The Gaelic Club

To my grandfather, for his genetics and everything that entails. For walking the beat when Terry v. Ohio actually happened, for the boxes of cases with his name signed as investigator, and for the beginning of so many of us to wear blue.

To my father, for being the best role model anyone could have. For teaching me to do what is right and what is necessary, despite personal discomfort or awkwardness. For being my moral lighthouse, so that I never feared the dark and choppy sea. For choosing to be fair over being popular, and the importance of why. And most importantly for his name, for giving us such a valuable gift.

To my mother, for her unwavering tolerance and compassion. For her ability to understand human nature but to not become a cynic. And for the untold burden she carried while paving the road for my generation of women in blue.

To Emily, for her intellectual and physical prowess, which has always kept me at the top of my game. For the questions she asked, and for not explaining the thought process, but making me trace it back to the original problem on my own. For leading me to the stoics.

And to Libby, who started everything by sending me a single text message last summer. For not ever doubting me, and for being the most loyal friend anyone could have.

The new blue bloods.

His photo is washed out and pixelated on the copy announcing his memorial that they hung in the dimly lit basement corridor where we have our academy. Two youthful eyes peer out at you from behind a motorcycle helmet, it looks like he's revving the engine. And when I walk past the photo to go to class, I find myself wondering who held the camera.

The street in front of the church was lined three deep with shoulder-to-shoulder police blue as far as the eye could see, until the heat and humidity of the day claimed the horizon in heat waves, making it impossible to focus. Sweat ran down my face, along the veins on my neck, pooled in the hollows of my collarbone and spilled out, soaking my shirt. If I lead, will you follow? We stood watch with thousands of police officers and when the bagpipes started we moved as one to attention, and held a long and sorrowful last salute.

They carried his casket into the catholic church, bagpipers and all, and the air outside became still, weighed down with the humidity and the mourning. We stood there in the oppressive sun, sweat bleeding through our clothing, wishing there was more suffering we could take on for his family, for his department.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. And although it means a paltry little, he will never be forgotten.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

She was the Irish girl with a lilting step she inherited from her father. The talkative tomboy with a reckless smile whose eyes lit up at the first sign of mischief (still do). Born a fighter. When she was 10 she filled page after page of construction paper with drawings of Air Force jets that she hoped to someday fly. When she was 13 she borrowed Carl Sagan from the library and mispronounced infrared but loved his poetry of possibility. She didn't understand when the mother of the kids she babysat laughed at her answer to what-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up; an astrophysicist or a blue angel.

She had no conception of what could not be accomplished.

Lately I've been thinking of that kid most every day. Running lap after lap at too fast a pace just to keep up with the boys, to make the men's time. Needing the amazement and the congratulations and the whispers and the stares from the others when I finish above the men's average. Scoring 100% on every test or not being satisfied. Drawing my sidearm and firing 2 rounds into the preferred area in 1.14 seconds and still thinking of ways I could do it faster. Reading ahead, researching weight displacement and muscle control to not permit my size to be my limit; pushing, lunging, grappling my way to unquestioned competency.

Accepting no limits.

I can still see her, when I look in the mirror. She's in my eyes somewhere, and in my smile when some thing's afoot. She reminds me to be stoic, steadfast and unquestioning in my ability, and I offer her an unflinching resolve and the spirit of a warrior. There is nothing we cannot do.

They called me Annie Oakley.

I took the twelve-gauge and he said, are you going to show them how it's done, in that joking way that is meant to be demeaning. My fingers fed four rounds into the hot metal of the gun, my hand pumped the action and I stood ready. My blood pounding with hate and the will to fight. He gave the command and I worked four huge holes into the unfortunate paper silhouette 50 feet down-range. I locked the action open and passed the shotgun on to the next shooter and ignored whatever derogatory marks he was making, still had my "ears" on and the wind carried his words away with it, away from me.

Later we were examining the the red welts on our shoulders, the texture of the gun's butt impressed upon our flesh from the sheer force of its discharge. He caught one or two of them and told us that it was an excess level of estrogen that caused the skin to turn red. Shit-eating grin on face the entire time. Me being the only female in the crowd. Me shooting daggers and him never making eye-contact.

All the others were looking at me though, like they always do, wondering (I'd like to think) how I can take it, why he doesn't know it's wrong to say, (hopefully not) why don't I say something back.

My blood burned and my mouth tasted like bile. My brain was only capable of processing the need to fight, the need to win, the need to be better and better and better. The next qualification I was all this-is-no-fooling-around-I-mean-business and I nailed each and every shot, each and every move, and I was one of only two to pass it the first time around. The others congratulated me and even one of the other teachers told me it was nice shooting, but when I glared at him he was looking away.

When I was the only one to nail two shots from 75 feet he approached me. He said some crap about me being a chick gunfighter and from there it developed into bullshit about gender and how women are mostly incapable. The shark circled away again and my boss, who had been standing there the whole time, looked at me and said, he has never liked women, he's gotten better lately though. He's just a grumpy old man.

As if that could possibly make it acceptable. As if that could even come near to explaining any of it.

I am one of the best shots in the class. I pass the academic tests with flying colors. I can PT with the best of them. I take this shit seriously because this is my calling and I have a mega-fuck-ton of natural ability. But damn if that guy making some statement about how the female newborns in his family are smothered at birth because they have no need for women doesn't make me feel like I'm not cut out for it.

Like a Tumbleweed.

She once wrote,
Hope is the thing with feathers
that perches in the soul
and sings the tune without the words
and never stops at all,
And I thought of it today, after he left the note for me to find.
She left a note and our grandmother found it
under such different circumstances
but the spaces between the lines are still full of parting,
and a quiet sadness.

The advice of my mother and the strength of St. Michael;
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God.

I was not born a warrior and the inside still has places that are soft and weak and insecure. When I go to bed instead of prayer I offer up the Code of Ethics and when I wake I remind myself that it's a choice I've made to be a sheep dog and not a sheep. That it's a choice and to not ever get complacent.

Moxie, grrrl

It wasn't what I thought it would be. She seemed nice, intelligent, strong. And then she looked at him and said, I feel for you, I know where you are coming from. All I got was a blank stare and a warehouse load of guilt. And confusion.

I went in with expectations, but you can't help it. We deal with new situations by trying to put them into a familiar context. We assume.

This whole time I've been convinced that my actions have been reasonable. That the root of the problem is our shifting view of life, not that I'm asking too much. That I'm not a bad person for knowing what I want and being determined to acheive it. That it's not outlandish or sinful to want to live near my family.

Maybe she'll quit, maybe she won't like actually doing it as much as watching it.

I thought about my dad, and my mom, and how much bs mom put up with on the force 20 years ago. And still she loved the job.

Maybe he has problems with the thought of his wife getting shot at.

I thought about Nate and how he said he wanted to be a Ranger, or a Seal, the high hopes he had and how he just always knew. How it seems that some people are called with such undeniablity that it's not even a choice.

How would you feel about not starting the Academy right now? Maybe that would make him feel better, lessen the tension.

And I thought about Pittsburgh, and how small life can become if you're not vigilant, if you sell yourself too cheaply.

In the end it's shadow and dust. You do what you can to be true to yourself before the winds claim your ashes. You don't regret, you don't compromise your integrity, you are always honest with yourself, and death finds you smiling.

You lie to yourself and may the gods help you.

I won't set aside an hour a week to meditate because I can't betray myself like that. I won't delay the Academy because that would be death, and would breed contempt. I will keep an open mind, I will be honest, but I will not sell myself cheaply. That would be unreasonable.

Praetorian!

The sun beat upon the worn concrete road in waves and washed over the car, heating the steering wheel and forcing my eyes into a fierce squint. The sun retreated back from the street in mirages; at first like water pooling and then like heat lines from an oven. My gaze swept from the approaching intersection on the left back to the street and past the police badge dangling from the rear-view mirror.

Dad told me once about Joe and his wife almost crashing at that intersection, about how his quick thinking and faster reaction time saved their lives. My eyes drifted to the rear-view, checking for the ghost car they avoided more than two decades ago and I thought about how many times in a life fate, or the gods, or whatever guidance that might exist intervenes on our behalf, keeps us traveling towards our destinations.

Like Marcus Aurelius said,
Nature has provided for us all that we need.

I was baking inside the car, waiting for the light to change, when that particular feeling began to well in my solar plexus and radiate out towards my extremities: you are doing what nature intended for you, nothing could ever be wrong. It was like laying on a warm beach after swimming in the ocean, the salt drying on your skin and hunger beginning to register in your brain. It was the feeling of not being sated, but of being satisfied, there is no way you could mis-step.

I thought about the community that I am a part of and the Praetorians of Marcus' day and about all the generations of warriors that existed between then and now. I thought about how easy a decision it was to make, how I didn't actually make a decision at all, I just knew. I just knew. I thought about the bagpipes at the funerals and the stories and all of the "choir practices" and the brotherhood.

I thought, What we do in life echoes in eternity.

The light turned green, I shifted into first gear and made my way back home, grateful for my last name and this sense of purpose.

My Monkey Suit.

My twin is the greatest photographer ever. Look at how cool she made me look in my uniform!

Night Shift

It's four o'clock am and you begin to hit the wall. Your vision takes on that quality of a cheap flourescent light, where it flickers just slowly enough for you to feel like you might lose consciousness; your body trying to conserve its resources. Sitting in your chair you worry that, would it be required of you to stand up, you might just fall down instead. You think about the road home... and your bed... and how good it is to sleep.

Four o'clock am is when you really have to wait and think out your phrasing before you press the transmit button. Otherwise it'll just be broken sentences and breathing. And then the embarassment of listening to yourself on the recall radio. It's also the beginning of a two-hour window where you pray that no one on your shift comes into dispatch because it would be too hard to be coherent. Six o'clock is better because you're so slap-happy you'll laugh at anything, and the others will be too.

Four o'clock the voice of the younger guy from the water department flows out of the phone's receiver like someone standing close, whispering. Their breath warm on your ear. You wonder what his name is, what he looks like, and how he fills the hour and fifty-nine minutes between calls.

Four o'clock begins the unexplainable pains and fevers, your body carrying on with its purification despite your lucidity. A twinge starts in the abdomen and spasms down your thigh and into your knee. Your sternum has a dull and hollow ache. Your skin goes from flushed to chilled and clammy. Your eyes burn like the fire of a million candles.

Four o'clock actually lasts seven-and-a-half hours, the rest of the shift is like an easy walk on a nice day.

***********************

Yesterday morning on the drive home I found myself by the county airport, surrounded by vast expanses of corn fields and soybean farms, oak trees and weather-beaten homesteads. The eastern sky was cloudy and as the sun crested the horizon the whole thing lit up like an outrageous watercolor painting. Red, orange, purple, magenta, pink, blue. It was the first day of spring and the earth was showing off. It was marvellous.

Book Ten

12. Why all this guesswork? You can see what needs to be done. If you can see the road, follow it. Cheerfully, without turning back. If not, hold up and get the best advice you can. If anything gets in the way, forge on ahead, making good use of what you have on hand, sticking to what seems right. (The best goal to achieve, and the one we fall short of when we fail.)

Book Nine

28. The world's cycles never change -- up and down, from age to age.
     Either the world's intelligence wills each thing (if so, accept its will), or it exercised that will once -once and for all-and all else follows as a consequence (and if so, why worry?).
      One way or another: atoms or unity. If it's God, all is well. If it's arbitrary, don't imitate it.
      The earth will cover us all, and then be transformed in turn, and that too will change, ad infinitum. And that as well, ad infinitum.
      Think about them: the waves of change and alteration, endlessly breaking. And see our brief mortality for what it is.

No fate but what you make.

We were talking in the truck, on the way somewhere, and he told me, "you can't let someone trick you into thinking that their happiness is dependent upon you, because it's not." It's not, and I know it, but damn if it isn't hard to remember that sometimes. He comes home and it's a son of a bitch to not feel responsible. The sadness that comes with failure, the depression of something that is broken and you don't know how to fix it.

And there is my dad, and his truck that smells like safety, like nothing in the world could ever be that bad, and me feeling guilty for being angry but not worried. I know that no matter what happens there will be corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's day, a warm fire in the shop every New Year they own that house, there will be a great hullabaloo on every birthday, and thousands of celebrations and congratulations along the way. I know, without question, that no matter what happens, each and every one of them will be there for me and would even give me the shirts off their backs if needed. And that I would, too.

And then I think, does he have that kind of unflinching support? When his brain tries to get him down, of whom does he think, which spirit offers his soul some comfort? And my corny neurons fire up the image of Linda Hamilton, alone in her cage and doing pull ups on her over-turned bed, and I think no fate but what we make... every one of us has taken each step down the path which has led us to where we stand in the present. If we are in need of people to support, nurture, inspire, comfort us, then we need to seek them out.

The only constant is change. Always, always, always.

**********************

I had a dream last night, I don't remember much of it but Emily and I were trying to get somewhere in a very old car. It was some old manual racer and I was driving and we came to this very steep, very muddy, very terrifying section of road. The farther up we made it the more I down-shifted until we were in first gear, barely crawling. I was afraid the car would tip over. But she knew we would make it, I remember looking over at her and she wasn't worried at all..... so we crested the hill and kept driving.

Poor Isaac.

I was anxious because of the formality he was trying to force, and so I blurted it out. "Okay, but I don't believe in God." My mouth is my worst enemy when I am embarassed. It is a mutinous bastard, completely liberated from any inhibition that would like it to just shut-up.

And he looked at me for a minute, processing. Looking for the right slot to file away the new information. He teased me about it, my face went as red and hot as a matador's cape, and after awhile he went back out. Left me alone with my thoughts, feeling insecure as ever about my doubts, about my weaknesses.

Later he came back, and I could tell he had been thinking about it and that part of him felt bad for the abuse I had suffered by his taunts. (Didn't stop him from twisting the screw just a little more though, but only at first.) He wanted to relate to me, wanted to understand, and so he tried by explaining the foundation of his beliefs to me. He said, "I just think about shit like waterfalls. There is no way that man could ever make something like a waterfall."

Mercifully the phone rang, and when I hung up the subject had changed.

But I can't get the vision out of my head. I can see him contemplating the holy beauty of nature while he's sitting in his pew Sunday mornings, arm around his wife, everything being right with the world. I can imagine him giving thanks for the mountain bike trails, the getaways to the ocean he takes every year, for his daughters and for a life that is honest, good, whole. The picture I have of it makes my joints weak it is so convulsively beautiful. I lock it away deep inside, in the hopes that some of his faith might leak into my bones, like some kind of divine osmosis.

But the doubter knows it won't. The doubter dwells on the story of Job and Abraham and wonders who the hell would want to believe in such a petty, insecure God. The doubter thinks about the paganism of a Catholic service and how it is a sin to not believe that the communion wafer is actually the honest-to-god flesh of christ. The doubter is too occupied with her skepticism to notice the small miracle that is a waterfall, that is the silence of a dense and lonely forest.

So she invests her faith with Marcus Aurelius and waits for some kind of sign, some kind of proof. She is almost completely convinced that it will never come.

Thank you, Owen Meany

He said,
"IF YOU CARE ABOUT SOMETHING, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT IT--IF YOU'RE LUCKY ENOUGH TO FIND A WAY OF LIFE YOU LOVE, YOU HAVE TO FIND THE COURAGE TO LIVE IT,"
and I earmarked the page.

It is one of the most beautiful books I have picked up in a long, long time; I will be sad to lose the characters when it's over. And it has thrown my head into a tumultous fit. Anxiety. This is good for the soul, I keep saying to myself.

I suffer from a profound lack of faith. This has been true of me at least since confirmation class in the ninth grade, and was probably true of me before then, I just didn't have the vocabulary to realize it. In truth, my agnotisticism is unassailable. Perhaps doubt is a form of a priori wisdom, perhaps some of us are just born with it. I remember being very young --still sleeping in a crib-- and waking up early one morning wondering why I was born, "what was the point of it?" When I was older I prayed for boys to like me, and for us to win softball games. I never took it seriously.

But I imagine how comforting it must be, to have the ability to believe. To know that God exists, the way you know that the walls are full of electricity, even when the lights are off. How much of a sense of belonging there must be, to have a moral code completely spelled out for you, to even have a book to refer to when one's mind gets clouded with desire! And I'm not talking about your average "weekend christian" or "sunday catholic". I am talking about holding fast to a faith so deep and nourishing that it changes the entire shape of one's life, a faith along the lines of Alyosha Karamazov or Guy Fawkes.

But I just can't make the leap.

----------------------------------------

Maybe I am being too naive about it. But my fatalism knows no bounds. And my beliefs are not completely without christian influence.


One must approach life with an unfailing sense of virtue; in all things strength and honor.
You will encounter many ignorant people who would like to harm you with their words and actions--treat each occurence as a way to build up your humility and compassion.
Be wary of anyone who has a subjective sense of right and wrong.
The object of each day is to be truer to your sense of justice than you were the day before; a static morality is one that has atrophied.
Remember that your name is priceless, let it be devalued by no action.
Do not succumb to anxiety about the future; you will meet it with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

You are O-town's pride!

He said it on the show, and I know it's sappy and lame and for chrissakes it's a spoof anyway, but damn didn't it make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Didn't I want to be running down the street, gear over the shoulder, fighting the good fight. We were born under an obsessive star, possessed of the need to lay ones' self down at the feet of justice, to sacrifice everything for the moral and the good. We are happy just to give and give and give.

So we make our decisions accordingly. For the first time in my life I feel focused. My energy is channeled and I spend my time eating up road and iron and information as quickly as it can be metabolized.

I have this picture of us in my mind. We are knights, we are glorious, we are the knowledge of all of the men of the family who went before us, and we are fueled by the strength of all of the women who sought out a more daring fate than their peers. We are strong, we are smart, and we have a killer instinct. There is nothing that will stop us.

All I want in life is to be happy.

Before a trip, the one where we borrowed her car, she left the song cued in the cd player so that it would be the first thing we heard as we headed out onto the open road. The spot in my solar plexus that burns when I think about the Alf Christmas Special lit up and everything felt right with the world. Reminded me of mom and dad hiding notes and candy in our suitcases when we or they had to go away for any length of time. Reminded me of staying up late in to the night, drinking coffee and pontificating while our inebriated peers filled the bars and staggered home, hours later, us still awake, trying to spot Orion.

A few seconds later I was back in the car and he had turned off the song and was grumbling about it being too early for music. I finished my coffee and watched my breath put fog on the windows.

It's just not the kind of thing you can learn. This is what I'm figuring out. You either get it, or you don't. Ranger in Arizona either makes you die from the weight of all the beauty in the world, or you don't notice him at all.

Tonight I'm dealing wolf cards.

I am a real bastard sometimes, I can be selfish and cruel and horrible. I have this ability to smell out weakness and exploit it when I feel necessity dictating.

Sometimes I am not good. He is running scared, and I can see it inside of his eyes when I look into them deeply. There is a hesitation not in the word, but in the look. A small resistance when he looks back into mine, the fear of what might be there. That was the first drop of blood. And the silence, the reticence, the walls made out of stone to try and keep me out. Keep my bastard brain out.

It's always midnight and I've always got a pack of wolf cards in my pocket. Stalking, tracking, I fight for what I want, for what I think is my own like a wild animal. I am no longer kind, the coldness of night fuels me but it's wrecked a part of me. I am leaner, stronger, but now there's also a fierceness who wants no ally.

Sometimes I am just not good. But I stopped apologizing.

Take it if you want it.

Burning in the solar plexus, heat behind the eyes, last time I looked in the mirror the wrinkles were looking back, I looked so tired. Forty-five minutes ago, mid-morning.

There is an emptiness inside, I can feel the gravity like a black hole pulling in solar detritus from nearby galaxies. I haven't slept well for a week and the tiredness is dragging me down, exposing the emptiness to harsh elements.

So many thoughts pulsing through my weary head, it makes it hard to think. Perhaps at this point action is better than forethought anyway.

I know what I need to do. I can feel it, every time I think about it I know it's the right decision. But I'm scared. Or maybe intimidated. Afraid, unsure, weak. I wake up and look at those wrinkles and think of the daylight that all of this indecision is burning and I tell myself to give a hard tug on my bootstraps. Pull yourself, up, out. Jump in because you know you can swim. Hell, you even know how to fly.

In April, if you care for me, be sure that I am enrolled in the academy. Actually, check on me March. Tell me "1939" and I'll remember.

And in the sea there swims another thought, or maybe it's just an emotion, and it sucks me up into its salty swirl and occasionally I am absorbed by the undertow. Sometimes I don't surface for hours. And it's a face, with a name, and a look and so much potency. And its my mind that, when I do resurface, imprisons me with the agony of what if and how and what does it all mean. And all I want is to go back, go back, go back, if just for one more small piece. One more something to cling to while I'm back here in the present.

There is an epic battle going on inside. I hope I win.

The devil in blue.

Hard-faced glass reflects lines etched with makeup and dark circles under eyes. The light comes down from the ceiling in all directions and is a sickly blue-green. Makes white walls look yellow and skin appear jaundiced. The profile is more angular now than it's been, but certainly just as insecure. The flourescence casts deep shadows into so many scars left behind, never quite out of sight. And hair, like wheat, and as untame as its reflection's spirit.

She is a solid block of steel on the inside, encased in something soft and vulnerable. She still cries when it hurts but still bites her lips to fight it down. She is smart but afraid to show it, and keeps far too much inside the steel, away from daylight. She craves acknowledgement, acceptance, recognition, but thinks the need for it is her biggest weakness. She wants to function independently of the approval of others. She hasn't yet realized that she can't. Hopefully someday she will.

It would make things a lot easier for me, on the other side of the glass.

Open the vents.

You wake up at the butt crack of dawn, but not even because the sun won't be up for another two hours. You swill your coffee, go through your routine and go to work. It's a damn good job, too. Sure, a lot of the people that you work with are totally nuts and some of them should probably seek out counseling, but what you're doing is making a difference in a very tangible way and also, you really love it. It is regimented, it has protocols that you follow, each cause has its own effect. There is a very black and white meaning there. And it fits you. It feels familiar in a way that nothing really has before.

But the thing is that it's really draining. Especially now because you still don't know exactly what you're doing. Keeping all the dashes and dots together in your mind to form a coherent overall picture takes up a lot of your brain's CPU, which in turn takes up a lot of your energy. The day is long and you don't really get any breaks. Which is fine, it's great, it's kind of relieving to always be counted on, but it is tiring.

Eight hours are over and it's time to go home, except you're not, you're going to your second job. This one is a bit more frenetic. This one is like the opposite of the first one, there's no structure, your supervisor is a very loosely woven group of loosely put together people, and they've not given you a very good sense of what your responsibilities are. They seem to change every day, and as the paperwork that you were told wasn't yours to work on piles up, the stories change, job functions shift. It makes you crazy and you want to rip out your hair and throw things.

And by this point you have no brain capacity left anyway. You're tired, your face feels all oily and you are fucking hungry. Your eyes burn. You want to go home and watch tv or read or do abso-fucking-lutely nothing, but you can't. You will be here trying to connect invisible dots until after the sun goes back down. You don't even get to see your husband all that much, let alone do anything as novel as cooking.

And then you find yourself hoping that a permanent slot opens up in your first job, by hook or by crook, that you can fill. And you hold onto that hope like all those times you prayed to God that so-and-so would have a crush on you back in grade school. Even if it means that someone else would be fired. And you look at your shoes and you don't know what to think. Did something on the inside change?

People, I am burning at both ends right now.