The Closet

In the wake of my dad's homecoming from Iraq, Amy and I finally agreed to clean out "the military closet". Barely able to close, the closet was chock full of every piece of military gear that Amy and I have ever been issued that isn't used on a monthly basis. Even more disgusting than the closet itself were the bags of old training gear that never really got opened- shoved in the closet in our eagerness to forget them. Tonight as I sorted through the mounds of gear, I felt pangs of recognition at almost everything I touched. The ratty AF basic training t-shirt that still somehow smelled of sweat, with a few faded food stains paying tribute to my lasting inability to eat slowly... The desert gortex pants that I was too scared to fish out from underneath my mouse infested bedroom in Qatar... The portfolio I carried with me in basic training- on the inside a list of what was allowed inside of it including "Unused tissues"... an unused 341- the AF trainee disciplinary form that we were required to carry with us at all times. Surrounded by mountains of painful memories, I felt a strong unsettling current of... sorrow? Or maybe simply deep seated sympathy with the terrified 19 year old who wore those too large BDU pants and the unhappy 21 year old who wished whole days away in those too short PT shorts.

What really got me was a pageful of notes about an intro to music class. The definition of baroque, castrati and lute were annotated with an unfamiliar hand and yet I vaguely remember someone sending them to me while I was in technical school. It reminded me of a CD I ordered while in tech school, of famous female opera duets-- of the song "Viens Malikia" from Lakme and the opening

"Come, Mallika, the creepers are in flower
They already cast their shadows
On the sacred river which flows,
calmly and serenely,
They have awakened by the song birds!"

--of a letter I wrote to a friend about my longing for beautiful things-- opera, laughing with friends, and falling asleep on Blanchard Lawn.

I wonder what another five years removed will bring. While I laughed at many of the things we found tonight, there was still a profound sadness. Sadness for the experience itself, sadness for my own reaction to it, and some sort of strange disassociated sympathy for that girl.