Then she would quit. Then she would turn.

Every day I would call the house to check on them, but really to check on my Dad, because he was my Mother's caregiver. Often, I would hear a crack in his voice. I would not say a word. I would just listen to what he would tell me they did that day. Then I would try to steer the conversation away from Mother and onto him. "Daddy, did you get to go to DQ this morning? Did you drive out to the golf course? Who all did you see today, Daddy? Oh, you didn't? Dad, you need to get out of the house more and take care of you." Then it would happen. My Daddy would do the one thing that would tear my soul out. The one thing that would crush my heart. He would cry. No, that's not right. He would sob. He would open the gates of his sorrow and let it flood over us both. And he would tell me that my Mother, his wife of over 50 years, whom he had to bathe now, and dress now, and do everything else for her now that she could not do it on her own, would yell at him, scream at him, be so ugly to him that he didn't think he could go another day.

No child should ever hear her parent express such anguish. No daughter ever needs hear her daddy cry, but every daughter needs to hear her daddy cry. Every daughter needs to know that her Daddy loves her enough to let down the Father armor.

After this episode, I jumped in my car, and drove the 20 miles to my parents' house, my childhood, happy home. I walked in, kissed my Daddy hello, and marched to the back of the house where my Mother was laying in bed in their bedroom. I leaned down, kissed her on her cheek, and said, "You may think that you do not need your antidepressants, but if you do not start taking them again, I will drive up here every day and force feed them to you. You will not be ugly to my Daddy again."

So, who do I say I'm sorry to?

Can I See You Now?

I had my first eye surgery at age two. The second was two years later and the third was at age seven. My eye was crossed, just one. I think they call that lazy eye now. They say it's more politically correct. Someone told me that little kids don't think the word "crossed" is positive. I personally don't think the word "lazy" is such a good substitute, but then again they didn't ask me. I also think political correctness has gotten out of hand, but that's a separate blog post. I do remember words they used to explain why I didn't have proper vision in the eye: false fusion. You look that phrase up on the internet and you read words like dichoptic and stimuli and monocular. All I know, and I still cannot fully explain what I see and how I see, is that I am legally blind in that eye.

The first two operations were on my left eye, the one that was slothful. Since by age four I had not read the medical literature for those type of surgeries, I am clueless as to the reasons. The third surgery was on the "good" right eye. I remember everyone, my parents, my doctors, the nurses, their assistants, referring to my right eye as "the good one". I also remember thinking, at the tender age of seven, if this eye was so good, why did it have to have an operation? They told me that there are muscles behind each eye that move the eye and that the one on the right was stronger than the left and was pulling it inward. They were going to cut the muscle, thus weakening it.

Post-surgery, lazy eye was no longer lazy. It was industrious, lively, straight as an arrow, and looked perfect. Problem? Still could not see a whit. Not even the big E. But this is when life for me really got amazing, got really fun and interesting. This is when I learned that the unknown could be exciting. This is when my parents and my doctors put their heads together and decided to send me away, to send me away to rehab. They believed, through therapy, that my left eye could be trained to see and the best place to do this was Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas, 550 miles away.

I. Am. Seven. Seven years old. It's 1962 and I am about to fly on a plane for the first time in my life. Traveling to a city where, during the week, I will be living in a hospital environment, training an eye that has never seen like everyone else sees to see, and on the weekends living with a family that I only know through their relatives in my hometown. Can things get anymore fun? Seriously.

My Mother and I arrive in Houston, meet my home away from home family, and go check in the hospital. My rehab begins the next day and, Mother, being a farmers wife, must go back home after a few days. I will see my real family again in three weeks, the end of my rehab stint.

I don't know how vision therapy is practiced today, but in the early sixties it involved three-D movie watching, three-D reading, and torture. Torture to my way of thinking. The therapists would patch my good, right eye, sit with me, and "force" me to watch and read aloud with my bad, left eye. There is no possible way for me to accurately describe to the normal-sighted how horrible, how scary this is. The closest description is like being trapped in a tiny, dark room with only a small pen light showing you there's a monster sitting just to your left. To this day, I detest "Alice in Wonderland" because that was the book of choice of the therapist.

I had to figure someway out of this, someway to please the therapists and doctors to get them to stop this suffering. I knew when any progress was made, praise was heaped upon the patient. I knew that, in order for me to receive that praise, I had to read with my left eye. Or, it had to appear that I was reading with my left eye. So, I started reading with my left eye, or so it seemed. The therapists were thrilled. The doctors were amazed. My vision had improved 100%. After three weeks of therapy, I was going to be able to leave to continue this treatment at home.

What they did not know, what they never suspected, was that seven year old little me had fooled them all. I had loosened ever so slightly the inside corner of my eye patch and was able to read aloud about Alice falling down that damn rabbit hole with my good one, my loyal one, my right eye.

My secret did not get discovered until I had returned home and returned to my second grade classroom. My beloved teacher, Mrs. Bray, also had a "bad" eye, but she was completely blind in it. My Mother was still patching my right eye as prescribed by my Houston doctors and, as a result, I was struggling in class. My angel teacher finally had a meeting with my parents and told them I was going to need a psychiatrist if they continued this "therapy". I was questioned about how I had had the miraculous recovery in Houston, but had seemingly now reversed back to the original condition.

I confessed. And that confession garnered me another three weeks in Houston. Ultimately, according to the doctors, the therapy failed. To me, though, despite the patched right eye reading sessions, it was six weeks of fun and adventure. My eyesight is the same as I have always had and I know no difference. Better to see you with, my dear.

watch out

Dear Mr. Road Construction Worker Man: You have been working the same stretch of road that I take on my way to work every day for the past five months. Every time I drive by, I try to be extremely careful, courteous, and cautious in order to protect you and your fellow workers. I had always hoped that you would extend me the same courtesy. I knew when you pulled out in front of me, driving a big, white super cab truck pulling a 25 foot trailer carrying a one ton piece of construction machinery the odds were not in my favor. Especially when I'm driving my motorcycle. I am thankful that I have good reflexes, but even more thankful that I have good brakes. I am thanking YOU now in hopes that my universally known finger greeting to you will stay in your memory and will remind you to be more watchful.

dumped

 
I am an uncomplicated woman. I like easy relationships. You give a little, you take a little. You tell the truth and you expect honesty in return. No muss, no fuss. 

Which is why I don't have lots of close friends. I can count the number of close friends on one hand, intimate friends on fingers.  As outgoing and gregarious as I seem to the outside world, I could also be the old woman on the hill and be by myself. Which is why something that happened last week has left me sad, blue, but more importantly confused as to why I feel lonely.

I have been dumped by my best friend. And if that wasn't bad enough, she did it with a text message. It was one of those, "it's me, not you. I love you like a sister, love you forever, but we need to cool our friendship for awhile, hope you understand." 

I did not understand. I still do not understand. I did not respond. 

+friend

+best friend

+lonely

I'm Not Old

I know a woman. I don't consider her to be my friend because I don't confide in her. I don't tell her when I have a problem. I don't talk to her about personal things. We don't spend time together.  But she's more than an acquaintance. We've attended social occasions together. We've been with the same group on motorcycle trips. I know the circle of people she associates with. She is older than me. In cat years, she is forty years older, and the first number of her age is higher by one than mine, so I do consider her to be my senior, something I won't be able to do in three months. What I'm trying to say is, I don't want to be her. She is old. I am not.

 I found out today she had a heart attack two days ago. To add insult to injury, after she was in the hospital, she had a stroke. From the outside looking in, she was a healthy woman. She doesn't drink, I do. She doesn't smoke, I did. I don't know her activity level, but my motorcycle clutch and throttle hands are very strong, and so am I.

For some reason, this woman acquaintance's health situation has affected me. I'm not her, but I could be. She is old. I am not. I am not her.