Leah, Human Shield
It had been several months since Leah was home. Mike was thrilled that she was finally coming back to visit. He couldn’t wait to hear about his daughter’s adventures out in Oregon, what it had been like in the tree for all that time. He had been doing research on the internet on the tree-sitting campaign; it was clear that her group was having an impact on the logging practices in the region. He was so proud of his daughter; she was turning into exactly the person he and Judy had dreamed of when they thought about having kids so many years ago.
He continued to wind his way through the foothills, watching the Norway pines on the slopes of the mountains in the distance. Closer to the road, he could see the dark forest floor, covered with long pine needles and seed cones, the sunlight blocked out by the dense canopy of the forest above. He imagined her up there, living in those nets high above the ground. He smiled at the thought of the loggers, standing by their impotent machines while they shook their fists at the kids in the trees.
Within 30 minutes he pulled up to the arrivals lane of the airport, just as she came through the doors. She was beautiful, so much like her mother had been at that age. The car had scarcely stopped before he was out to embrace her. "Leah! Oh, Leah. You look wonderful. How’s my little girl?" He lifted her in the air as they hugged. She was noticeably lighter, having probably not had many full meals while living in a tree for three months.
"Hi, Dad. I’m great. But I’m so exhausted. And I’m hungry, too."
"Don’t worry, honey. I’ve got some fruit in the car, and I have a nice lasagna ready to cook at home, and no plans but to spend time with you this week."
They loaded his Outback with her bags, of which there weren’t many, and settled in for the hour drive back home. On the way, they talked about what it was like in the tree, who she had lived with, what she had accomplished. Mostly, she talked about the friendships she had developed there, how close she had grown to the people she fought together with. Mike took it all in: her achievements, her passion for the work she had been doing. Most of all, he enjoyed the company of his daughter, less a girl these days than a woman ready to take on the world.
After some discussion of Oregon, Leah turned the conversation: "OK, enough about my tree life. How have you been? Things must be crazy at school for you; I assume there are a ton of Iraq protests going on. How are you dealing with that in your classes?"
Her father kept his eyes on the road: "You know, I haven’t really altered my course content too much. Iraq certainly has been a theme, but I’m letting the students map out the discussion, as always. There are so many outlets for them to protest at the college, I’ve tried hard to keep them focused on our class content."
Leah nodded. "Yeah, I can see that, I guess. The faculty must be pretty up in arms about the whole deal, though. I remember how nuts it was during the Gulf War. Have you been organizing on campus?"
He glanced out through his side window up at the sky above the trees: "Not as much as last time. Plenty of other people are taking the reins now. So many more people are finding their voice this time around." Mike carefully considered his words before he spoke them. Everything he had just said was true. More people were finding their voice, and he wasn’t taking as active a role. He very much wanted to leave it at that. He pointed out the window of the car-"Does looking up at the top of those trees make you homesick now?" They both laughed, glad to be together again, driving through the forest that surrounded their home.
Once they arrived, she took a short nap-"It’s kind of nice to sleep on the ground, in an actual bed again."-then came down to join her father for dinner and wine.
Mike wanted to hear more about Oregon, see her pictures, hear more about her friends. Beyond those immediate details, he had other questions. Like, what was next for her, and did it involve going back to school? He was hoping that one reason for her visit home was to talk about how she was going to transition back into school. She had taken a leave three semesters ago, ostensibly for a one-semester break. It’s not that he was stressed about it, really, although he had spent a lot of money to get her through two years of school, and it might be nice to see a return on that investment in the form of a diploma. (It wasn’t about the money, of course. It was about her setting goals and following through on them. It was about her having a foundation on which she could build, from which she could do anything and everything.) He wanted to ask about school if the opportunity presented itself, but he was so happy to see her, he decided it could wait. No need to hassle her about that right now. Besides, he was pretty sure she would bring it up herself, sooner or later.
"This lasagna is great, dad. I haven’t eaten a veggie meal this good in three months."
Mike appreciated the compliment; it had been awhile since he had cooked for more than one person. "I’m just glad you’re not a vegan anymore, Leah. It’s too damn hard to cook for a vegan!"
And then, as he was pouring himself a second glass of wine, Leah started what Mike thought was going to be the school conversation: "Dad, there’s something I want to talk to you about. I feel like I’ve done what I can out in Oregon, and Page and Hugh, my two friends that I was telling you about, and me, we were thinking about what we wanted to do next."
He was mid-drink as she finished. He swallowed, replaying her words in his head. "Page and Hugh, where do they go to school?" What did Page and Hugh have to do with her going back to Berkeley? He was missing something.
"Well…Page went to Lewis & Clark, and Hugh went to a couple schools before he hooked up with the Earth First people. But we were talking about what we were going to do after Oregon, and we have a chance to maybe do something really cool. It’s something really important that we all believe in."
Mike took another drink. He felt his skin getting a little warm, no doubt in part from the wine, but also because it was becoming clear that going back to Berkeley wasn’t the next thing on her list. He told himself to stay calm, that it wasn’t a big deal. He had this conversation with himself all the time; he had dropped out for a semester, and it was no big deal. Judy hadn’t been to school in two years when they started going out. Leah was just finding herself and seeing herself as a key part of an important movement for the first time, and she probably just needed a little more time to…
"Dad, we have some friends with the Voices In The Wilderness organization, and we might have an opportunity to go to Iraq as human shields."
Mike put down his fork, still loaded with a bite of lasagna. "Excuse me?"
"I want you to sponsor me to go to Iraq as a human shield. We have some good friends with Voices, and they’re helping to coordinate the shields program. They don’t just let anybody in. You have to know people, and they go through a heavy screening program. And you need a sponsor. Page and Hugh and I have talked about it for a long time, and we really think this is the best way for us to make a difference…" Leah stopped talking. She looked at her father; he seemed to be staring right through her. She looked down at the last few bites of her lasagna. The popping sound of the fire filled the room.
Mike sat, motionless. Go to Iraq? Of all the ways to save the world, why that?
He spoke out of impulse, something he almost never did-"That’s crazy. Don’t be stupid. You’re not going to Iraq."
Leah abruptly stood and took her plate into the kitchen. She scraped the rest of her lasagna into the garbage with one hurried swipe, and then turned to put it in the dishwasher. But just as she opened the door, she slammed it back shut again, spun around on her heel, and stormed back into the dining room, plate still in hand. Her father’s expression had not changed. In truth, he had no expression at all as he stared at the wall across the room.
He startled as her loud voice filled the room, the loudest voice that particular room or that house had heard in many years. "That’s it? That’s all you have to say? That I’m crazy? That I’m stupid? This is special. This is a real opportunity to do something about this war. This isn’t about some march on Washington. This is direct action. Very few people get to go do this. I thought you would support this. Isn’t this what you and Mom always taught me to do?"
Mike wanted this conversation to end. "Listen, it’s getting late, and we’re both tired. We’ve got all week. Let’s talk about this tomorrow, OK?"
"Fine. Goodnight." She bounded up the stairs two at a time, slamming the door to her bedroom behind her.
Mike started to clean up the dinner, but instead he poured himself another glass of wine, put two more large logs on the fire and sat down in his reading chair. Soon, there was nothing but his thoughts and the glowing, hissing fire. He thought about how stupid he had been to think that he could continue to play this game of avoidance. A lot of his friends and fellow faculty could talk the talk about what it meant to protest and fight, but few had the kind of experiences Mike had. He had been on the front lines of important protests as a writer and an organizer. He was a "name" in the peace crowd. People were going to be paying attention to what he said about Iraq—and he knew what they all expected him to say.
It used to be simple for him. There was right, and there was wrong, and then you went out and did something to make people sit up and listen and see what was going on in the world. There was a time when he could say things like "Make Love, Not War", and really mean it.
But Iraq was different. Hell, everything was different now.
Certainly he was different, changed the very morning he sat and watched a plane slice through a steel and concrete tower over and over again. Changed, since read a story about an image he never actually saw, of a man dressed in a sharp blue suit with a red tie and blonde hair waving in the breeze like he was on a Sunday drive in a convertible, as he plummeted 80 stories to escape an inferno. Changed, when he realized that it wasn’t just the "us" of the various protest movements vs. "them", the U.S. Establishment. There was a whole world out there that was fucked up with hatred, and didn’t give a damn about the clear-cut logging or Roe v. Wade or dumping nuclear waste in a mountain in Nevada. To them, he was no different than your typical NRA militia-member from Michigan--he was just another ugly American.
Was he the only one who saw that, the only one who saw a new reality? Wasn’t anybody else scared? He was ashamed to say what he really felt: That we were too far gone. Even if we could change our government, how could we change the world? How could we get rid of the weapons (or the airplanes, or the fertilizers?) How could we get rid of the hate? He wondered: Would Judy have felt the same way if she had seen what the new world was going to be like?
Late in the day on that September 11th, he had scribbled something absent-mindedly while grading a student’s paper. He wrote: "They won’t wait for us", and that was all. When the student got the paper back, she asked Mike what he had meant. He looked at it like he hadn’t seen it before, and then he remembered. He sat long after class that day thinking about those five words-"They won’t wait for us." And he thought about them again now as he sat in front of the fire. The idea played over and over in his thoughts as he felt the heat of the fire on his feet and face. "They won’t wait for us to save the world. They won’t wait for us to inform our public, to expose our government. They’ve taken their own actions. We’re too late. We’ve missed our chance. We’ve failed." And he couldn’t tell anybody in the world about it.
And now she wants to go to Iraq? She’s too late. She’s going to die there, and for what?
He watched the full logs burn to embers and then to nothing before he drifted off to sleep.
They avoided each other for much of the morning. Finally, she sat down next to him on the back deck. The smell of pine trees was in the air; the advancing autumn was offering a shorter slice of sunlight to enjoy on the deck with each passing day.
He acknowledged her quietly, nodding and offering her some coffee without raising his gaze from his morning paper.
Leah had a different idea. "We need to talk about Iraq."
He sighed and continued to look at his paper, though he wasn’t really reading it. "Well, good morning to you, too."
"Dad, I know it’s a very serious decision, but I thought we could at least talk about it."
Mike put the paper down. "OK, let’s talk about it. You want me to sponsor you to be a human shield in Iraq and that’s not going to happen. The only place I’ll be sponsoring you at is Berkeley."
Calmly, she said "Well, I’m sorry you feel that way, but I’m not going to go back to school just yet. I’ve thought about this a long time, and this is what I’m going to do. Voices will accept a variety of people as sponsors, and I have several other people who have given me their blessing. I’m not 16. I’m 22, and I don’t need you to give me permission to go. You can’t do anything legally to stop me from going."
Mike listened to what she said and realized months of being coy about Iraq with friends, colleagues and family was necessarily about to fly out the window. "I’ll just be honest with you and say that I don’t think you should go. For one thing, it’s not going to do any good. It won’t have any impact over whether this war happens or not. You can do more good here in the States."
"I think you’re wrong about that. The shields can go to hospitals and power plants and water treatment facilities to keep them from being bombed. Voices gets a lot of media attention, and if we’re there they can’t bomb those places. We can also act as witnesses to ensure that Iraqis aren’t killed needlessly, to tell the world about the brutality of war."
"Leah, don’t you know what Saddam did with human shields in the first Gulf War? They were tortured. They had no choice about where they were placed. They were placed next to military targets." His voice began rising; it was time for him to take his own stand in this fight. "You would be supporting his regime, the worst regime in the world from a human rights perspective. Is that what you want to stop, Leah? Do you want to stop the U.S. from removing Saddam, who has been making life a living hell for Iraqis for almost 30 years?"
Leah stood, her fists clenched. She bent at the waist to get her face closer to her father’s. "My God! You support this war, this phony made-up bullshit Oil War? Since when was war ever the right answer? Violence always begets more violence! You taught me that! You think this is what the Mid-East needs, for America to go in under a false pretext and kill these people?" She was yelling now, her face red and her bottom lip quivering. "You never would have said anything like that when mom was alive."
Mike hadn’t expected that, nor had he expected his face to suddenly feel flush with anger at the mention of Judy. His hands began to tremble; he picked up the paper again, and quickly rolled it up as he spoke emphatically: "You’re wrong, Leah. This doesn’t have anything to do with your mother. It’s about what’s happening in Iraq." He smacked the paper on the arm of his chair as he said "Iraq". "It’s about the way things are now. It’s about living in reality." Another smack of the rolled-up paper on "reality". "You should try living in reality sometime."
"You think I don’t know reality? You think living in a tree for three months is some kind of joyride? You think getting harassed by cops and loggers is some kind of fantasyland? I’m trying to make reality better, and all you want me to do is go back to Berkeley so you can brag to all your friends about it, like Berkeley’s some kind of ‘reality’? I’ve been out there fighting for what I believe in. I’ve taken chances. What the fuck have you ever done? You sat around and got high with a bunch of hippie burnouts and called it a protest? You sat at your desk and wrote a goddamned book? You marched in some parades and carried a sign? You’re my fucking hero. It’s so easy for you to sit on your ass in your special little class and solve all the world’s problems now that you’re so comfortable-"
Mike stood; now they were both pacing the deck, circling each other like prizefighters. He sneered and waved his arms dismissively, paper still in hand as he cut her off. "Oh, you’re so smart now, huh? You’re a 22 year-old college dropout, but you know it all now, right?" He pointed his paper right at Leah’s face-"You saved some trees with your friends and now you can save the world? I’m sure that’ll stop the bombs." He put his hands to his face in mock anguish "Oh, no! It’s little Leah Foster who saved a dozen trees in Oregon! She’s come to save the day for Iraq! Better turn those B-52’s around, we can’t hurt Leah the Human Shield!"
She was crying now, shouting through her tears. "Don’t you fucking condescend to me! How dare you condescend to me! I’m doing what I think is right. I’m going to fight this war, even you if aren’t." The tears were coming faster now; she was starting to do that thing that people do when they cry hard and still try to talk, with large gasps of air coming in and out of her mouth rendering her speechless for moments at a time, only to recover just long enough to get a short burst of words through the hard sobs.
Mike was ready, he had a comeback all planned for her, but as he watched her sob and shake and melt he was frozen in fear and anger all at once. He was angry that she was going to offer her life in an act of futility, to stop a war that perhaps shouldn’t be stopped. And he was afraid their relationship was never going to be the same after 15 minutes in the sun on their back deck.
They had stopped circling. Leah stood, shoulders slumped, now barely able to get bursts of words out as her body heaved. "I thought you would be proud of me." Mike tried to backtrack, softening his tone. "Leah, honey, I am proud of you. I’m so proud..." She didn’t hear him, or at least didn’t react: "I can’t believe how you’ve changed."
There it was. Mike had been waiting for it, almost wanting her to acknowledge what he had been thinking about for the past several months. He was earnestly asking, almost pleading when he stepped toward her, palms raised: "Have I changed so much, Leah? Or has the world changed? I really can’t tell. Am I the only one who’s changed?" She didn’t answer. Leah’s last burst through the tears came after she went down the steps and toward the cars, as her father watched her walk away and wondered how he could have fucked this all up so badly. She turned, and despite the tears, said it with a voice so steady that Mike knew she believed it: "Mom would be ashamed of you."
The words reverberated in the backyard as Leah pulled the car down the driveway and out onto the mountain road before speeding away. Mike considered them carefully before offering a response that only the squirrels, nuthatches and chickadees in the forest around him could hear: "Yeah, maybe she would."
The car pulled back in just before midnight. He had been looking out at the driveway each time he heard a car come up the road. It brought back memories of when he and Judy had waited for and worried about Leah just after she started driving. Every car that passed had them looking out the window, hoping it was her getting home safe from a party or a friend’s house. "Don’t let her know we’ve been fussing over her," they would say to each other. When they saw the headlights come in the driveway, they would scurry to act busy and pretend that they hadn’t even noticed she was home when she walked in. Judy would always overact it for Mike’s amusement-"Oh, Leah. When did you get here? Why, I never even heard you come through the door!" There weren’t enough of those memories; Judy was gone before Leah’s 17th birthday.
He dusted off the old routine, and quickly established himself in his reading chair with his reading glasses on, magazine in hand. Leah went straight through the front door and up the stairs, so she didn’t notice that he had been "reading" his magazine upside-down.
He sat and listened. She wasn’t coming back downstairs. She was going to make it hard on him, which of course he had expected.
He knocked quietly on her bedroom door. "Leah? Can I come in?"
She said yes; she was sitting up in bed with only the orange lava lamp on. It gave the room a warm glow. It had belonged to Mike and Judy back when lava lamps were really cool, not just retro cool. They all loved the lamp. "If that lamp could talk," Mike said, pointing at the lamp as he sat down on the edge of Leah’s bed. They sat quietly for an awkward moment. They both knew they had to close the current gap between them, because another large and painful gap was about to open.
"Leah, I’m sorry about today." He sighed, not sure how to say what came next. Or what came next. "I can’t tell if I’ve changed, or if the world has changed, or what. I know that my world has changed, though. You’re all I have left. I’m scared of losing you." He paused as she put her hand on his shoulder. Feeling her supportive touch meant the world to him; it chased away his thoughts of the irreparable rift he had feared was opening between them. "I always felt like everything was so simple, but I just haven’t felt that way in awhile. First your mom died, and then you went to school, and I was here at home by myself, and everything was just so different. And then 9/11 happened, and I felt like all of the things I had believed in just weren’t going to be enough anymore. I couldn’t save your mom, and I couldn’t stop any of this other stuff from happening, either. I always thought I could make a difference. That was just always a part of who I was. But once things got really tough, I realized I couldn’t do anything at all to stop them from happening. I was just along for the ride, and I think maybe I’ve decided to step off of the ride for awhile."
Leah gave him a playful punch on the shoulder: "Maybe it’s just a mid-life crisis?"
"Thank you," he thought to himself. It was the perfect time for a little joke, because he had no idea what to say next. "Then where’re my Corvette and trophy girlfriend?"
They sat and looked at the lamp as the orange balls floated up, down and up again. "Dad, I know it’s been hard for you. It was hard for me, but I can’t imagine what it must be like for you. I miss mom, too. But don’t you still believe in what you taught me? That we can make a difference? That we need to fight for what we believe in?"
There was no hesitation in his answer: "Yes, I do. People with passion can change things. I’m just having a hard time finding my passion these days."
She seemed encouraged by this. "Maybe I can fight now, while you rest and get your passion back."
"Leah, it’s not your passion to fight that I have a problem with. It’s that you want to fight this fight, in this way. I don’t want you to go. I don’t think it will work, but even if I did, I wouldn’t want you to go. I don’t care about changing the world anymore. All I care about is you. You are all that I have left. All the things I have fought against, Vietnam, nuclear power, you name it. None of it matters as much to me as you do. I did what I can to help the world. You’re my only cause now."
He should have known she would make it hard on him again. "Then if I’m your cause, you need to sponsor me. You need to be with me in spirit when I fight this fight. Help me follow my heart and try to help these people." She paused, shrugging her shoulders. "I haven’t lived the life you’ve lived. Maybe someday I’ll understand better where you’re coming from, but you can’t take me there on your own. I have to live my own life to see where it takes me, and you and Mom taught me to do that. Now I need you to help me do that, whether it’s going to Oregon or Iraq or Berkeley or wherever. I need you, just like you need me."
He looked into her eyes. She was starting to cry again; so was he. He knew she was wrong. He knew bad things could happen to her. He knew she wouldn’t stop the war. But she was going to go no matter what he said. She needed him, and he wasn’t going to watch his daughter get on a plane bound for Iraq knowing that she didn’t have the love and support of her father. Besides, just because fear was turning him into a cynic didn’t mean that he had to raise his daughter to be one. Against his better judgment, he decided this was a fight that was OK to lose. "If you’re going to go, I guess I’d better sponsor you."
It took a month to take care of the paperwork and the logistics for her trip. With two weeks to go till her departure date, despite hoping for a diplomatic reversal that would render the trip unnecessary, it was clear that there wasn’t going to be a major development that lessened the likelihood of war.
They spent the time before her departure living simply, and enjoying each other’s company. They hiked the forest trails they came to love as a family years before. They planted flower bulbs for next spring, and assured themselves that they would be there together to watch them break through the musty earth as spring approached. They talked about so many things, but not Iraq. There was no point in it—They had resolved to move forward. Two nights before she was to depart, they polished off a couple of bottles of wine and dusted off the old carousel slideshow; it was the first time they had looked at the slides in many years, since before Judy died. They spent most of the night laughing hysterically at old hairstyles and plaid pants, and remembering friends they hadn’t seen in far too long. They were even laughed at the slides with Judy in them. It felt good to have fun with her in the room again.
On a sunny Thursday morning, they were at the airport. The itinerary called for Leah to join her group in Jordan before crossing over into Iraq. Mike had imagined waving to her as she walked down the runway, imagined seeing her turn to wave back at him as she stepped onto the plane. He then saw himself standing with his face pressed to the window wet with his tears, as he watched her jet lift off into the sky. He was startled when they pulled up to the departures level and he remembered that only ticketed passengers could get to the gates now. It didn’t make any sense to go inside if he couldn’t go to the gate.
This was it. This was goodbye.
They hugged as the skycap took her bags away to be checked. She spoke first: "I’m scared, Daddy." It was the first time she had mentioned her fear to him. It made Mike feel strangely comforted. This was real to her. She understood her sacrifice and her fear, and she was going to face it. It was so much more than he had been able to do lately. He didn’t know what to say to make their fear go away. He could only say "I love you. Your mother would be so proud of you."
And then she was gone. He watched her go into the terminal. He stood on the curb as he sobbed; he waved goodbye long after she was inside the building and on the way to her gate. He was beaming with pride. He was terrified.
