Touring My Trophy Case

I reorganized my trophy case, going from two rows to three. In the process, I added a few things that had previously been either in our library or in our china cabinet, and I removed a few things that either weren't true trophies or that were redundant with other stuff that was already in there.

Here's where we landed. I tried to leave a little room at the top for future Swim Across the Sound trophies.

I'm now dying to explain this. If you're interested, the explanation is past the jump.

2020: The More Things Change...

Earlier this week, I told my wife that we're not celebrating the end of a decade, we're turning the page to a new beginning.  And yet, I somehow found myself scrolling through old blog posts yesterday, trying to get a feel for how much life has changed -- and how much it hasn't.  

It was a little depressing.  After a life full of whirlwind changes, the last ten years have been amazingly static.  I've been with the same woman since 2002, nurturing the same kids since 2003 and 2005, in the same house since 2007, and in the same job since mid-2010.  None of that is bad, but it doesn't make for some kind of sweeping narrative of hope and change, either.  Given the turbulence of my previous decade, I suppose that a quest for stability -- seen clearly only in hindsight -- was a natural outcome.  But going back through some of my older writing, I also felt keenly that the thing I've done most is to keep on keeping on.

#SBRLLR: Losing My Father (Part 2)

We buried my father in Arlington Cemetery with full military honors.  A giant Marine Corps band showed up in their red dress uniforms, complete with a horse-drawn caisson.  The Marines took my father back in the end, and I walked away from the cemetery content in the knowledge that my dad was again with his people, that he was where he wanted to be.  He was buried in formation alongside all the other soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who’ve faithfully served our nation in its times of need.⁴⁸  His funeral was truly moving.  But it was sparsely attended, however, because my father’s drinking had driven so many of his old friends and colleagues away.

#SBRLLR: Losing My Father (Part 1)

 “Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.”

― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 2, Scene 2

“You need to come home,” my mother said during a phone call in early February 2007.

Again? I thought.  “What’s going on?”

#SBRLLR: Welcome to New York (Part 3)

While I was struggling to adjust to life in the big city, my father was coming unraveled back in Tennessee.  My mother had finally left him, forcing the sale of their home in Lawrenceburg and upending Dad’s his life from top to bottom.  I don’t think he even argued in his own defense.  Rather, he just let her take whatever she wanted, allowed her to set up their soon-to-be-separate finances to her own best benefit, and--at some level--accepted responsibility for destroying her life and his.  He raged, sure, when he was drunk, but he never actually defended himself nor stopped loving my mother.  For that reason, he let her take advantage of him and of the situation.

Or maybe he was just so drunk that he didn’t notice.

#SBRLLR: Loneliness

“Because you can’t trust freedom when it’s not in your hand,

when everybody’s fightin’ for the Promised Land…”

― Guns ‘n’ Roses, “Civil War”

I drove over the Kosciuszko Bridge and into the heart of urban New Jersey late in the afternoon on August 5, 2001.  After almost a year out of uniform, I’d been offered a job in New York City and—with some trepidation—had decided to accept. The drive up from Tennessee had seen me through the rolling farmland of western Virginia and rural Pennsylvania, but population had picked up steadily as I worked my way east.  Halfway through New Jersey I began seeing the unique urban cityscapes I remembered from my Academy days.  It wasn’t until I hit the bridge, though, that New York Harbor came into view alongside the Statue of Liberty and Liberty State Park.  The glass and steel skyscrapers of Manhattan’s skyline emerged when I crested the next rise, beckoning me forward as they have so many others looking for a fresh start.  

I was badly in need of one.

#SBRLLR: Firstie (Part 5)

My dad retired from the Marine Corps at about the same time that the West Point Class of 1995 hit Branch Night.

#SBRLLR: Duty - Honor - Country (Part 5)

Whether it was my newfound work ethic or just simple physical maturity, cow year was my best in the pool by a wide margin.  I won my event at Navy for the third time, leading a trio of Army butterfliers to finish something like first, third, and fourth.  We lost the meet, decisively this time, but I found some peace with it for once, content in the knowledge that I’d at least done all that I could do.  I also scored a dual-meet win in the 100 Fly against Harvard later that same season, the only individual win for the Army team in the entire meet.  This was important because I felt like it proved that I hadn’t given up too terribly much in the pool to pursue my other dreams.  About midway through the season, Ray Bosse posted a list of top national collegiate times, and I saw myself ranked something like 90th overall in the 200 Butterfly.  

#SBRLLR: Duty - Honor - Country (Part 4)

While I’d been a yearling, my father had served as the Operations Officer (G-3) of the Third Marine Division, located in Okinawa, Japan.  Call sign “Warlord.”  He went a little crazy.  Drank the way they used to drink back in the 1960s and 70s and kept a full-time in-house mama-san³⁵ among many other personal indulgences.  He remained one of the best operational planners in the Corps, but his time at Special Operations Command had put a serious dent into whatever commitment he’d once had for “clean living”.  By himself overseas, my father degenerated into a legitimate party animal.

#SBRLLR: Duty - Honor - Country (Part 3)

I passed all of my classes, even Russian, but that semester was hardly a tour de force of academic excellence.  I pulled out a B- in Russian and C+ is Statistics, earning a grade point average of exactly 3.0, even with an A+ in “German History from 1848 to 1945.”  With that, I squeaked onto the Dean’s List.  I was still on track to become a second lieutenant.  

That was good enough.

#SBRLLR: Satisfaction, Not Success (Part 3)

Water polo season ended at about the same time that my relationship with Cam fizzled.  My friends Jeff, Jennifer, and Trisha all left the Vista Swim Team shortly thereafter.  This put me in a tough spot, though I couldn’t exactly blame Jennifer or her family.  Her career had stagnated with Mr. Malone, and she possessed entirely too much talent to let herself just sort of muddle along through the rest of her career.  Her parents felt that she’d gone about as far as she could go with the Vista Swim Team, and they were probably right.  They took half the team with them when they left, however, establishing a gigantic multi-family carpooling effort by way of sharing the daily forty-five minute one-way treks out to Mt. Caramel that joining their new swim team required.  Through this they got access to vastly superior facilities and to a coach who’d put swimmers into the Olympics.  That was probably worth it for Jennifer, but a lot of other kids got pulled along in her wake, and poor Jeff spent almost all of his time behind the wheel of his old beater hatchback for the next few years.

#SBRLLR: First Taste of Glory (Part 3)

I found myself sitting on the windswept bench of some close-packed aluminum bleachers a month or so after school began, watching my father take command of First Reconnaissance Battalion.  His men were formed up in companies in front of a forlorn Quonset hut outpost called Camp Tallega, which sat lost in the sun drenched high-desert hinterlands of Camp Pendleton’s immense beachside training ranges.  Dad had written a speech on notecards for the event, but when he got up to give it in front of his new Marines, he went through a mere card or two before putting his notes away and speaking extemporaneously.  He looked ill at ease to my eyes, particularly when trying to speak from notes, but he was also grimly determined to be the man, the commander, that his Marines needed him to be.  He was discomfited to be around guys who saw themselves more as a special operations unit than as traditional infantrymen, a change in mindset typified in my father’s eyes by the fact that Recon Marines said “Hooyah!” rather than the more traditional “Ooorah!” that characterized the rifle companies he’d been with prior to that point in his career.  I had no idea what his prepared remarks were intended to say, but off the cuff, he acknowledged that the language barrier was only the beginning of the things that he needed to learn to be the best commander that he possibly could be.  He also promised that the Marines in front of him could count on learning a few things from him as well.

His men stood silently in formation, looking uniformly lean, mean, and competent as Hell.

5 Things on a Friday: The Saga of Greg Schiano

As a cadet, I at no time expected that it would ever be easier to be a fan of Army Football than it is to be a fan of the Tennessee Volunteers.  But here we are.

Honestly, I'm glad that my father did not live to see the destruction of his beloved Vols, but I also kind'a wish that I could rub it in, too.

Happy Veteran's Day!

We're showing old pictures today, right?

Me & my buddy Joe before a dining in at Camp GarryOwen, Munson, ROK.

Happy Memorial Day

My dad is in Section 64 at Arlington Cemetery,
near the 9/11 Memorial.

On Turning Forty-Four

My birthday is this week, and as you might’ve guessed from the title of this piece, I’m turning forty-four.  I spent the weekend feeling old and fat and slow, and I’m not gonne lie, I was legitimately upset about it.  I don’t know if it got quite bad enough to be called a “depressive episode”—I just learned that term from Twitter and have no idea what its technical definition is—but I was really blue most of the weekend and maybe a little more sullen than usual, so much so that I know that it bothered my wife quite a bit.

I don’t know what to tell you.  I feel like I’m struggling with this whole “mid-life” thing, and you can say whatever you want to about it.  I’ll just say that it’s true.

TV Talk Back: 13 Reasons Why

Netflix’s new series 13 Reasons Why is America’s latest obsession, and with good reason.  I read one review that described it as “a high school melodrama for adults who like watching high school melodramas.”  That’s a fair assessment save that 13 Reasons Why has a lot more to say than something like Party of Five or Riverdale ever will or did.  It’s got us talking in my house about teenaged angst and suicide but also about teenaged happiness in general, all of which are relevant topics as we prepare for our oldest to start her first year of high school this coming fall.  Our daughter is also named Hannah, and like the protagonist of 13 Reasons Why, she’s not an obvious cool kid, though like the show’s Hannah, she certainly has her share of friends.  How we navigate the coming storms together is a matter of acutely critical importance.

Spoilers ahead.

Memorial Day: Remembering My Father

My dad was a great guy, and I miss him tremendously.

Me and my dad, in either 1995 or '96.

My dad was born Allen Thomas Head, Jr., in September, 1946, on the outskirts of Knoxville, Tennessee.  Everybody called him Tom.  He was the son of a railroad engineer who'd served as tank NCO during World War II and his wife, who stayed at home.