This week has been unremitting and unforgiving at work, despite the lack of significant disasters. It was more the burrowing into my nerves of a 1000 different inconveniences, along with a day of manual labor (yesterday) spent reorganizing the storage room I manage (a typical summer activity that did not happen last summer due to obvious, pandemic related reasons!). So of course my heating pad stopped working last night, and I ended up using my spare.
Having a spare heating pad on hand is a lesson ingrained in me by Mother: always, always have a spare heating pad stashed away in a drawer somewhere. I think she developed this habit back in the day when drug stores were not open 24 hours, and if your heating pad died at 11 pm you could not just go buy a new one. Anyway, it is a lesson that has served me well over the years, as it did last night. Still a sub-par experience, overall.
But it’s Friday, and Keely and I got out on our walk at a reasonable 5:30 am. The park was dark and empty enough for me to practice singing for a bit, although Keely was unimpressed.
I thought the helicopter memorial was especially liminal the the contrasting lamp lights, poking its nose out from the dark. 
I’ve never once thought about how odd it is that we have the shell of an old helicopter sitting in a public park, and now I think it’s odd that I haven’t thought about it. It is profoundly weird, even if there is a coherency to its placement behind the Viet Nam Veterans of America chapter lodge, as it was a helicopter of that era. Possibly even one of the models my father piloted at some point.
I understand the impulse that led to its placement, though, as I grew up during the time that Viet Nam veterans were trying to find respect and anchor their role in the military history of our country. It’s almost hard to believe these days but as I child I remember vividly that the identity of being a Viet Nam veteran was one that bore a lot of social and political turmoil with it. My father, in fact, never called himself one, instead only claiming that he served in “Southeast Asia” to the point where I was twelve years old before realizing that the place he was not talking about was Viet Nam. He hated that war, mostly because he worked in search and rescue, and saw the worst of what it wrought for soldiers, airmen, and civilians. I think a lot of his desire to retire early came out of that experience.