Wishing the troops a return to normalcy

I was making up a list of gifts to send to our troops fighting in Iraq. Not cookies or Mom’s homemade lazy-daisy cake or even a bottle of Jack Daniels concealed in one of those tall, round oatmeal boxes. Nothing like that.

That isn’t to say they’re not swell things to receive when you’re far away from home and the possibility of sudden death waits just around the corner. But a box full of cookies, some of them crushed into crumbs during shipment, fails to distract from the forces set loose in war.

I wanted to send words, because even though words are just little things and often not too important, sometimes they can make a difference when you’re in a combat zone and wondering how the people at home regard your efforts.

What I had in mind saying to those who are bearing the brunt of our skewed foreign policy was that we care a good deal about you personally even though many of us are almost fanatically opposed to the war.

I wanted to offer you that explanation accompanied by a gift of wishes, among them being peace and safety, or a good night’s sleep with both eyes closed, or a moment to eat without a weapon across your knees.

I was just cranking up when a ringing telephone intruded. It was our Teengirl in Chicago, who was in a panic because she couldn’t find her copy of the plane ticket that would bring her home for Christmas. She’s attending art school in the Windy City, where she is wowing them with her talent and her creativity.

We all desperately want her home, so I dug out the original copy and faxed it to her. She’s done some growing up in Chicago, being on her own and all, and making mature decisions. One day she called both her mother and her grandmother not to ask for money but to ask how to make a lemon pie.

I turned back to my computer and was continuing with my list of gifts, which included my wish for at least a moment when our warriors in Iraq could pause to appreciate the beauty of their environment, a glory that will outlast even the deadliest bombs and rockets of human conflict.

I’m talking about the bleak beauty of the rolling desert sand and the vast expanse of a starry sky undiluted by gathering clouds or city lights. This is a land trod by the believers of God for thousands of years, where in the hearts of those yearning for miracles the icons of peace were created.

I realize it’s more than a little ironic talking about the birth of peace in a place of war, like death intruding on the ebullience of spring. But ironies abound on Planet Earth.

I was just getting into philosophical aspects of place and war, remembering my own discovery of snow, and its blinding beauty, during the fighting in Korea a long time ago, when suddenly I felt a presence to my right. It was the dog Barkley and he was laying a red-and-green tennis ball in my lap.

Barkley has leukemia and less than a year to live and lacks the bounding energy he once possessed. But the life that remains glows occasionally with a flashing memory of playing catch, and he came to me with the Christmas ball my wife bought him just yesterday. He loves to have me throw the ball so he can catch it in his mouth by leaping into the air. I couldn’t deny him that, so I broke away again from my words to play catch with Barkley.

When he tired of it, I went back to what began to seem like a somewhat disjointed effort at creating a list of Christmas wishes for our troops, given all of the interruptions of trying to write at home. But I’ve been writing under less than ideal conditions for a long time, so I went back to it again, like a good Marine digging a latrine.

I was at the point where I had recovered my syntax, when my wife, the radiant Cinelli, called for help in moving a couch. We had to rearrange furniture to accommodate family coming from Portland and Sacramento to spend a week with us. Every corner of our house will be taken up, and on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, more family will join us from just over the hill.

So I left the computer to help and returned some time later to poke around in my brain, looking out the window sometimes for inspiration, or watching my fish swim lazily around their tank. And then it occurred to me that what was going on in my life is what I wished for you guys in peril a long ways away:

Young people asking your help, a dog wanting your attention, a family filling your house, the tranquillity of a home that, for a moment, crowds your life and your memories. This you deserve, soldier. This you need, Marine. I wish that for you someday when the fighting is done.

Come home to us.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached at al.martinez @latimes.com)