Just one of the crew

Back a month or so ago, I was able to get underway for a couple of weeks on a 378', a trip I'd started laying groundwork for back in September.

This relatively short excursion was preparatory to my desire to deploy with the ship in the spring for five months: an opportunity to get some experience onboard, meet the crew, familiarize myself with the ship, and start working on my qualifications both on the bridge and in combat.

The command cadre knew of my background: an inescapable explanation for why I was available, what my background was, and just how I'd managed to take only 1/3 of an important "pipeline training" school. It was accepted as part of my package, and otherwise ignored.

The crew, on the other hand, knew nothing other than that I was a restless seafarer uneasily anchored to a land desk, desperate for that one prolonged blast. I crossed the brow, then, with no baggage but a hastily packed seabag.

The two weeks were relentless. I flew out to meet the ship less than two days after I'd returned from South Africa. We had barely reached the sea buoy when a fireball blew out of the stacks; and that was only the first main space fire: at midnight that night, we had another; and the next evening, the threat of a third (though it turned out to be only billowing smoke). Drill followed drill, non-stop, from daybreak to taps, preceeded and followed by training team briefs and debriefs. Almost every morning and evening, we were either pulling into or out of San Diego, anchoring for brief moments (for "score"), or exchanging crew members and shipriders via small boat. At last, the TACT drills took a brief hiatus, so we could squeeze in a 48-hour battle exercises with a Navy strike group. I volunteered for the morning 4 - 8 break-in watch: sure, it meant days lasting from 0230 to 2200, but it was the only chance I could carve out to stand a watch uninterrupted by drills.

Nor were my watches uneventful. I conned away from one pier and took the deck inport homeport, maneuvered the ship to protect a "high value asset" during a Navy exercise, coached for recovery of a deflated gunnery target, and tracked down and assisted a sinking sailboat before dark one windy morning. We even beat the helo to the scene. Down in combat, I observed a multiplicity of drills before filling in, somewhat uncertainly at first, as the Watch Supervisor. Eventually I took a turn as TAO (tactical action officer) to practice identifying and defending the ship against inbound missiles. I loved every minute of it.

The best part, though, other than finally casting away the lines (OK, shouting rudder commands from the bridge wing and "wardroom movie night" featuring Sink the Bismarck! were also pretty cool), was that I was simply one of the crew: a landlubber with a bit of sea time trying to make the cut for a high-stakes deployment. It was not that I neither asked for nor received any special favors; it was that they weren't even under consideration. Held to the same standards, and subject to the same expectations, as any of my shipmates, I at last felt free from the stigma of sickness. (Even seasickness: 378s ride well, and the weather was mostly calm.)


I was just one of the crew.

Because against all odds, we're still here

"No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy." --Abraham Lincoln, 1863 Thanksgiving proclamation

It was a game I couldn't lose - taking multiple turns around the table to give thanks, I wasn't about to run short of ideas. The little things, like being able to taste food again; the job- and career-oriented - a supervisor who encouraged me to go where I wanted for treatment, other supervisors who supported me taking leave to go to South Africa and to get underway with a ship, the opportunity to "write my own ticket" this year, a whole network of colleagues who supported me at every turn; the friend-related: living in the same city as my best friend for the first time since high school, seeing more of my family in five months than in the previous five years, friends who knew and judged me for who I was, not what I suffered from; the move: two amazing roommates, a great apartment, unbelievably amazing renters, a safe home for my car over the summer; the symptoms: no lasting heart or lung damage, no lasting damage to my fingers (the symptom I most dreaded), no more drugs; the side benefits of taking a few months off: a two-week cross-country road trip, shelves of books read, a symphony and several other pieces composed, a newfound love for the local library; finances: a completely paid-for course of treatment (with some of the best civilian providers available) - I didn't pay a penny for anything, not for transportation, not for medication, not for anything, for treatment that's cost at least $100K and counting; opportunities: long deployments or top assignment picks; and most of all, that I'm still here. It wasn't that long ago that someone in my position a year ago wouldn't have made it this long, let alone be driving ships and hiking mountains and cooking Thanksgiving dinners.

Not to discount the hard work and distinguished support of so many, but this is the work of no mortal hand.

"Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him."

Confounding expectations

If you know me much, you probably know that I’m not good at fitting into stereotypical boxes or under conventional labels. Having grown up attending a small school in a very insular community, where pre-kindergarten follies are doomed to dog you through high school, I’ve made it a mission of mine to confound expectations, to leave people guessing.

I certainly don’t match the picture of conventional young-womanhood. Ok, so I’ve followed the 18th-century playbook in a few ways: I can cook, clean, and sew; play a civilized musical instrument and sing light songs; speak a smattering of foreign languages (including the de rigueur French); sprinkle my polite conversation with literary and Biblical allusions; entertain small children; throw fancy parties; and sure, I’ve been known to paint a watercolor or two, or needlepoint by the fire.

But that’s about where it ends. I also fix my own car, curse like a sailor, would much rather spend a day at the range than the mall, and have been known to out-drink more than one male companion. I take about 5 minutes to get ready (10 if I have to polish my boots), detest women’s magazines, watch SportsCenter, not soap operas, and detest chick flicks (sappy love stories are only marginally permissible if bloody battles outweigh romantic longings by at least a 3:1 ratio). So I’m not about to be on the cover of Vogue any time soon.

The South African relatives I met, most of whom are solidly in the sit-and-genteely-drink-tea generation, weren’t quite sure what to make of me, this fearless Coast Guard chick traipsing about a country halfway around the world, alone but for a 12-page list of relatives’ names, cold-calling folks in the phone book, making up her itinerary as she went. One elderly relative in particular was most politely appalled. She did her best to shield her pointed questions, but the barbs became unmistakable.

“So, tell me about your family,” meaning not my parents and siblings, but a sidelong shot at my apparent lack of husband and children. Why hadn’t I “settled down”? Where were my traveling companions? The military…sailing around in foreign seas…driving ships: “Isn’t that a man’s job?”

Finally, she wound up to her final zinger, delivered with withering disdain: “Your hair…do they make you keep it that short for the military?”

“Oh, no,” I replied cheerfully. (How could I say the military wouldn’t let me cut it this short - I'd tried, and failed!) “I went through chemo and radiation this summer, and it’s just now starting to grow back.” “Excuse me?” “I went through chemo and radiation a few months ago and lost all my hair – it’s just now growing back. It’s coming in nicely, don’t you think?”

It silenced her for the duration.

Huddled masses yearning to breathe free

I've done a fair amount of traveling outside the country, and while I'm a confirmed quest-a-holic who could easily spend 9 out of every 10 days on the road; without fail, I always ended each trip deeply longing to return to the good ol' U. S. of A.

It wasn't just the conveniences of living in the richest (and most expensive) country in the world. The privileges - and responsibilities - of being the world's only remaining superpower. The conveniences and commodities and the enormous well-stocked grocery stores. The big cars and the cheap gas. Those are all double-edged swords.

No, it was the pervasive, if dying, truth that even in the darkest days of discrimination, slavery, war, depression, and fear, that no matter who you were born, with hard work, prudence, good stewardship, determination, and the indomitable American spirit, you could grow up to Be Someone. Or in the worst of circumstances, at least your kids would have it better than you. Even in other First-World European countries, I found this to be devastatingly untrue, which made me always long for home, America, where the homeless and tempest-tossed could make good someday.

This changed with my trip to South Africa. I have never seen a country so resilient and determined. I thought the brutal, dirty stain of apartheid would have irretrievably polluted the national spirit, but I found nothing of the sort. Instead, I saw an entire country of first-generation American immigrants. Working in mediocre jobs, living in shacks, eating minimally, surviving with the least of frills, sacrificing everything to send their children to the best private schools possible, hiring tutors, ensuring their kids studied every spare moment, irrepressible in their determination, convinced beyond doubt that they might die penniless and broken, but their children, dammit their children would be successful, success was within their kids' reach as it was never open to them. A whole country full of welcoming, friendly, helpful people, who, far from being taken aback from calls from foreign strangers claiming kinship and wanting to meet, scolded me for not staying longer and eating more of the extensive spreads they laid out for me.

South Africa has a tarnished reputation for widespread and violent crime, but I've felt more afraid in the streets of Chicago and New York. In fact, all the locals went out of their way to warn me away from the bad streets and sketchy characters. It was a country under construction on all three coasts and everywhere in between, frantically trying to rebuild and expand infrastructure in advance of World Cup 2010. A country of hope, of promise, of unfailing hospitality.

I was sorry to go, but even more so as I found myself confronted by materialistic, selfish, cold American society. On the plane into Washington DC, an elderly woman (seated with her husband, on a flight of mostly older couples who had been flying for the past 17+ hours) spent the final 20 minutes prior to landing carefully applying eye makeup and anxiously checking her reflection in a compact mirror. Even at the remotest bush airport in South Africa, the planes flew on time, the stewardesses were young, polite, and attractive, and traveling was a refined experience that left you refreshed at arrival. In DC, our plane was delayed due to striking pilots and a half-full flight, the stewardesses were middle-aged and rude, and the airport filled with angry, frustrated, snappy passengers. The stores teemed with expensive, processed, packaged, useless goods and to get a basic snack cost upwards of $8. The bathrooms were dirty and the people handling our luggage, careless. The line for American citizens at Customs was twice as long and moved half as slowly as that for all the foreign nationals. The CBP agents eyed all of us Americans suspiciously. What was this country to which I returned?

Ubi sunt indeed. I daresay the golden door yet exists, beckoning like a beacon in the night; but the lamp lifted beside it, is it still lit?

Fear itself

I used to think that after staring down the barrel of a loaded gun held by a crazy person wanting to kill you, there's not much left to fear. But the truth was, the whole surreal episode made me cling a little more desperately to life, to realize what I'd nearly given up, to weigh more dearly what still hung in the balance.

Sure, there wasn't much they could do to scare me into shape at OCS (Officer Candidate School) after that - yell all they wanted, I knew they couldn't (and had no desire to) kill me. But my career-planning, my life-living, became ever-so-much-more determined, steely-eyed not to forfeit what I'd almost never seen, iron-gripped on a future I swore I'd never again let out of my grasp.

It worked, brilliantly for my career, though to the inevitable detriment of most everything else. Four years of determination and sacrifice finally, astonishingly, paid off in an incredible career opportunity, my top pick, a real leap of faith from the detailers (what with my paper-thin resume), an open door into a limitless future. All blown to bits in just weeks with a cancer diagnosis that dominoed into cancelled orders within the hour. My XO at the time was quite taken aback that I cared more about losing my dream job than I did about dying.

But dying is final. What can be frightening about a fixed endpoint? Jobs are fluid, so many variables: they scare me in a way that facing death never could. Showing up in a new position, with new responsibilities and expectations, new boss, new crew, new unit...always worried that somehow I'll fail, I'll come up short, I'll let someone down. I don't like the learning process. I want to be expert upon arrival. I'm untrusting of my skills, talent, guts, intuition, and experience. Worried about first impressions. But I've been lucky; or perhaps my caution has simply served me well, because no job has ever been as bad as the worry preceding it. I study hard, I watch others, I listen, I step lightly at first, I trust and empower, I speak with confidence, I admit mistakes, I force patience upon myself, I'm eager to learn, and somehow...somehow it all comes out okay.

But Death is different: either you are or you aren't; there's no middle ground. And I guess I've always felt there's so little you can do to control Death (the wages of sin, after all, and have we not all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God?), although I suppose that's not really true at all. I feel in some karmic way, I was supposed to be gone by now. Cancer should have done me in. It was my time, was it not? Somehow I cheated Death, for the time being at least, and though he'll come for me eventually, maybe I've carved out a few decades of "bonus round", of "overtime". It's finite. We like to think, us corruptible humans, that we live forever, but there's a horizon in my future and it's not limitless.

And in its strange way, these extra innings have made me even more fearless, if that's possible. Fearless in a different way, I suppose - prudent enough to plan for tomorrow, but improvident enough to enjoy today, to carpe diem, to go for broke. Unwilling to wait for company; unafraid to strike out alone. Hungry to seize at every opportunity, not just for career, but for family, for friends, for myself - to strike all that stuff off my list of things to do before I die. Fearless, because the fear comes from the waiting, the worrying, the unknown. Strike out and seize the moment and clammy fear will evaporate in the sweat of action.

For tomorrow we may die.

A long and winding road

Flight time from San Francisco to South Africa is about 30 hours. I went by way of Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Singapore; and immediately upon arrival in Johannesburg, hopped on a train down to the coast, to Port Elizabeth. I left San Francisco on Wednesday morning and arrived halfway around the world at my final destination on Saturday at noon, local time. It was a long journey.


My grandfather on my dad's side was one of 11 siblings, and the only one to leave South Africa. Since, of course, many of the younger generations have left, for Australia and New Zealand, for Dubai and Saudi Arabia, for England, for Canada, for the United States; but for the most part, there is a whole branch of the family still resident in South Africa. My father's parents died long before I was born, so I had little connection to, or knowledge of, this part of my heritage.

It is a rite of passage for us melting-pot Americans to go off in search of our roots. More than an excuse to travel, more than a unique opportunity for an inside look at a foreign culture, I hoped to find, in that stereotypical questing way, some reflection of myself among these distant cousins. After all, I don't look much like either of my parents. I'm the starched-collar goy among my mom's family, and too liberal and open-minded for my dad's conservative Christian relatives. Everyone on all sides collectively gasped when I abandoned a safe and lucrative intellectual life to (consecutively) scoop ice cream, live on a farm, work in a small-town dental office, and eventually join the military. Pacifists on one side and anarchists on the other, nobody quite knew what to make of me swearing to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Why wasn't I teaching, going to grad school, studying law or medicine, pursuing a musical career, living in the city, dating a suit, settled down and busy raising rugrats?

I hoped rather fleetingly that perhaps I'd find some actual relations, some resemblances, on this trip. And I was not disappointed, though the source took me by surprise. The second- and third- and once-removed cousins I discovered across the country were all incredibly warm, welcoming, and refreshingly full of stories of my grandfather and grandmother; but the best story I heard was that of my great-great-great grandfather, one of the 1820 British settlers sent to South Africa to establish a human barrier between the British and the native black population (rather peeved about their land being stolen away).

Thomas, my great³ grandfather, was what you might call a rogue. Growing up, he lived with a wealthy merchant family in London, but for unknown reasons, out of the blue he enlisted in England's Merchant Navy. After a few Napoleonic sea battles, he was captured by the French, perhaps even fought back against the English on a captured English ship, languished several years in a French prison, got in with the Freemasons, then successfully leveraged his Masonic connections to escape France - one of just a handful of English POWs who did so. Returning to England, my illustrious ancestor found he wasn't too popular, so after futzing around a bit (and fathering an illegitimate child), he signed up for the dubious 1820 excursion with his wife and three young children. Against all odds, he scratched out a decent farmer's life amid the chaos and privations of white South Africa, frequently haggling with the government for damage and loss reimbursement from the "frontier wars" against the various black tribes. In his later years, though, he spent most of his days chasing after a married-but-separated woman (helping raise her kids) and getting "stupid drunk", perhaps as a way to cope with having to be taken in and supported by his least favorite son, who despised him. Restless, even in his retirement he tutored children, mended shoes, and kept a daily diary, peppered with odd recipes and remedies and regular weather observations ("It was windy." "It was windy." "Today it was windy.") For decades, landlocked far inland, this illustrious forebear kept among his small library a number of books on navigation and seamanship, deeply prized and sorely missed when they burned along with his farm during one of the frontier wars.

Some of my ancestor's colorful nature must have trickled down the bloodline, I suspect.