Memo from the Department of Just Showing Up
By Lynnette Bukowski © 2011
How is it that I find myself at 3:30 in the morning
on my back porch with an old box of matches?
I ask this aloud to Spike. He
does not answer. Instead, paw on my leg,
tennis ball in his mouth, his brown eyes look up at me, hopeful. The print is faded, but I can make out “Subic
Bay Christian Serviceman’s Center” and on some dare to the full moon, I slip
out one match, strike it, and marvel at the spark and fire, the sharp, pungent
smell of thirty-three-year-old sulfur. Spike
is not impressed with this magic. Still,
my spontaneous grin ignites a full body wag and thumping tail and I cannot help
but throw a high curveball into the moonlight and watch as he ducks under the
fence and chases across the pasture.
Surely, it is no accident that on this particular night
I woke up to rummage through a drawer for warm socks and came up with a memory
so potent that time slips away in decades, like a golden liquid it seems to
drip from the palm of my hand. I am so
entranced that when my captive audience of one returns triumphant - ball in
mouth – I cannot help but tell him the story.
In 1976 I lived in Coronado, California with my
parents in a high-rise condominium overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I attended college and worked as lead vocal in
Whitefeather, a top-forty, all-girl
band. We played military base clubs and
private parties four nights a week and I was rarely home before 3:00 AM. It began in October that year, each morning
at dawn – with only two hours of sleep – I woke to a crude, slightly entertaining
mantra emanating from a group of men dressed in blue and gold t-shirts, tight
tan shorts and combat boots. They ran in
formation down the beach, chanting their cadence, replete with original and
rudimentary rhyme that echoed up six floors and into my head. Most of the time I was intrigued, but after
one particular week of very little sleep and finals looming, I leaned my head
out of my open window and issued a stream of oaths. Without breaking stride, every single man waved
at me in unison, mocking my sunrise angst.
Thus became our morning ritual.
A neighbor educated me about these supercilious
behemoths. All were trainees or instructors
at BUDS (Basic Underwater Demolition School), a brutal 6 month training course
for specialized commandos known as Navy SEALs.
It was several weeks before I had my first close-encounter. During a
private gig, and mid-way through my rendition of Moondance, the most ridiculously handsome, arrogant man I will ever
meet, walked right up onto my stage and
asked me to dance. We spent the next
year in heated debates disguised as dates.
During one such date he dared
me to marry him. I accepted the dare.
Years later, when he arrived from a mission just
moments before I gave birth to our daughter, I yelled at him about his lousy timing and party-crashing habits. He laughed, kissed me square on my panting
lips and said, “I didn’t crash your
party, I simply showed up to the rest of my life.” The sweetness of that moment may have been
lost to labor pain, but I digress…
In October 1978, Steve and I were married at 10:00
o’clock at night at the Christian Serviceman’s Center in Subic Bay, Olongapoe,
Philippines during a monsoon. Picture
this: me in red Candie high heels, (I
had them in every color) climbing alone into the back of an open Jeepney (a Filipino taxi) in rain and wind that
sliced the sky open. When I arrived, the electricity was out but Steve was
there, along with Sixteen Navy SEALs (slightly intoxicated), a Navy Chaplain
who stood wearily between our friends – the other crazy couple of the PI. I
stood at the entrance, charmed by the glow of the votive candles they
held. In unison, they began their own
off key version of the wedding march. The room smelled of matchstick sulfur,
wet clothes and grain alcohol, but I was delighted by their goofy smiles and I think
I laughed aloud as I sloshed my way down the aisle with mud spattered up to my
knees and rain dripping from the hem of my cotton dress. Steve smiled that cocky, edgy smile, leaned
in close and whispered, “See, all you had to do was show up.”
Exactly six hours later Steve and his platoon left
for a three-week excursion. Middle of
the night exits and unannounced returns became the rhythm of our
existence. During our first year of
marriage, we spent exactly 98 days together, no more than 15 consecutive days
at a time. I found it fascinating to drill him on details about his trips and quickly
learned that even my best methods of persuasion only worked for short clipped
versions of his days (so to speak) at the office. Eventually, we found other things to talk
about. Every two to three years from 1978 on we moved across the street, the
country or the world. We lived in seven
different states and four different countries.
I learned to enjoy change and introducing our children to new cultures,
mores and languages.
Independence, while
slightly force-fed, taught me how to run our family on my own for months on
end. Then Steve would show up on the doorstep and we would
begin again the next adventure.
This is no sad story, I tell Spike. He lifts his head, having long since curled
himself around my bare feet, and looks at the small box in the palm of my hand.
It is not a treat or ball and his obvious disappointment makes me laugh through
my tears. Death is nothing at all. Even
now – fifteen months after Steve’s passing from this earth – he is urging me on
to show up to life without him. This,
I announce aloud, is beyond measure, a
legacy much larger than our little universe of dog and odd woman in the wee
hours of dawn. This ancient little box
of matches is a gift full of brilliant love and serendipitous moments.
Steve was right. Life is not complicated. Rather, it
is a sequence of surprises, both excruciatingly painful and full of glorious
adventure mixed and stirred up in moments. We mere mortals too often obscure
the steps and miss the moments, when all we really need to do is just show
up.
Lynnette Bukowski is the proud widow of a 32 year veteran Navy SEAL,
Master Chief Steve S. Bukowski. She continues to show up to life each day as a
freelance writer and artist and is always available to correspond with military
widows and families of our fallen warriors at bukszoo1@embarqmail.com.
