Big changes

Life as I know it is about to change.

Back in July, my mother fell, broke a rib that punctured her lung and went into the ICU for several days. After she left the hospital, Craig and my sister stayed with her for another several weeks. Dusty tried to stay full time with her (at the time, she'd lost her job, and was contemplating losing her apartment) but it was not a good arrangement. Too many ghosts of past arguments and misperceptions made it a negative atmosphere for both. My sister couldn't look for a job and my mother wasn't getting better.

Her heart is weak but serviceable; it is her spirit that is weakening.

We brought in home health aides as a stop-gap, but at $16-$18 per hour, they are expensive, and in my mother's mind, intrusive. She continues to lose weight, down to a tiny 105 pounds.

So I gave notice and quit my job. As of Sunday, Aug. 26, I am moving in with her until we can get back into our Walnut Creek home in March, and then (I hope) we will move her up with us.


Will I miss my job at TimesLedger? A little yes and lot no. There are several people I've grown fond of, but I will not miss the 40-50 hour weeks, the increasingly lack of quality brought on by the newspaper's sale to the New York Post, and I would have quit in December any way in preparation for the move back.

What I do regret is that I was just starting to "get" New York. I was starting to know where interesting haunts were, places were starting to feel familiar, and even the weather was becoming tolerable. I'd planned to spend the month of January in my own version of a farewell tour of things I hadn't done before, but life is what happens when you're making plans.

I know that being a caregiver is both fulfilling and soul draining. I hope to make some kind of balance between her needs and my own. I will be doing some freelancing for the TimesLedger and perhaps take an online class.

I don't know if this will be my last newspaper job ever. The way the industry is going and with the disadvantage of my age -- I'm dinosaur by HR standards -- it could very well be. If so, I left them sorry to see me go and with a body of work I'm not ashamed to have my name on, and some I'm really proud of.

In this business, it's often the best you can hope for.

There's something you're not telling me ...

So David is in Taji, near Baghdad now. He's had his last patrol for the time-being, and has reassured me that he is in now danger.

Except when we were talking on the phone on Wednesday, he suddenly said he had to go and hung up almost immediately. I assumed he'd run out of minutes on his phone card, but then I this nonchalant comment on his blog:

"The main gate was hit by two car bombs while I was at the phone center a few hundred meters away, but I'm safer than I was in Baqubah."

Which tells me a lot, as does the blog entry below that, which talks about his 10-second fantasy about the shift in trust.

It's not the "I'm OK" message I'm hearing on the phone, but what did I expect? "Hi, Mom, they're shooting at me today? Guess what, it's dangerous out here?"

The mother in me drinks from that cup of comfort on the phone; the journalist in me believes the blog item, and maybe each in their own way, they're both right.

I'm not mad, I'm not confused, I just want him to come home.

He should have some interesting stories to tell.

One more patrol

I hadn't realized it had been three weeks since I posted last, but I have some major changes in my life which I hope to post in the next few days, but meanwhile ...

David called on Saturday (Aug. 18) to say he will be coming home around Oct. 10, give or take five days. By the end of this week, he'll move out of Baqubah to a FOB (forward operating base) near Baghdad for two weeks or so, then onto Kuwait for another two weeks before heading back to Ft. Lewis, Wash. Most of his unit will get home a little ahead of him, but he has to stay behind and essentially do inventory on the thousands of parts, weapons, communication instruments and pieces of equipment that will either go home with the brigade or stay in the Middle East. Everything has to be tracked.

So in Baqubah, his platoon has just one more two-day patrol to accomplish. One more time sitting in a cooperating Iraqi's home, watching the streets for insurgents, checking homes for bombs and avoiding local militia gunfights.

Just one more patrol.

One more patrol.