Caught In A Jar

I'm sorry. It echoes around and around in my brain when I'm with you, I have this deep deep sinking downgoing when I look into your eyes because of the hope in the reflected gaze. By being too kind I have made this a million times more difficult, for both of us. And I think about it, why it has become more difficult, and the reasoning makes me angry. When I tell you that it's over, that the hope has gone, it will deflate you and you will grow sullen and think your life is over and make hints at suicide and maybe even try it. And it doesn't even have anything to do with me. You cannot shore up your reserves of strength on something external from you. You cannot seek the structural supports in everything around you and leave yourself weak on the inside. But you don't think logically like that, you're not remembering how the last month we lived together was silent treatment and accusations and you living in the basement [hell.] You just think about the way my hair smells and when we hug you breathe it in, dream about the way that things could be if only you provide enough wanting. And it doesn't even have a thing to do with me. It is the hope that someone besides you can help you figure out how to do this right.

I'm so so sorry. A 130 pound weight on my back. God forgive me. Our present position in life is a direct result of the choices we have made to get us here. Nothing is easy; nothing is easy.

I am sorry for what you're going to have to endure to get yourself to where you want to be. It's a journey that I just simply cannot be a part of. It isn't in me anymore. Something in March died and slowly it has been replaced with something else, something that says four years was enough and making further sacrifices would be foolish on my part. Ryan, I am so sorry. But I can't walk your road with you anymore.

I arise today through a mighty strength

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred . . . let me sow love
Where there is injury . . . pardon
Where there is doubt . . . faith
Where there is despair . . . hope
Where there is darkness . . . light
Where there is sadness . . . joy

Precipatum, Lupi.

I don't think that you understand.

You sink down into it, a little more every day. You try to stay busy so you don't have to think about it but that voice on the phone "I just wanted to hear your voice" makes you feel the futility of that deep down-going and yet somehow you can't avoid it. I wish we could erase all of this, everything that has passed between us. How different my life would be.

It still can be, just don't lose sight. A dark night, a night of stones and branches obscuring your way.

Saint John of the Cross, in the darkness of your worst moments, when you were alone and persecuted, you found God. Help me to have faith that God is there especially in the times when God seems absent and far away. Amen

Friggin Sweet

The Dream.

"Everything you need," he said, "I have already given to you."

We were walking on the golf course looking up and I wanted desperately to know how to soar like that. Overhead and about 200 feet up there were five humongous winged creatures, ragged wings like paper, so graceful. They were gliding so majestically and though their appearance should have been frightening for how dark and prehistoric they were, I wasn't afraid. I knew I could be up there with them but the series of steps that I was repeating that I thought would get me up there wasn't working. I looked back to my right but the man was gone. I closed my eyes. In my mind I was next to them, soaring, and when I opened them it was so. Instead of looking down I started asking questions. Somehow I knew that looking down would put me back on the earth.

"Don't you ever have self-doubt?"

The answer was a smile that radiated out and instantly made me feel the absence of anything like self-doubt.

"We need to make a stop here." It wasn't one of them who said it to me, it was a non-verbal communique that seemed to come from all of them. We were in front of a church and all of a sudden I was alone again. "My father's house," is what I keep hearing echoing around in my head, in someone else's voice. I looked to the top of the church and there was a huge hand overhead, open, golden, palm down. Protection.

All of a sudden I was under a cobblestone bridge with a terrified young boy who was my servant. I wanted him to apply the same amount of care and compassion to his own life that he was trying to apply to mine. He was bringing me a clay vessel full of water but his own thirst was causing him to fall. "Drink without passion," I said to him. "Drink because you need to, because it has to be a part of you." He drank the vessel down and wept, and looked both terrified and full of joy. Some water spilled from the vessel and caused the river to surge up next to him but it didn't threaten him. He opened his mouth to speak,

and my alarm went off.

He is always with us, always. I feel so strongly about it now. And I want desperatly to return the favor.

Not Even Wild Elephants

I had the most amazing dream last night. I will write about it when I get home because I have it all written down there and I'm losing the details.

Yesterday I went to the station to talk to the chief about doing my EMT schooling early, since I have the summer off. I took him the paperwork for the class I found and said, "I know this is outside the realm of normalcy, but I'd really like to get this knocked out during the summer when I have so much time. I am willing to pay for it myself, or wait to be paid for it until I prove that I'm going to be sticking around here for awhile."

He looked at me and laughed. "I have a pretty strong feeling that wild horses couldn't drag you away at this point."

So May 27th I'll be in EMT school! Also, we had a call last night to an MVA that really wasn't too bad, we cleared in around 15 minutes. When we got back to the station we all milled around for awhile (9 A-shifters showed up to the call, it was sweet) and as people were leaving one of my LTs told me to stick around because he had something for me. I followed him out of the bay to his truck and he reached in on the passenger's side. He pulled out a pair of extrication gloves and told me to try them on. They fit perfectly and he told me that they were mine. "Put 'em in your bunker pants. It'll make next monday a lot easier."

I work on the greatest department in the world.

Mutual Aid.

I was sitting in the back room in a meeting when I got a single text from Rob. "Get ready." Instinctively I turned up my pager and sure enough in a matter of seconds I heard Sue's voice over the wire.

"All Oberlin firefighters report to the station for mutual aid."

I got the squirrely eyed look and looked up at William. "Can I go??!!" Without even looking up from his computer he said, "go save the world, girl." I jumped up for my car keys and flew out the door. I took Pleasant street all the way to Hamilton and of course every slow driver in Oberlin decided to get in front of me. The drives to the station always seem to happen in slow motion. I pulled up to a red light at Hamilton and 58 just in time to see our back up engine pulling out of the station. Too late! I cursed the fates as I pulled into the station lot, hopeful that I might get to see a little action, that they'd be sending the rescue truck too.

Sue was waiting in the bay, and the other rookie, Kevin, was there too. "You guys wouldn't have been able to go anyway. Not til you're through the 36. It's good to come to the station though, we might get a call in Oberlin. You're welcome to stay if you like."

I went into the main room and sat at the conference table with a cup of coffee. I had an hour's leave from school and I was going to be at the station for every second of it! Kevin didn't follow me and and I assumed he left. After five minutes of reading the paper at the table, the 911 buzzer went off again. My heart palpitated. I jumped up and ran to the control room where the chief was on the phone with LC 911. Sue was there too. He hung up the phone and looked up at Sue.

"They want our tanker. Who do we got?"

Sue looked over at me and looked back at the chief. "Well, it's either me or you driving!" The chief laughed in his derisive way and looked up at me. "Wanna ride in the tanker?"

I could not believe what I was hearing. My eyes got as big as saucers. "YES SIR!" I ran into the bay and jumped into my gear in record time, and I was latching my last hook the chief appeared in the bay in his bunker coat. Kevin was standing there with no gear on and asked me why I got to go. The chief just looked at him and as I was running over to the tanker I yelled over my shoulder, "I'm geared up!"

We pulled out of the bay and I was still total disbelief that it was just me and the chief taking the tanker to a mutual aid structure fire. "We can do this because you won't actually be going in. You might have to pull hose but I think you'll be all right."

"My heart is in my throat, sir!"

He laughed at this and just said, "give it a few hundred times, it'll wear off."

He joked with me the whole way, answering my questions, me trying as hard as I could to not be totally geeking out the entire way. As we approached the scene the chief called out that we were close, and I heard Mike come back on the radio with, "glad you've got a rookie with you!" I have no idea how he even knew I was in the truck but it made me feel so welcome.

We arrived on scene and it was clear that the fire was under control. "We probably won't even have to get out," the chief told me, almost apologetically. "I can see the fire!" I shot back without even thinking about it. "This is so awesome!" He smiled, I think appreciating my rookie excitement.

We sat in the tanker for about ten minutes watching all of the nomex-clad firefighters scurry around and my heart swelled with pride to see so many coats emblazoned with Oberlin on the back going in and out of the structure. We are a family, I remember Joe telling me one afternoon in the truck bay. We are as good as any of the full time departments around here. All we need is pride and I think you guys will help bring some of that back.

The Incident Commander radioed that the scene was under control, and for all mutual aid tankers to return to their stations. "Oh well," I thought. I got to see my first fire, and I got to go on a mutual aid run with the chief even though it's against the SOP before I'm done with the academy.

As we backed down the narrow street I watched the house and I saw an Oberlin firefighter that I recognized to be Rob climbing way up on the roof with an axe in hand. The grin on my face came back ten-fold. This is a guy who, a couple of nights ago, told me that in no time I'd be telling him how to do stuff, and here he was up on a roof ladder with an axe ready to go to work!

I get paid to do this! What an amazing day.