Catching Fog

Timewinder is a science fiction short story that was published in a small press magazine a long time ago. It is the first published work that I was ever actually paid for. My previous publications, to that time, had been paid in contributor’s copies. The magazine in which this Christmas-themed short story first appeared unfortunately no longer exists. I don’t think the story had anything to do with its demise:

Beneath the north magnetic pole, in a large white room, sat the Timewinder. He spent his time spinning dreams. His age was beyond knowing; his names were legend: Kris Kringle, Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and Father Time. The last name came closest to describing him. Many thousands of other names he’d held over the millennia had long since faded with the passing of peoples and tongues.

His hair was long, as was his beard, though carefully combed and neatly trimmed. He wore a dark red, almost magenta coat and pants; a white belt edged in gold circled his narrow waist. Muscles bulged beneath the long sleeves and pants of his suit, and he was anything but the roly-poly figure of the legends he had created…

UPDATE:

Timewinder is now available as an ebook from Amazon.

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Giving thanks once a year has been institutionalized in the United States since the time of Abraham Lincoln, at least. And so on the third Thursday of every November, we sit around a table, eat too much, and say that we are thankful.

Sometimes, we may actually be specific in what we are thankful for. For myself, I have a tendency to begin by enumerating material objects. For instance, I might give thanks for having a house, or for my cars, or perhaps for items in my house, like digital high definition cable TV or a broadband internet connection. The last two are particularly delightful things.

Only later—perhaps because they start glaring at me—will I mention my three adorable daughters and my equally adorable wife of nearly thirty years. Maybe I’ll mention my parents and sister, and my friends, as well.

But there are other things that we take for granted that perhaps I should think about more often to give thanks for.

For instance, breathing is really a cool thing to be able to do. Since I developed asthma (of the seasonal variety) I’ve become a lot more conscious of this simple pleasure. So I should be thankful for my allergist, and for the drug companies and their researchers that invested enormous amounts of time and money to come up with treatments that keep me mostly symptom free.

Freedom and democracy. Although it’s thankfully been on the rise the last decade or so, it is a rare and precious thing. Ninety-nine percent of the human race through ninety-nine percent of its history didn’t know what it was. Now we simply assume it as a birthright. Eternal vigilance is still a good idea and it’s something never to take for granted.

Whether you’re happy with the outcome of the election just past or not, one can still be thankful that we at least are able to have elections and have been having them peacefully for more than two hundred years. There aren’t many places in the world that can say that, or that can have confidence that transitions from one administration to the next will occur without bloodshed of any sort—and who know that in a few short years we can easily replace the rascals we’ve elected with new ones.

Life. The simple fact of being alive in a universe that is more than ninety-nine percent dead hydrogen gas is something to revel in.

We can be thankful for the things that we usually don’t notice. I’m thankful for my morning coffee every day. I’m thankful for hot water in my shower. I’m thankful for modern medicine and dentistry. I’m thankful for the roads and the other benefits of civilization like electricity and microwave popcorn.

I’m thankful for a bed to sleep in and for cheap and plentiful food supplies. Historically, the sin of gluttony was condemned because it meant you were eating more than your fair share, taking food that could have sustained someone else. Now, when we think of gluttony, we see it as poor discipline: a lack of self-control. For most of human history, our biggest problem was starvation. In these United States, our biggest worry now is obesity. And the fattest among us tend to also be our poorest (who can’t afford gym memberships or racquetball court fees). How odd is that?

And frankly, being thankful for all these things will probably be good for us. Enumerating things we otherwise take for granted can help us keep our lives in perspective just a bit. Just because we had a flat tire, or even a major tragedy, does not mean there’s nothing to feel good about in our lives. For most of us, for most of the time, things are good.

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When facing problems that won’t leave, God is still near. An otherwise unknown author named Asaph wrote a Psalm reflecting the darkness that sometimes afflicts the human heart. He opens his poem by writing the following:

I cried out to God for help; I cried out to God to hear me.
When I was in distress, I sought the Lord;
at night I stretched out untiring hands but my soul refused to be comforted.
I remembered you, O God, and I groaned; I mused, and my spirit grew faint.
You kept my eyes from closing; I was too troubled to speak. (Psalm 77:1-4)

What exactly is troubling Asaph is not expressed. The value for us today is the universal applicability of his feelings. Whether we’ve experienced the loss of a loved one, the breakup of a relationship, financial setbacks, or illness, the words express the common misery of the human heart in turmoil. Asaph wants God to make the pain go away; he wants to experience peace, calmness, and comfort. But despite all his tears, comfort never comes. God does not break through the clouds. Instead, the gloom remains.

Devastated now by both his own problems, and the refusal of God to respond to him in his hour of need, Asaph casts about fitfully, wondering what he can possibly do. At last, in the second half of the Psalm, it comes to him: he will remember God’s faithfulness in times past. He will recall the character and actions of God and comfort himself with the notion that, even though his heart is broken with no healing in sight, he will chose to believe that God is there and that he has not abandoned him, regardless of how it looks just now.

If God could rescue the Israelites from Egypt, bringing them through what seemed the insurmountable barrier of an ocean, then God will surely see Asaph through his current crisis. Near the end of the Psalm he comments that God led the Israelites through the sea, “though your footprints were not seen.” (Psalm 77:19)

Asaph can’t see God, but then neither could the Israelites, and often, neither can we. Not seeing God at work does not mean that he isn’t.

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I’ve run across people who make odd statements regarding the current war Israel is waging against the terrorist organization Hamas in Gaza. I’ve read phrases such as “war accomplishes nothing. Killing doesn’t change anything except perhaps to engender more anger and hatred on both sides.”

I suppose those who write or say that such things imagine they are being profound or sensitive, but I simply find myself puzzled and pissed off. Do they mean to tell me that the Allies who attacked and defeated Germany in World War II accomplished nothing—and that World War II accomplished nothing? Killing Nazis only “engendered more anger and hatred on both sides?”

How exactly was the world supposed to respond to the Nazis? Would the critics of Israel make similar comments about the American Revolution or the Civil War?

I’m sorry, but such words from those who criticize Israel, who try to make Israel and Hamas somehow morally equivalent, strike me as nonsense or worse.

Likewise those who say, “look how the Israelis have killed hundreds of Palestinians but only thirteen Israelis died from the rockets that Hamas shot at them.” As if the numbers of bodies one can stack up means something in the context of this recent conflict. Imperial Japan only killed 2402 Americans and wounded 1282 at Pearl Harbor in 1941. So after the United States had killed and wounded that many Japanese the war should have ended? The fact that the United States went on pounding on the Empire of Japan until it was totally defeated was a “disproportionate” response and a crime against humanity? I don’t think so.

I just don’t understand what is going on in the minds of a lot of people. But I think they make such foolish statements simply because they are unwilling to believe just how bad the enemies of Israel are.

There is no moral equivalency between Israel and Hamas. That would be like trying to equate England and Germany in World War II. And yes, I do mean that Hamas is Nazi-like. Hamas (an Arabic acronym standing for “Islamic Resistance Movement”) was created in 1987 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi and Mohammad Taha of the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by the Egyptian schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna. Their credo is “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” It is a violent, anti-Semitic organization. Likewise, Hamas is a consistently violent, anti-peace organization which believes in strange anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

The Hamas charter (adopted in 1988), states in article 13 that “Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that. For the sake of hoisting the banner of Allah over their homeland they fight.” Article 13 goes on to state, “Now and then the call goes out for the convening of an international conference to look for ways of solving the (Palestinian) question. Some accept, others reject the idea, for this or other reason, with one stipulation or more for consent to convening the conference and participating in it. Knowing the parties constituting the conference, their past and present attitudes towards Moslem problems, the Islamic Resistance Movement does not consider these conferences capable of realizing the demands, restoring the rights or doing justice to the oppressed.” And “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.” Article 22 sees the Masons, the Lions Club and the Rotary Club as part of a conspiracy with “the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests.”

Egypt is now ruled by a thug who is part of the Moslem Brotherhood. Are we to be surprised that he supports the actions of Hamas, given that he is part of the same movement?
The reality is this: if the terrorists of Hamas laid down their weapons tomorrow, there would be peace. If Israel laid down their weapons, they would be killed.
It takes two to make peace. Hamas does not want peace. They explicitly state their opposition to peace in their founding charter and repeat their opposition in their current pronouncements. Hamas just wants the Jews to die. That is a very ugly truth that a lot of people simply are unwilling to face. It’s not the first time people have been unwilling to face such ugly truths, of course. We’d prefer to imagine that Hamas (and many of their fellow travelers) don’t really mean what they say. We would prefer to believe that there’s some other thing that is really behind all the bloodshed: maybe Western imperialism, or economic deprivation, Israeli intransigence, or something else that is more appealing to our sensibilities.
Unfortunately, sometimes the bad guys really are just bad. Sometimes they really are just Nazis who hate the Jews because they are Jews. Sometimes peace really isn’t possible.
Remember some relatively recent history when you think about comparing Israel and Hamas. Hamas is responsible for suicide bombers and calls for the death of Jews on a regular basis. In contrast, Israel withdrew from Gaza and was rewarded by rocket and mortar barrages. Israel gave back the Sinai to Egypt in exchange for peace with Egypt in 1979. In 1948 the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into a Jewish and a Palestinian Arab state. The Jews accepted that UN resolution. The Arabs rejected it and went to war. Between 1948 and 1967 Egypt held the Gaza, while Jordan controlled the West Bank. Why was there no call for a Palestinian state for the Palestinian Arabs then, when their Arab neighbors controlled that territory? Why was the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) formed in 1964, three years before Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in the 6 Day War? And why did the PLO attack Israel rather than Egypt or Jordan before 1967? For that matter, what was the excuse for Egypt, Jordan, Syria and other Moslem governments for attacking Israel repeatedly before 1967?

It makes me wonder if maybe the radical and tyrannical Moslem governments of the Middle East, and their proxies in Hamas and the other terrorist organizations, don’t really care about the Palestinians at all. Instead, it makes me think that maybe it is simply that the tyrants find it useful to blame the Jews as a way of distracting their oppressed people from who their real enemies are.

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It came upon her slowly, stealing away every bit of happiness. It didn’t steal her personality in one grand break-in, like a thief arriving while you’re away at work and emptying your house. Instead, it stole a chair one morning. Then next afternoon, a lamp went missing. A week later it was the rug.

And we tried to replace the items as we noticed them missing. Perhaps we tried to imagine that they were still there: squinting our eyes and pretending, humming softly to ourselves.

But then, over the course of three horrific days one week last year, we realized that the house was empty: the theft was complete, awful and horrific.

Last year, my youngest daughter faced a growing illness. A teenager now, she was born to drug addicted parents. Her biological mother had ingested crack cocaine, methamphetamines and marijuana while she was pregnant. She’d also smoked—and drank alcohol to excess. She was a prostitute and her father was the pimp. Before and ever after, they have regularly been in and out of prison.

We took our youngest daughter into our home as a foster child when she was only five days old. She was, at that time, still going through withdrawal symptoms. We adopted her by the time she was three.

Over the years, we were careful to get her the best treatment. She received physical and speech therapy. She went to Head Start. She enjoyed special kindergarten before beginning her normal schooling. By the age of five she had been diagnosed with severe Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD); our pediatrician told us it was the worst he had ever seen.

Our youngest daughter has received a variety of medications for the ADHD. They have helped her tremendously. She prospered through elementary school and through most of middle school. We also saw to it that she got therapy.

But last year, she started having ever more trouble managing her life. She suffered severe mood swings and uncontrollable rage. Her grades began dropping. Where before, she had been a mostly happy, carefree, and vivacious girl, she became dark, morose, and lonely. We put her back in therapy. We changed her ADHD medication once again. We found her a psychiatrist.

For awhile, the medication change seemed to make things better, but the darkness continued to grow. Her rage was sometimes uncontrollable: she punched holes in the walls; she broke windows. She began using foul language. She would scream that we were not her family and that she didn’t deserve us. She stopped getting along with her sisters. She became increasingly difficult to discipline. The least criticism or innocuous question could trigger explosive rage.

And then, one day, the rage stopped going away. It grew; she twice ran out of the house and down the street. One night I followed her in the car for a mile and a half, hazard lights blinking as she ran, before I could talk her into getting in the car and coming home. The next day, she spoke back to one of her teachers and received a detention. It was the first time in her life she’d ever gotten into trouble in school.

That afternoon, when I picked her and her older sister up after school, she was in full rage. She screamed at her sister and screamed at me without provocation. The rage was escalating beyond anything I had seen before. So I took her older sister to her boyfriend’s house, and then drove my youngest daughter to the emergency room at the hospital.

As we pulled into the parking lot, she began crying, begging me not to take her to the emergency room. She refused to get out of the car. Then she began screaming and yelling. Fear and crying traded places with cursing and yelling. She hit and kicked me multiple times. She began clawing the seat covers. She gnawed them with her teeth and chewed on the straps of the seatbelts. Periodically she lay curled in a fetal position for a few moments before launching into rage once again.

My wife arrived and went into the emergency room to let the doctors know the situation. A nurse came out and asked my daughter to come with her. She explained that if she didn’t, then she would have security and the Sheriff’s deputies take her in. My daughter finally calmed down. The storm passed; tears flowed.

It was a long evening.

We arrived at the hospital about 2:45 PM. We did not leave until after 7:30. Our daughter apologized to us in tears. The next day she had an appointment with her psychiatrist, who prescribed an anti-psychotic mood stabilizer for her—a drug normally prescribed to those suffering from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

After the first day on this new medication, the thief returned all the furniture that had been stolen from her mental house.

The rage had disappeared. The mostly happy, carefree, and vivacious girl seemed to have come back. She no longer reacted with out of control rage. She joked, she hugged, she laughed. She acted once again like a normal teenager: listening to music, singing, and enjoying her life.

Her transformation was like a brilliant sunrise after a terrible dark night. But she was and is not entirely well. The thief was still skulking around. A month later she ran away from home, enticed by the father of a supposed friend of hers. She called to be picked up about 24 hours later. Her psychiatrist adjusted her medication.

My youngest daughter is now on independent study with her high school; she cannot be in a normal classroom, so the high school gives her classwork to do, which I help her with at home. Once a week she goes to a special classroom to take tests over that week’s lessons. Her grades have been good. Her medication was recently adjusted again within the past month as the thief started to become a more frequent visitor. She got better. Now, she mostly does okay, but she still has periodic episodes. Today was mostly a good day, except for once: I told her I’d forgotten about a followup appointment she had at the doctor. My phone’s alarm had just gone off and informed me we had but fifteen minutes til the appointment started. She raged at me, cussed me, and told me she couldn’t get ready in that time. I called the doctor and rescheduled the appointment and let her know she didn’t have to worry about it. Her rage grew; she threatened me with her curling iron, threw a pillow and then a metal lid at me and shattered a crystal candle holder. But within an hour she had returned to normal. She apologized. We talked; she cannot explain where the rage comes from or what triggers it. It worries her.

The thief is hard to live with. But most of the time it doesn’t trouble us anymore. Doubtless, over the coming years, there will be further work with psychiatrists and adjustments to her medications. Better medications may be developed. And perhaps some day the thief will finally be put away for good.

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