Flashback

Today it is raining and I am inside, and I’m dry, and I’m cozy.

Acute memory though, of my twenty-one year old ass fitting into an upside down steel pot helmet that held me out of the rice patty water. I’m on night guard and my poncho drapes around me and into the water at my boot ankles and my M-16 is between my knees like a tent pole. It is such a drenching downpour that I have zero fear of Viet Cong intruders. They are wet and cold too. I have the poncho drawn to a fine pinhole over one pupil and I am marinating my body inside in the smoke from my cigarette. The poncho is thick enough that it hides the glow of each smoky draw, and this wee hour smoke, out here in the bush, is an unusual treat. So I peer through the pinhole into nothingness but rain lines that are popping the rice patty surface, and I sit in the arc of my squad perimeter that circle in a protective pattern. No trip flares are out, the rice patty too soggy for a firmly staked grip. So the rain drops drill the outside poncho against my light helmet liner and I conger up visions of the United States, women who are not Asian, freedom to just go for a drive, dry clothes, fresh fruit and sliced tomatoes. These thoughts are in the slice of custard in my cranium where I go for refuge, for down time, for escape.

Then I am here again in my cozy home looking out at the splashing rain. I go back to the kitchen for another cup of coffee and ponder whether I should go outside and get cold and soaked, just because of my freedom to come back inside and be dry and cozy.