agent orange

First of all, Richard never talked about Vietnam.  We were married for decades before he started to speak at all about it.  We did not know much about Agent Orange.  I dropped my High School chemistry class during week two.  After my A on the Periodic Table test, things went downhill fast.  I am not a chemist, but I have read everything I can get my hands on about Agent Orange.

When Richard slept in Vietnam, he usually found a little dry creek bed. He looked for place where it was lower,so he could sleep sitting up and kind of recline his back onto the side of the dirt.  His M-14 was always within reach. It was jungle and it rained. When he woke up in the morning, he would be sitting in 4 inches of water.  He slept where there was no vegetation. Why would there be a spot that had no vegetation in a jungle??  It had been sprayed with Agent Orange.

So where were we?   Oh! the rain.  So as we waited at a stop light on 5th south I watch a homeless man make a shelter out of three large city trash cans and a tarp.  He sat under the tarp and was prepared for the rain.  He didn't know it would come in 4 minutes because he didn't have a phone.  I worried about the lightning for him more than the rain.

Richard slept outside in lots of rain in Vietnam.  He told me the thunder would wake him up and he thought it was artillery being fired.  Sometimes he had shelter but most times he was just sleeping on the dirt.  So what to be afraid of there?  rain, lightening, poisonous centipedes, mortars, Vietcong soldiers, grandmothers, children ( with grenades).

Agent Orange.

Starts and stops and wealth

My starts and stops are part of our problem.  When my husband is bad, I am bad.  It is hard to explain.  I needed to take something back to Comcast.  It sat on my fireplace for months.  I was being charged for it every day.  I could not put the steps to do it in my mind.  I was a former busy woman. A productive woman.  Now I am a woman of starts and stops.  Permanent writers block.  But yesterday a story formed in my brain.  I love when I get my brain back.  I was never a beauty.  It took loads of make up and lots of time to make me look just ok. So I was not too sad to grow old and have my face wrinkle.  but my brain.  I really did love my brain..  I miss it.

 This is my blog and punctuation have my rules.....  I am not going to do a rough draft....this is it.  life does not get a rough draft and then a nice copy.

Ok so here is is.

One of the Lord's tender mercies to me is my water aerobics class every morning.  It gets me up and out and my body feels good and I speak with wise older women. It helps me feel young as I am 20 years younger than most of them. They all have a story and someday I will tell you about each one.  maybe when my brain comes back totally, I will write a book about them. 

Yesterday our instructor, who is 73, mentioned when she was a girl she lived next door to John Wayne.   She and her siblings used to climb over his fence and take his pomegranates.   He told them to come over and he would give them some but they liked climbing the fence.  He once ran into her mom's Cadillac. Her mom never fixed it because she liked telling people John Wayne ran into her car.  I asked what her dad did to live in such an affluent neighborhood. My brain was having an off moment but I think she said some kind of nuclear engineer. She said when she got married she thought she was poor because she had to clean her own swimming pool.  

So that was in my brain at 9 am yesterday and then Richard and I went to the VA for his appointment.  On the way home we saw brilliant lightning strikes and Richard' s smart phone told him it would rain in 4 minutes. We drove past the drug park across from the county building.  Lawyers in suits were stepping up their pace to get inside the building. A woman walking her dog was quickly heading for home.