December 7, 1941. A quiet Sunday morning in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Warplanes swarm out of the sky, spraying machine gun bullets, dropping bombs and cold-steel fish that go swimming toward undefended hulls. Splinters are flying
like shrapnel from the beautiful, highly polished teak decks of the peacetime
U. S. Navy. My Uncle Walt sits in a deck chair watching the carnage unfold, his
trauma just beginning. A fire control specialist, his long-range guns sit idle.
At this range, a baseball bat would be more useful.
In Asia and Europe, Alpha-squared monkeys, driven by power-hungry
demons, out to remake the world in their own image, the deaths of millions of
people considered only in terms of cannon fodder, have cut deals they don’t intend
to honor in the long run. George would later sing, “watch out now! Take care beware of greedy leaders,
who take you where you should not go…”
Back on the Mainland, millions of young lives are about to be uprooted.
Young couples, moving slowly towards matrimony and a family, suddenly have to
either give up their dream or rush into marriage.
Less than two months later, a child is conceived.
Less than two months later, a child is conceived.
Thirty-something years later the child lies reading. Hungover. Glued to
the mattress. Again. The Rise and Fall of
the Third Reich falls from his fingers. Ugly thoughts
threaten his “wall of denial,” but fail to topple or even breach it, beyond a muddy thought, fated
to be drowned in the evening. Again.
“How many millions died that I might live? What have I done with this
precious gift of life?”
Nearly a decade later, a small hole is punched through the formerly
impenetrable wall, reality begins to seep in and the child now 42, is given a second
chance to earn that precious gift.
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