24 Hours in August
Wednesday
4:20 PM. In the late afternoon I chat with a nurse while she feeds a baby. The baby is swaddled tight and only her cheeks move, cratering in rhythmically as she sucks. Suddenly, she sputters and milk oozes from her mouth and nose. The nurse pulls the nipple out of her mouth and holds her upright while the milk clears her oropharynx. The baby swallows hard and stares at the nurse, unmoving, unflinching, her brows slightly furrowed in what shapes up to be the ultimate stare down. It goes on for a full minute until her eyelids slip down, and she sleeps.
5:45. I hurtle down the asphalt amongst tractor trailers, SUVs, and sedans. The AC churns out cool air, and heat pours from every surface of the car. Two doctors from Northern California interview a trafficking survivor on a medical podcast. I don’t want to listen, but I need to. A few years ago, a nurse on labor and delivery identified a woman who was being trafficked. I need to know what to look for. By the time I get home a heavy sorrow envelops me. When I come through the door, my middle daughter is there, already talking to me; she talks so fast she can barely take a breath. I hug her close and tell her how wonderful she is, while fear sits in my stomach. I want to hold her close forever.
7:05 PM. I ask my son if he wants to practice driving in his high school parking lot. “Sure,” he says. “Is it legal?” I shrug, “Probably, we’ll go where there aren’t any other cars.”
When we pull into the parking lot the sun is still high enough to release a thick heat. Parents line a football field, sitting in folding chairs while kids in oversized pads run drills. I find a place in the lot with only one parked car, and we get out and walk around the car to switch seats. As we pass, I see his lanky arms and legs, his head almost level with mine, and it comes back to me. That soft, silky feel of soap on his little body, pouring water over his head, shielding his eyes from the shampoo while he played with his Thomas the Tank Engine bath toy. My sentimentality evaporates when he slides the car into drive and we lurch forward.
At first, he strays lanes, cuts the corners and the car jerks from start to stop. But after a few laps he gets the hang of it. We stop the car and I show him what each button does. We pop the hood and I teach him how to check the oil and refill the wiper fluid.
Thursday
1:45 PM. I’m walking past the waiting room annex when I hear the wall mounted TV announcer. Bomb blasts struck the perimeter of Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport. The news comes after days of people flooding the gates of the airport, crowding the runways, and clinging to the outside of planes. The desperation and fear and confusion are palpable, even all these miles away. Husbands, fathers, wives, mothers, brothers, sisters. People will be left behind in a vortex of retribution, retaliation, and violence as IS-K and the Taliban vie for control.
Over the next few days, I will find out that 13 US service personnel and at least 170 Afghans were killed in the bombing. I will see images of people wheeling the dead and injured in wheelbarrows. Reports will tell us how victims were blown into a sewage canal. The sense of helplessness is paralyzing.
8:10 PM. My wife and I walk our golden retriever down the street. It rained during the day and the ground seems to exhale moisture. The sun has dropped below the trees; slats of sunlight slip through the cracks. There is the smell of wet cement and pungent earth and all around us cicadas drone. I should focus on the moment, the way my dog holds her tail high and shimmies her haunches as she carries a stick, the feel of my wife’s hand in mine, the humidity enveloping us. But somewhere, in a place I have never visited, there is a little boy with shrapnel wounds to his face and blown out eardrums and an expectant father only six years older than my son who is now dead. And here where lawns run up to the street and the landscaping lights are starting to flicker on, my dog zig zags between my wife and I, pulling hard towards invisible markings in the grass and we talk about the first few days of the school year.