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Rex 84 – The Beginning #fridayflash


It was the second Wednesday in November.  I hadn’t heard from my husband in four days and woke to news that the gates of our enclosed community had been closed and barricaded overnight.

“I’ve heard they’re going door to door looking for US citizens,” a neighbor told me.  She’d slipped out after her husband had gone out to the fields that morning to warn me.  She didn’t know we were dual citizens and hadn’t traveled using our US passports in years.  I wasn’t even sure which packing crate they were in.  We’d moved four times since leaving the US.  Twice since obtaining Canadian citizenship through my native born husband.

I thanked her.  I didn’t know her name at the time.  She was native.  They didn’t mix much with the expatriates.  A cultural preference more than a religious objection.

News reel exploded from the flat screen at the end of the breakfast nook.  Grainy cell phone images from Flickr and video from YouTube hastily retrieved by Al Jazeera before the media blackout highlighted a frightening recitation of silenced Twitter feeds and Facebook updates.  The revolution did not take place in cyberspace, it was just recorded there for a few moments before vanishing like the people who took the pictures and dared to stand witness to history.

No one knocked on our door.  The whispered warnings were fearful winds which blew like the sandstorms, searing and scouring the unprotected in their path.  The company had locked the gates.  When the army arrived, in search of Americans “in need of assistance”, they were sent away with a reminder that the Emirate was not subject to the United States of America, but they would graciously keep them apprised of any needs that might arise.  Praise Allah.

I scanned our passports before burning them, transferred the images to flash drive before deleting the files and then I waited.

Camp sat on the gulf coast.  The moist air ran in little rivers down the panes of our hermetically sealed town home.  The winter was warmer than usual that year. Children played unattended in the park across the street.  I watched my daughter through the droplets.  And waited.

The day before Ashura, the President of the United States, addressed the world.  The next day I left my wet-eyed little girl in the care of only people I could trust, Aamina and Fahd.  They were engineers in my husband’s work group.  Aamina had checked in on me every day since my husband disappeared.  In better days, we had gathered on Friday evenings, discussing and debating while our daughters bonded in the way of little girls.

Fahd tried to discourage me.

“We can’t trust the news coming from America right now,” he said. “Wait a while longer. The company is negotiating the return of our people.”

“Your people,” I pointed out needlessly. “James is Canadian.  Enemy combatant.  You heard what that man said.”

“I don’t believe the Canadians have closed their border or that the Americans see them as threats,” Fahd said. “It was a bad election. That happens.  Americans have been spoiled by their democratic illusions.  The people there will learn in time and all will return to normal. Patience.”

“Not my virtue,” I said.  James would have smiled.  Fahd frowned but in the end agreed to shield my child until I returned with her father.

Without a passport,  I waited at the front gate until the Army transport arrived to collect me.  A guard stood uneasily at either shoulder, clearly disapproving but Fahd had accompanied me and spoken to them on my behalf before hugging me and driving off.

Heavily armed soldiers sandwiched me on the trip to a small airstrip near their base.  Eyes shielded by mirrored sunglasses, their body language obscured under layers of kevlar and khaki.  Their camp was in disarray and I learned from the handful of other detained Americans that the Emirate had politely insisted on their withdrawal.

“Where are we going?” I asked a tall, dusty man who appeared the least shell-shocked of the group I found myself among.

“South Carolina.  There are camps there.”

“Camps?”

“Rex 84?” he studied me and when I didn’t react continued, “It’s the Homeland Security Act that allows the president to declare martial law.   Intern citizens.”

“You mean enemy combatants,” I said, remembering the words I’d heard.

“Potato, po-tah-to,” he shrugged.

Patience, I thought.  The universe had schooled me again.

The Stuff of Memories


I apologize for the tardiness of this post. I know that many of you catch me first thing in the morning or not at all.  Although I have been assured that punctuality and daily posts aren’t necessary, I am a writer and this blog is part of my discipline and I have been slacking.

Slacking has been the theme of August.  Rob pointed it out to me the other day and he’s right.  I haven’t pushed myself overly hard where any of my writing is concerned.  In part because it’s hard to lose myself in a project when Dee is around.  She can be wonderful one day – not needing me much at all – and then turn around and be at my elbow every 5 minutes the next. Not knowing makes it hard to plan and execute, and our lack of schedule once swimming and camps ended just added to the jumbled feel of the day to day.

I have a plan for the school year.  Funny, this is my third year away from the classroom and I still think in terms of the school calendar, making it the basis for my planning and personal schedule. 

The annual summer purge has been unsettling but on a lower level than in the past.  Summer, for some reason, always finds us foraging through the boxes of our past and imposing change on the immediate landscape.  By the end of September – if the weather holds – the exterior of the house and the yard in general will be dramatically different than when Dee and I first moved here.  The interior – upstairs mostly – will be nearly overhauled.  It has its emotional impact.

Dee has been on the edge of tears several times over the last week as we have been going through her toys.  Rob and I didn’t have the stomach for purging her possessions when she and I moved up here.  I probably divested myself of things I needed in order to accommodate what amounted to junk in an effort to keep the trauma level to a dull roar for her.  Consequently, I have been engaged in a near constant war of attrition with Dee for over two years now.  At seven she is finally old enough to understand that much of what she was holding onto was not really all that important and that I have never tried to force her to give away anything with true meaning attached to it.

Except for the chair.

The chair is a brown Lazy Boy recliner my mother bought for Will when he went into the nursing home so he could watch television in his own room. But as he was unable to sit – the dorsal nerves in his lower back were quite damaged by then – and he was nearly blind, the gesture was just that.  The chair ended up being co-opted by his mother though Dee doesn’t remember that and which explains our differing opinions on the importance of the thing.

She sees it as something tangible of her Dad’s that she rocked, sat and used as a jungle gym after I brought it back from the nursing home when Will went into hospice.  I see it as something he didn’t use and that made it easier for his mother to perch night after night in his room, feeling sorry for herself and feeding him the sugar that eventually rotted the enamel off his teeth.

The chair, however, has once again survived a round of purging.  It will not survive a major move.  There is no way we are paying to ship that thing to the UK or even Texas if that ends up being the case.

It surprises me still that the most insignificant things drip with the past.  It’s like slime, clinging and oozing all over. Even when I don’t feel as though it is obviously affecting me, it does.

Rob received an email inquiry from his former boss today asking for an update on his project status.  This is a good sign. It means there is still need and Rob is still the man they want.  But, it means things are going to happen and happen quickly.  By March in all likelihood.  It colors things.

I have been half-heartedly applying for jobs.  I am torn between sorta wanting to work and knowing that work will hamper my writing, be a juggling act where Dee is concerned, and won’t really be fair to any employer because I know I won’t be around in nine or ten months.  The definition of “part-time”  seems more like practically full-time as well.

“What would you do if something happened to me?” Rob asked after a discussion about part-time work.

He’s already observed, aloud, that I have fairly willingly abandoned many management issues because he is around to  do them.

“I would assess my financial picture and take steps accordingly,” I said.  I did not add that I have spent time thinking about this very thing because that is a given.*

The truth is that I would stay put as long as possible, tie up any loose ends and stabilize as much as possible before looking for teaching jobs in Iowa – which is where I would move back to.  I would teach, write and mother until Dee was off to university and then I would search for new opportunities which would not include remarriage.  Though Rob thinks I should consider that because in his opinion I “do better” in a loving relationship – and he’s right – I doubt I would have the stomach for a possible third widowhood.  It’s like being burned down to the bone and I am sure I could do it one more time, if it turns out to be me again, but anything more would be too much – even for an Amazon like me.

Wow, I got off track.  Forgive my digression.

So, purging in preparation for the hamlet-wide garage sale on Saturday and preparing for the school year that begins on Monday.  Dance class registration was yesterday and yoga registration is tonight.  I have a few classes at the university to sign up for and my quarterly calendar to pencil.  And a disgusting bathroom to finish up before Dee’s hair cut this afternoon, so I need to end this.

#fridayflash will be an attempt to continue last week’s story. If you have a moment or two, stop by.

 

*Cheery discussions like these are not new to me. I have always been a “what if” contingency planner. Side-effect of teaching, where the good/successful teacher is the one who spends time imagining what could go wrong with every lesson plan or class and cuts off routes to chaos in advance. Worst case scenario daydreaming is just part of who I am.  I can’t remember not being a worrier.

Publishing Poetry


I submitted a couple of piece to the Canadian Federation of Poets anthology drive a while back. They are attempting to put together a number of anthologies on different topics. I received a rejection email and then a callback on just one of the three poems I submitted.

The anthology is titled The Poetry of Marriage. I am not sure why they liked my poem. It doesn’t portray marriage as a rom-com or take a Disney princess view. I am totally in favor of marriage. I think those who eschew the legalities are nitpicking and taking a huge risk with the future well-being of their partner should anything ever happen*. It strikes me as funny that of the three poems I submitted, I should end up in the marriage anthology.

I don’t know when the anthology is coming out. I have to send a reply with my consent and vital data back and they will let me know. 

If I liked poetry more I would be jumping up and down, but I am at the core of my soul so not a poet. I don’t read it and have a hard time listening to others read their poetry aloud**. I only taught it under duress in fact and any school year that I could skip the whole things was a coup. However, I can write poetry and at different points in my life I have written only poetry. I had close to a dozen pieces published under my maiden name in fact. 

But as Rob reminded me, a publishing credit is a publishing credit. So there.

 

*And I am aware that some common-law relationships are entered into with the full battery of legal documents necessary to ensure that neither party will be hurt in the event of a tragedy but that’s just not the norm. Most couples believe that bad things happen to other people if they’ve bothered to give it any thought at all.

**Mostly because poetry is the realm of the wanna-be writer. People enamoured of writing but not talented, flock to poetry. This has always struck me as odd because poetry – the good stuff – is far more difficult to write than prose.