Alone 185 Days during a Storm with a Quilt

I wrote this years ago in my wife Karen's voice and POV.

            August 1990: the Desert Shield buildup had begun a few weeks earlier with massive military supplies and people living around us disappearing to the Middle East everyday.

          Neal and I lived on K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base, and he was a meteorologist, a behind the lines, non-combatant type, but he was on “the list” for ready Desert Shield deployment. His green duffle bag was packed"an obtrusive symbol. One particular Sunday, the perpetually smiling, two-faced Captain Moore stopped by to tell us that Neal wasn’t due to deployment anymore, effectively off “the list.” By Monday afternoon, he had orders and went through the line receiving various scary sounding vaccinations and filling out tons of paperwork"and a will. My stomach somersaulted all day long. He was grim that evening for he was leaving on Tuesday. What happened from that point on seemed surreal, unreal, and I was a victim of circumstances beyond my control.

            A few weeks prior, I had received a stack of dark blue, white-starred fabric quarters from my mother. At the time, I quilted off and on in high-speed bursts and proposed a use to myself for the new fabric that had two sizes of stars in a large quilt, something to keep me busy during, I knew assuredly, a lonely period.

On Tuesday, we quietly drove to the Marquette Airport with nothing much more to discuss. We had said it all before. He and I were confident I could readily handle the household chores, pay bills and take care of our eighth-grade son, Benjamin. I had done it before when Neal had gone off for training for months on end. We didn’t know where he was going for sure, probably one of the coalition bases in Saudi Arabia, maybe in the desert living and working in Air Force issue tents. We held each other at the airport for a longtime"quietly. I told him goodbye, turned and left after the last kiss. I abhor waiting in an airport still today; it only makes the ache of separation more enduring and entrenched.

            On the second day apart, I decided to make the quilt for us. He had said that he liked the dark blue against white background, and the “Drunkard’s Path” was his favorite pattern. I cut out four plastic templates, curved pieces in and out of four-inch square blocks that could make twelve different configurations of the sixteen-block pattern. I laid the templates out on the uncut pieces of blue and white fabric. That starred fabric laid out on the floor had an incongruous and ironic connection with the Air Force and George H.W. Bush’s infamous “thousand points of light.” I maintained an opinion of George Bush as a clueless man"p***y whipped by the battleaxe grandma Barbara, and the Air Force, an uncaring, paperwork-laden organization in need of lubrication. How a small town couple like us got caught up, committed to the Air Force and this war, I refused to remember. That second day he called from Shannon, Ireland; why they stopped there I had no idea. He said most of the men and women were tanking up on Irish Stout, on the way to a war and a dry country in two dissimilar respects. He, the eternally poor traveler, said he didn’t drink anything alcoholic for the longer flight leg ahead. On the third day, I interviewed for a dental assisting job and was instantly hired. It was a good job for a single mom and the hours worked well with Benjamin’s school.    

            Days flung by. Working three days a week in Marquette and filling the vacant hours with quilting, I finished the quilt’s first prototype block in a week. Luckily, Neal ended up in Jiddah, way down south on the Red Sea with the Air Refuelers. A safe place. Before I received a package of the unique Saudi items from him there, he’d been unhappily moved to Riyadh. Closer to Iraq and within range of Scud missiles. There he worked in the basement of the Saudi Command, relatively safe but a huge, inviting target. I was confused and bitter"no one from the base ever checked on Ben and me.

            The Jeep CJ-7 was our fun vehicle, but it was historically unreliable. In the first cold shot of winter, the battery went dead. I bought a new battery and with Neal’s tools spread out on the snow, I changed it out myself"no problem. Soon after as the cold hit subzero, the car only a couple years old died. The dealer convinced me it was a fatal infliction and offered me a deal on another car. I signed the papers that appeared before my eyes. Neal, on the phone, said I was probably ripped off, maybe I was, but I did what I thought was right.

            Days continued to stream by. My coworker’s husband was a Marine. He mailed her a scorpion and sand sealed in plastic. Neal sent me illegal wool rugs from Iran and twenty-four caret gold earrings from the gold market. It was almost a class distinction indicator, the foot soldier in the desert versus the educated meteorologist in a hardened building. 

            Just before Christmas, Neal told me he was involved in an incident. Nothing dangerous, just a suspected security breach occurred and the alarmed Security Policeman shoved unarmed him in an elevator for cover with a screaming female Airman until he secured the area. Why they never issued guns to anyone but the SP’s no one understood.

Ben and I bought a Christmas tree from Meister’s. It was nice until we got it home and tried to stand it up, and it wouldn’t"it was bent. Jim, Neal’s bicycle riding buddy/coworker, stopped by right then and wrestled with the tree until it stood. Jim’s wife later said he refused to do that at home. That was the only call I received from Neal’s unit at Christmas.

            I was uncomfortable, stressed whenever I wasn’t intensely occupied. I awoke at three AM everyday and never sleeping well, worked on the quilt in the early morning hours. We thought that maybe it was the cosmic connection because Neal went to bed in Saudi Arabia around that time. There were three “Drunkered’s Path” blocks completed, looking like crooked, sixteen-inch, blue-starred “X’s,”when Desert Storm started in January"the media-fest war. A woman/coworker called from Neal’s unit"

            “Are you watching CNN, how can you bear to watch?  They’re blowing everything up, aren’t you worried?” 

            “Of course, I’m watching and worried,” I replied. “What am I supposed to do about it?” You inconsiderate Air Force b***h.     

            Soon after the war began, Ben was subdued and upset when he came home from school. After talking with him he began crying and I found out his English teacher was vocally anti-war and looked the other way when the locals taunted the Air Force kids with shouts that their parents will die. I was furious. The next day, I demanded to the principle that the abuse must stop and Ben be placed in another class. It happened immediately though some abusive words remained flying afterwards.

A Scud missile struck Neal’s building, but luckily, it was non-chemical. Another, later on, crashed down the street from his building and killed four Saudis. Sometimes, I wished I didn’t know. The quilt had four “X” blocks and four white border blocks with single four-inch stars.

            Valentines Day"an uncaring, non-descript Airman delivered single rose buds to the spouses of deployed Air Force members. My eyes teared for the first time. Whose inconsiderate idea was this? I gripped the stem, thorns and all, wanting to tear its every petal off, to smash it, to grind it into the floor with my foot, and throw it out on the street"maybe stuff the thorny stem somewhere painful.

            The hot part of the war soon ended with the coalition stopping short of victory and occupying Iraq. Words of troop return soon blossomed in the newspaper. The quilt blossomed in color and fullness while I worked harder on it, listening to Yes’s song “Hearts,” that refrained, “two hearts are better than one…” My assisting job remained stressful with bloody tooth extractions, x-rays and fillings, but everything seemed brighter and cheery. I called him early in March and as usual couldn’t reach him, but the guy on the other end said he was palletizing, packing up"now that was a good sign. Ben was happier. We ate out, one of the few times, in celebration. I decided to lose the eight pounds I had gained in the stressful habit of eating Hershey’s Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels by the bag.

            The weather warmed with rain in March and the roof leaked. I tarred a couple seams in hopes to seal it. Neal didn’t know when he was coming home, it was the usual, “hurry up and wait.” The week before his birthday, the quilt top was nearing completion with nine “X” blocks, nine white blocks and six border blocks. It was a striking quilt with the contrasting blue-starred blocks on pure white muslin. Neal called the day before his birthday with orders dated for the next day. Good news"great news"wonderful news.

            It took Neal several days to get home, and it was a glorious reunion for the three of us. He looked tired and beat. He said I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. I was sure of that after six months in a dusty Saudi dungeon. I showed him my labors in fabric, and he thought it was beautiful"loved the pattern, colors and stars. I pointed out the details of stitched quilting of two separated hearts connected by a chain, a watch stuck at three AM, and the many spiderwebs of solitary wait.                          

           

             

Author's Note

Any thoughts on this one?