by Shane Aldridge
It is 04:30 on a Saturday. The world is still asleep but I am awake, as usual. My circadian rhythm was set long ago by the well intended men of violence who initiated me into the Army. I have just looked in on my sleeping children bundled in blankets against the cool chill of the house. I have not turned the heat on yet as fall evenings have been warm, and the mornings have a pleasant crispness.
After brewing my coffee, as black as old sins and with a few grinds in the bottom, I settle into the peaceful solitude of early morning. I look at my cup of joe and think back on firewatch in the arctic getting up in the middle of the night for my shift and sipping a mix of ground and instant coffee with cocoa from the MRE. We had a camp stove that provided the hot water and warmth inside the thin insulation of our command tent. Stepping outside into the cold arctic of Alaska’s Fort Greely my eyes adjusted from the dim red light of the interior to the pale ribbons dancing across the sky. I thought to myself, this is as close as one gets to god, in this life or after. The bitter biting cold at my extremities and the vast beauty of the universe giving a private showing for the sole soul awake in the middle of the arctic desert. The glowing lines of pastel reds and gentle greens floated so thickly I felt I could reach up and swirl them through the sky leaving vortexes of color. It was always out of reach though, as gods are.
As I drink to the bottom of my cup, the grinds remind me of the sands in Iraq, omnipresent in everything I ate or drank. It is well above the heat that anyone should live in, reaching 140 degrees during my time there. You have to drink your coffee before dawn. I saw snow there once. Snow falling on Babylon. I watched it in full kit as I sipped the brew of coffee and sand watching a red sky bloom with cool white softness of gentle drifting snow. The heat of the sun rising to consume this momentary grace. I don’t know if it is a common occurrence but It felt like a visit from some kind of almighty.
Or maybe I had it backwards. The cradle of civilization, where we haven’t stopped sacrificing people at its altar since its inception. Maybe this was a sacrifice of precious water to an indifferent god. Just as those lives that I witnessed ground to a halt. There were many cries to god. Maybe a few of them were answered. I imagine the bomber cried to his god for his holy death. I imagine many of the people on Hajj cried to their god for some kind of saving. The doctor cried to his god for divine aid but refused ours.
I don’t remember any faces save for the head of the boy wearing the suicide bomb, but I remember limbs and body parts every time I close my eyes. They looked like the remains from a meat grinder. Red meat and white cartilage oddly carrying some remnants of clothes. I can still picture the silhouettes where the blast shrapnel was absorbed by the bodies. They call them angel silhouettes. Which begs the question if there is a god why do we worship him if we are the ones creating the angels. He seems indifferent and there were no angels there for those people.
There were many surreal events that happened in the span of a year there. IEDs, Mortar attacks, Suicide bombers, discovery of mass graves. Many men dying for their gods in the land of the first written words. The oldest graffiti is about the beauty of a woman’s eyes but we still kill each other in the same ruins.
Then I came home. As abruptly as that. Something in me split. I was no longer made for the world I live in. Home to coffee on every corner. With half-froth whole-dip skinny avocado coffees for the privileged. Home to my children, who I have loved more than I thought possible, my personal deities. Not in literal form but in some manner of the universe reaching in and leaving an indelible mark on an impermanent piece of human. Maybe more so they are a tangible interaction with god. Watching them grow and become the most amazing people. As if by my hand I have reached out and gently created those vortexes of color across their lives. I have, for the better part of the last fifteen years, kept to my work and to myself. Hard work paired with hearty doses of self-medication lets me forget, if only for a brief time, those hard things. I have found no god in a bottle but I have found respite. A temporary absolution, transcendence from a false communion. Some killing of the mind for better and worse. As I age I feel my body giving. I feel my bones grind together when I move. Soreness in my muscles and pain inside my head. As with the tiredness and cold of the arctic and the horrors of war, this pain is part of the blessing of being in the presence of my own gods.
For now though I can hear one of them wake up. I am blessed with a child who has swaddled herself in blankets and curls up beside me on the couch. It feels like dawn over Babylon. I sip the last of my morning ritual, thankful for the quiet moment we sit in.
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Born and raised in Georgia, Shane Aldridge is a devoted Father and Husband with a passion for engineering, poetry, and continuous learning. When he’s not engrossed in literature, you’ll find him in his workshop, where he enjoys tinkering with everything from engines to computer programming.
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