My desktop finally loads up and the screen flashes 2130 March 15, 2011. I never quite feel like I know what day it is out here; working seven days a week in the middle of the Arabian Sea is taking its toll. I spend what little time I have before my flight, reading emails from home while waiting for my crew to arrive for our flight brief at 2200. Tonight we are scheduled to fly for three hours on patrol, which is the same thing we have been doing since we arrived here about a month ago. Having the only helicopter attached with a night camera in the whole battle group, we’ve been placed on the graveyard shift for overwatch.

The phone next to me breaks the silence in the room; I answer “Aircrew Shop, AWR3 Bertelson Speaking.” An unfamiliar voice comes over the phone: “Report immediately to the Combat.” Click! The conversation is over. My mind begins to race. I know this could only mean one of two things: my flight is canceled or we are getting a mission passed over from the USS Enterprise, what we call The Big E. I make my way up to what we call Combat, silently hoping our flight has been canceled due to maintenance so I can have a much needed night off. As I open the heavy steel door and enter Combat, I realize immediately that tonight isn’t going to be a night off. Everyone is buzzing.

Hastily I make my way over to the TAO watch station. I can see that Lieutenant Gleason and Lieutenant Junior Grade Perry have received a similar call and are standing together around the Tactical Action Officer discussing what I can image are orders from The Big E. Moments after I arrive, Mrs. Perry—a short female pilot with a witty sense of humor—notices I have arrived and am standing behind them.

“Hey Squirt!” she says. “We got word from The Big E of an ongoing pirate attack south of here.”

Mr. Gleason, a tall male pilot with the an older brother type persona, cuts in: “USS Leyte Gulf has been ordered to depart the battle group and head south where we will launch to provide assistance and relay video back to Combat for further analyzing. We have an hour till we are in range.”

That hour flies by. Preparing for a flight normally takes two hours at a minimum, but with the help of another aircrewman, we are able to complete all preparations on time for launch. As I climb into the cabin moments before starting up our helicopter, my mind starts flashing through hundreds of scenarios that we might be flying into. Have the pirates taken the ship yet? What might happen to the crew? If so, will we be able to help them? These are just some of the main thoughts that flash through my mind. Mr. Gleason breaks the silence and the tension: “Aircrewman Prestart checks!”

“Complete!” I report back.

The engine begins to roar over our heads, and the rotor slowly creeps around. I watch the blades move round and round. They move faster and faster until they become a blur and an unsteady beating sound. A moment passes and the sound becomes evenly spaced. It has reached speed. “Harness check, harnesses locked left!” Mr. Gleason starts a chain reaction.

“Harness locked right,” Mrs. Perry replies.

“Harness locked back,” I instinctively reply.

I feel the helicopter kick as we lift off the narrow flight deck. The nose begins to turn out to the left, and now we are face-to-face with seemingly impossible darkness. We push our head down and rapidly move forward into the darkness. The black ocean and night sky are seemingly impossible to differentiate on this dark moonless night. We are forced to rely solely on our instruments to distinguish between the two. As I look back at the USS. Leyte Gulf, watching it shrink as we get farther and farther away until it becomes nothing more than another shining dot on the horizon. And then it completely disappears.

Thirty minutes after liftoff, we are approaching the coordinates where the ship is intended to be. I know my next job is going to be marking all contact on my radar, and we will have to call out to pin point the distressed ship. My radar illuminates three different ships in the general area. Mr. Gleason calls out over his radio: “Distressed Ship, this is US Naval Helicopter 514, responding to distress call.” The radio quietly cracks for a few moments. Finally a response comes across in a thick Australian accent: “Navy helo 5-14 we have been boarded by pirates. The entire crew is held up in our citadel.”

“How many crewmen are there and do you have control of the ship?” Mr. Gleason asks.

The Australian crewman replies: “We have 19 crewmen and we have control of the ship, but we don’t have a compass or map–”
Blaring heavy metal abruptly ends our communication. We have run into this problem with pirates before. Pirates like to disrupt conversations and make it impossible for information to be passed during rescue efforts.

All of a sudden one of the three ships erupts in a large plume of blazing light. It’s almost as if the pirates know we are not sure which ship is in distress and are sending us some sort of signal. Briefly, in a misplaced moment, the effect is beautiful. The fire places brilliant shades of red, orange, and yellow all mixed together on the ocean surface, spreading around like paint on the black ocean canvas.

Then all at once, reality hits me.

The pirates are trying to burn the crew out of hiding.

Like northern lights, my life has been unpredictable, and like those many observers, I have been pulled along through it stumbling blindly and at times drowning in its trance. At a very young age I was taught by my father that I will always be fair; fair in the games I play, my interaction with others, and my choices within my world. As much as I tried to understand the depth of this lesson, never was I told that in return life and all of its cruelties would deal me unfairness at my expense. No one is born with the ability to traverse through hardships with the required delicacy and bravery, but sadly it is something learned from having survived such experiences.

At ten years old I learned that love is not the “happily ever after” my Disney movies portrayed but a gimmick of convenience: “It worked for us for a while, but now it’s not working so it’s over.” Not that this was said by anyone to anyone, but the overall message rang clear to me that nothing lasts forever and watching the pain and suffering of love loss was all too much for this young naïve mind. It took years for my father to come to terms with his loss. It took me many more to understand the reasons for his sadness.

Having been raised daddy’s little girl since the day I was born, I always felt a connection with my Dad. He was not only my father but my teacher, my mentor, my best friend and my greatest adversary. There came a time in our debates that we realized that we have nothing left to debate because we agree on 95% of all things in life. He taught me joys of life, wisdom, math, and patience among many other qualities. I can look back and see that I too did some teaching. It’s like those moments in the movies where the music is upbeat and fun times are flowing across the screen and then BAM, the music changes, the mood turns bleak, and everyone is sad and crying and asking why.

That was the wall I hit in my life. My dad died.

Why did he have to die, and what did I do wrong? I listened, I followed directions, I did all that was asked of me and yet my person was dead. Should I have seen the signs, was I supposed to know he was sick when his pride could hide the elephant in the room? These questions haunted me for years; I couldn’t silence them. I was alone, again, and I had to learn my own path, to become acquainted with the miseries of this world, alone.

The little girl standing and staring at the northern lights on a subzero evening in Alaska as a plane flew her father away had to turn around and walk a path not paved with happiness but of sorrow. He never taught me how to handle grief, he never taught me how to handle forever goodbyes, and he never taught me that getting yourself back is a journey without a map.

For years I felt like my dad had much more to teach me, and to have left so soon I was now ill-equipped to make it alone. What will I do now? Luckily I had already signed up for the Navy prior to his death, so this decision I didn’t have to make. And for the next six years I was not responsible in making any life decisions. Every aspect of my life was decided for me as I followed the established path of all Nuclear Operators in the Navy.

One might think this made healing and grieving easier. It didn’t. I still had episodes of depression, the inability to concentrate, and powerlessness with keeping everything that I can control within my comfort areas. Many romantic relationships ended prematurely because they were dancing the blurry lines of seriousness and commitment. I spent many empty, drunken nights alone staring at the bottom of an empty glass, hiding my grief, embarrassed and too prideful to admit I needed help navigating this void in my life.

Fortunately before my life became too damaged, I was saved. Not by a person, but by the pounding of my feet on the belt of a treadmill somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The first day of my second deployment, I decided I would take up running. I’d read about its therapeutic benefits and hoped it would help me clear my mind, and if nothing else, then at least I would be bikini-ready upon my return to the States.

This became the healthy addiction I needed in my life. I was able to turn my brain off and just focus on one thing at a time. I came to terms with my Dads death in those thousand miles I ran. I logged every mile, every minute and every calorie burned for nutrition purposes. After deployment, I would still have my episodes of depression, but they weren’t choking me and demanding my full attention anymore. I was able to smile a real smile and know that I am happy about something.

Running, even though I don’t get to enjoy it as much now, will always be that turning point in my life. I ran my first half marathon alone with no audience cheering me on because my intended audience was myself. I crossed the finish line ready for more: “Damn. Why didn’t I just do the full?”

Seventeen years after my parents’ divorce, I learned that love is what you create it to be, and only you and your partner can define its terms. Was I damaged enough to know to wait it out in life, and not to rush for the fallacies that love tries to present itself as? Or, like the northern lights, was this the path intended all along? After my husband and I started dating, my depressive episodes became rare to nonexistent. On my Dad’s D-day I was fine; I didn’t ask to be alone and I didn’t drain a bottle of Malbec. I guess this is how I knew I wanted to be with my husband beyond the I love you as we moved to Let’s be serious about being serious together.

Like all lives, my life has been quite a journey and at times still is. I don’t think there will ever be a day until the day I die where I won’t miss my dad or where I won’t picture him with me and what he would have said. I still hear his voice if a choice I’m about to make is wrong or if I should have known better. Maybe it is no longer his words but mine disguised in his authoritative tone. Whatever it is, it is with those northern lights that he guides me.He only had nineteen years to teach me, and from my point of view and humble opinion he did a pretty good job. Having the confidence in life to close one career chapter and begin another is not for the faint of heart, but for the will power of a survivor.

Though those northern lights are faint, they dance around my memories of happier, brighter times. And as those northern lights disappear, they remind me that life is only as fragile as the eyes that behold it.

Summer was close to an end, and Chabot College’s 2006 fall semester had begun. I was starting my second year as a freshman and was taking calculus for the third time. The room contained a distinct aroma of uncirculated air that took on the smell of the enclosed walls. The class was long and narrow, consisting of three rows of about twelve desks that stretched from one wall to the next facing the blackboard. The ceiling was about ten feet over our heads, housing the engineered lights that made no difference to doing its only task compared to the organic light that can easily consume the entire planet.

Less than 20 students were enrolled in that particular math class as they gravy-chained through the door to expeditiously occupy the middle and back rows. I premeditatedly made post in the middle of the class, which could have been one of the reasons for my failure.

Class started. Coming in late was an Asian girl. As I looked up at her, everything began to slow down. She came in walking like she was strutting down a runway. The smell of her sassiness and the sound of her high heels hitting the classroom tiles made certain parts of me tingle. As one of my military colleagues would put it years later: “I would drink her bath water.” I am a sucker for high heels. I recalled she was dressed like Adriana Lima on a cover of those Victoria’s Secret catalogs that come in the mail from time to time. She obviously was promoting one of the two things: tight jeans or simply trying to get the D.

She decided to occupy the seat on my twelve o’clock. As the big booty lay before me, I couldn’t help noticing the exposed skin down on her six o’clock with some black tribal ink. I looked down even further south only to discover the exotic, sensual, touch me ever so gently, blue g-string she had on. A natural caveman mating grunt shot out of me as I enjoyed the site: “Mmmmm.” After some deep thought and debate with myself, I concluded she definitely wanted the D.

Before I knew it, the class ended, and I missed the whole lecture. During my first day of class, the distractions already began like the other three semesters prior. Little did I know, I was the one on the way to getting the D in the class. As my high school mentality followed me throughout college, a series of failures led to finding my path to success.

During high school, I would frequently stick my middle finger to the school as I walked away from campus with my friends to go to malls for the main objective of hollering at girls during regular school hours. I considered myself a smart kid when it came to academics, primarily math, but never wanted to put effort when in the vicinity my peers.

One particular afternoon I remember heading down Redwood Road in Castro Valley, California, on my 2003 Yamaha YZF-R6 with a broken speedometer, geared one-down-two-up, harnessed with a gold RK 520 racing chain with the tensile strength of over ten thousand pounds. The sky was grey and cloudy, making the afternoon sun seem darker than it already was on an October afternoon. The engine revolutions fluctuated as I engine matched only to pursue the perfect apex through the turns.

I was the engineer of the design that day. Carefully tweaking the throttle to maximize the traction of the tires at specific lean angles only to compensate for the existing g-force amount from the chosen entrance speed being applied to my half-human, half ninety-one-octane-in-line-four-banger-engine system. I mimicked my riding buddy’s race line as we attempted to find the perfect balance between speed and turning radius through the rough, curvy pavement.

Although reckless, this was the place you did not want to eat shit: on the right, you will either hit the cliff, whereas on the left, meet your maker at the bottom of the cliff. My conscience spoke to me: “Ride safely or smash through it like a Moto GP champion?” As the engineer, I responded to the telegraph that never existed.

Fuck it. It is all about the moment.

We ripped through a series of turns, blazing past the trees and terrain as they became blurry, solid green and brown walls. The Scotts steering dampener made it easier to control the handlebars as they shook violently. The front wheels dug into the ground like erasers on paper at a forty five degree angle. The heart was steady and the mind was focused on what frontal lobe recognized from the firing neurons sent from optic nerves to display the images like reel of your favorite film.

But there was one particular moment that felt different. Something was about to happen. Something was coming and I had no idea whether it was a good or bad thing. I realized this already happened, as if life was replaying itself again at this very moment. It was déjà vu. Everything slowed down. By that time, I already knew I fucked up. There existed connection between me and the cosmos that I was going 60 in a 25 MPH zone. Why did I know that? Where did that information come from?

At the end of the turn there was a CHP officer in his creased, khaki uniform waving for us to pull over. He zapped us out of nowhere. We were immediately guilty of speeding down the road as the officer observed the rubber melting off the sides of the front and rear Michelin Pilot Powers. Damn! There goes my driving record, bike, and future paychecks. This was going to be my third speeding ticket and my fifth moving violation in two years. After receiving the ticket, I was disappointed and ashamed of myself as I departed from my friend and headed home.

I woke up the next morning looking at the white ceiling. I stared off into space and I felt like something was wrong. I reflected about the reality I was currently in. The cosmic roll of the dice has led me to this point. I asked myself, “What the hell is wrong with me?” I compared my life to where I imagined would end up, and I was nowhere near that. I wasted almost four years after high school being an adrenaline junkie. I felt like crying but nothing would come out.

I checked out my unofficial transcript and the 0.89 GPA ripped my eyeballs out and dug me deeper in the hole I was already in. I gave up. I didn’t know what to do. That semester I was doing well in calculus. Due to the great disappointment in myself, I stopped going. I stopped caring. I left my education behind me to start a new financial situation for myself. I started to work full-time at the Oakland airport to make enough money to pay for the dues and have a roof over my head, which resulted in dropping out of college.

I was not happy with my life. There was a fear that unconsciously existed that began to show itself from which the space it was hiding in. I was afraid of changing from my comfort zone. My ego didn’t want to die. I was misguided by the greed from that ego; the very thing I trusted to guide me through life has failed me. The ego wanted to exist through me. And since I found the bastard, I won’t let it live.

How can I be such a fool?! I am not a kid anymore. I am in charge of my life. I am the one who chooses to conform to society. I am the one who decides how to respond to the situations presented before me. I am the one who chooses. I am my own observer. I am me, not that ego, not that voice inside my head. It is all me. The main ingredients of working at a dead end job, with a number of disappointments, and a dash of failed attempts in my education led to controlling my reality which harnessed the newfound strive for success. The fire was still burning inside me and stayed lit for to join the U.S. Navy. I was ready to leave my comfort zone and I accepted my reality. I became a seeker for knowledge.

My experience in the military opened my eyes and opened my mind. It taught me to drop out, and tune in. It was not about being happy; it was about being content. It was not about being the cool guy; it was about getting the job done. It was not about quitting when it gets hard; it was about manning up when it gets tough. It was about fixing the things jacked up. It was time to fix myself because I was in all kinds of jacked up.

As much as the chain of command wanted me to reenlist, I knew I was destined for when I made ranks of leadership. From all my disappointed experiences, I wanted to fix the only thing jacked up from my past: that sneaky 0.89 GPA I couldn’t hide from. I rolled the cosmic dice before I got too comfortable in the military.

Now I am here ready to learn and to do what is required to be successful in school. I now have the toolbox, just waiting for class to add more in it. Now, I am back in school to fix my grades with the drive I should have had from the beginning. Once again as I sit in a classroom, the cosmos is clear and blue. And that alone is a success.

It could have been the reception I received at the San Francisco Airport on that cold and foggy day. I had worn the uniform for what seemed an eternity. I took a cab into the city, but it had started before then. First the baggage handler threw my duffle bag at me, and then the cabbie acted as though I was Typhoid Mary.

I’m confused. I only did what was expected of me, why this?

Dropped at the Greyhound Bus Depot, I was treated as a pariah. People glowered at me, most backed away. One woman spat on me after saying something about babies, a killer. I had never imagined a woman could do something like that.

The bar was the same. One drink and I walked away. I found myself standing in front of a Harley-Davidson dealer. I went in. Here it was different.

“Hi, welcome home, welcome to Dudley Perkins.”

The man treated me with dignity. Maybe that’s why I bought an Electra Glide in blue. I threw the uniform into a Dempsey dumpster. I didn’t go back for my duffle bag.

Now five days later, I’m in Utah stopped alongside a lonely highway. Leaning against the motorcycle, I stare at a stark rock formation in a long-dead seabed. The trees, those with foliage, display orange and yellow leaves that shift and drop as a cold wind passes through the lonely valley. I feel as cold and lonely as the scene in front of me as I say goodbye to a world that no longer cares.

This story is a work of fiction by George Cramer, who served for three years in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War. He is working on three novels: two are crime fiction and the third is a romance set in 1890 New York. He served as the Editor in Chief of the 2015 Las Positas College Anthology, Impressions, and he was instrumental in helping to conceive of this website where LPC veterans could share their stories. Mr. Cramer has been accepted into the Master of Fine Arts – Creative Writing Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico.