Remembering Vietnam

Yesterday, in addition to being Memorial Day, marked the anniversary of the beginning of the Vietnam War. 

A war that cost the United States over 58,000 lives.

A war that defined me, & many of my generation.

A war that sent home its vets without the welcome & thanks & support they deserved.

When I lived in Washington, D.C., I went to the Vietnam Memorial many, many times.  With my son, with family & friends & visitors & sometimes alone.  

I have never completed walking its length.

Because at some point each time I walked along the memorial, I could no longer bear reading the loss represented by those names, those lives, those families.

Or the loss represented by those who survived & came home wounded, both physically & spiritually.

Yesterday, President Obama chose to speak to the issue of Vietnam & its veterans.  I don’t really care if this was a political rather than a personal move.

It was the right thing to do.

Because he welcomed the vets home & said thank you.  Damned time.

For me, I doubt I will ever be able to walk the length of that wall.  Because I will always wish & wonder that it is not so much shorter.

As I wish for Afghanistan & Iraq.

About Men & Words & Chess

So, I am playing “Words With Friends” on Facebook with my friend Carolyne, my cousin Dennis in Australia, too many others & my friend Glen from my high school years.

I suck at it.

And this really, really gets to me.  I live for words & I have only won seven games of too many games.

Carolyne & Glen annihilate me.  Carolyne says it is luck & practice.  She is very kind.

Glen says I need to learn defense.

After all these years, he still reads me. ;-)

I have been watching how he plays – I think that I am learning, but he has yet to tell me that I am learning defense.  After each of my moves, I plan the next move & he blocks it.

It is a good thing we are not playing chess.  He would decimate me & I would become obsessed with turning the tables.

But, if I should by some intervention of the powers that be, actually win a Scrabble game against him . . .

. . . Chess is definitely on the table . . .

Wizard chess, of course.  And I will bring my own Ron Weasley. ;-)

Flying Forks . . .

 

Years ago, before there was a Nick or a Sam, there was just Jaki Jean living outside the loop in an apartment complex designed for singles.  My time in that complex is another story.

But eventually, I met Marguerite & Richard Pulley & Marguerite introduced me to their friend John Chambless, who had a vacant apartment in one of his holdings.  Inside the loop.

For non-Houstonians, you cannot understand the difference between outside the loop & inside the loop.  Suffice it to say, I belonged inside the loop.  

So I moved into an apartment over John Chambless’ office in a quadraplex on Stanford Street.

Just a few blocks from Marguerite & Richard.  Who adopted me & brought me into their circle of friends.

Richard traveled in the oil biz in those days – which left Marguerite & I to our own devices.  The raccoons that scavenged her trash were frustrated with us – all they found were empty Frexinet bottles & an occasional Lean Cuisine box.

When Richard was in town, he & Marguerite allowed me to cook.  I still smile at the confusion in the lunch room at work when he called & I dictated a grocery list.  The ladies in the lunch room were very suspicious.

One evening, after I cooked, we cleared the table & rinsed the dishes.   

The house on Stanford Street did not have a dishwasher & Marguerite was a great believer in rinsing the dishes & leaving them for the next morning.

But that night I lost my mind & started washing dishes & Richard joined me in the kitchen & started drying.

And in the midst of all our laughter & banter, a fork came flying across the room. 

And missed embedding itself in either of our faces.

I don’t remember what Marguerite said after throwing the fork.

I just remember making a note to myself:  Jaki Jean, do not wash dishes with another woman’s husband.