i have a cousin who is in the army. he has a wife and two kids and has been deployed to iraq twice in the last 6 years. he's currently in kuwait and will be sent to iraq, again, in several weeks. he sends these mass emails to everyone in the family, keeping us all updated on where he is, where he's going, hoping to receive positive responses from all of us, updating him on what we're all doing. he just sent an email a few minutes ago; the subject was "another day down". here i am, reading the fearless flyer, making a grocery list for the week, still in pajamas, drinking coffee with the french doors open... and i get this email, it's sent from the other side of a very different world, 10 hours away, in an instant. yesterday i was having trouble wrapping my mind around the possibility vs. impossibility of being sent to europe for work, and was having this internal debate about whether or not i'd actually be doing anything positive or constructive there, and realized that by having that debate, by dwelling on that issue and continually wondering "what if" i was only wasting time, and by no means being productive. here i am, making my lists, writing things down, and still hardly doing any of them. i cannot believe he's so far away.
i talked to my uncle today, the one who's younger than me, and i found out that a) he's "not into politics" and is not voting, and that b) my nana and tata, mexican immigrants who do not have health insurance or any sort of retirement plan, are. (for barack, of course!)