Baby Jesus in a Walnut Shell
Back in 1990, we went to war. I was deployed to the Persian Gulf on the hospital ship, USNS Comfort, assigned to the burn ICU. Here's the ship--
The officers had staterooms of eight, four sets of bunk beds, and a locker and two drawers each. It was really not bad once we decorated. I bought a length of red silk in Bahrain and made myself a curtain- I was an upper bunk, and after that enjoyed my tiny space, except when my books slid down and fell on the head of my bunkmate below.
By Christmas time, we were at each other's throats through waiting and boredom and shopping withdrawal. My only patients were a squadron of young Marines who had tried to brew some Christmas cheer and ended up with wood alcohol, which blinded two of them and killed a third. One of the young Marines, a girl who was 19, told me her dream was to be a horse trainer, but she was going to work her way up from being a groom. I told her I thought she could still do this even though she had lost her vision. She was crying when she was telling me this, holding my hand, and I can still feel the heat of her tears on my skin.
But other than our work, we had little to do. I was learning Chinese from a book in the library. Most of the other thousand people on the boat were engaged in similar, useless pursuits. But a couple of weeks before Christmas, one of my roommates, Sylvia, told me we needed a nativity.
We started collecting supplies from the wards--cotton balls, paper and markers, and soon made a 3-d nativity out of paper stuffed with cotton wadding, and put it inside a shoebox and mounted it on the wall of our shared room. I saved the baby Jesus, and have carried him around with me since 1990, still sitting on his little cotton ball, in the walnut shell we saved for him.
This is my most precious ornament, the one I look forward to unpacking every year. And every year, I think of a bunch of homesick, lonely young Marines, and hope one of them is grooming a horse in some warm stables, with sweet smelling straw under her feet.
The officers had staterooms of eight, four sets of bunk beds, and a locker and two drawers each. It was really not bad once we decorated. I bought a length of red silk in Bahrain and made myself a curtain- I was an upper bunk, and after that enjoyed my tiny space, except when my books slid down and fell on the head of my bunkmate below.
By Christmas time, we were at each other's throats through waiting and boredom and shopping withdrawal. My only patients were a squadron of young Marines who had tried to brew some Christmas cheer and ended up with wood alcohol, which blinded two of them and killed a third. One of the young Marines, a girl who was 19, told me her dream was to be a horse trainer, but she was going to work her way up from being a groom. I told her I thought she could still do this even though she had lost her vision. She was crying when she was telling me this, holding my hand, and I can still feel the heat of her tears on my skin.
But other than our work, we had little to do. I was learning Chinese from a book in the library. Most of the other thousand people on the boat were engaged in similar, useless pursuits. But a couple of weeks before Christmas, one of my roommates, Sylvia, told me we needed a nativity.
We started collecting supplies from the wards--cotton balls, paper and markers, and soon made a 3-d nativity out of paper stuffed with cotton wadding, and put it inside a shoebox and mounted it on the wall of our shared room. I saved the baby Jesus, and have carried him around with me since 1990, still sitting on his little cotton ball, in the walnut shell we saved for him.
This is my most precious ornament, the one I look forward to unpacking every year. And every year, I think of a bunch of homesick, lonely young Marines, and hope one of them is grooming a horse in some warm stables, with sweet smelling straw under her feet.
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Julio
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Dec 20, 2013 01:37PM
*blubbering helplessly*
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