A Significant Event

For years I kept my secret tucked close. There is a stigma, after all. A stigma against people like me. I was a kid when it happened, just 13. I just couldn't bring myself to tell anyone. I mean, how do you bring it up in conversation? What would people think of me if I did? I never told my friends. (Actually, at 13 I didn't have any friends. They all moved away on me.) I never told my parents or brother and sister. How could I? No one really wants to believe in UFOs.

I'm an adult now. Been that way for awhile now. As I got older, I realized that I had this secret lingering there in the back of my mind. I tried to forget, but there is just no forgetting what I saw and experienced. Last year, I started talking.

In early September the leaves rustled green on the trees. My parents had gone out to get some groceries after work. They had been hesitant to leave me alone, but as I got older they were a little more willing.

Let me set this up a little bit. We lived on the north slope of the tallest hill in our county and probably this part of the state. There was a huge radio tower on the peak of the hill that rose probably 400 to 500 feet into the air. No air craft were allowed anywhere near the tower and our house was located even further down the hill.

That day I had the TV on, but something felt off. I turned the mute on and listened. Pictures on the walls shook, but didn't rattle. An earthquake? This is the Midwest. Earthquakes happen, but not on same level as other parts of the world.

We had a big sliding glass door on the second floor, but the deck had yet to be built. Instead we were accustomed to pulling the door open, gripping the moulding on the inside of the door and adjusting the TV antenna as needed. (Yes, we had to do those things back in the old days.)

Trying to locate the humming sound - and feeling - I opened the sliding door and leaned out. Nothing on this earth could have prepared me for what I saw. It defied the laws of known physics. Enormous metal objects with no wings and no rotating blades are not supposed to, you know, float, almost silently over your head.

Just above the trees an enormous black, cigar-shaped, metallic object slowly throbbed in a westerly direction. By "enormous" I mean the front end had a diameter of 75 to 100 feet. Diffused red lights lined the sides. The outside was some kind of metal, but looked more flat than shiny. Light did not reflect on the surface, instead all light absorbed into the metal skin. I saw no real doors or windows.

It took a very long time for the object to pass overhead. My body went numb. There were no wings, propellers, just an intense throbbing sensation. How? How? I didn't even know what to think.

At some point I must have closed the sliding glass door and ran to my room downstairs. I climbed into the back of my closet and hid under a blanket. After a little bit the throbbing sound went away, but I didn't get out of the closet. Instead I shook, stunned by what I witnessed. I knew no one would believe me if I told them. When my parents arrived home a short time later, I didn't say a word about whatI had seen. It took me years to get to that point.

Last year my nephews were very interested in UFOs and they were looking them up on the Internet. There among the descriptions, I saw drawings and photos of other objects that looked very similar to what I had seen. Their UFOs were from a distance, mine hummed over the top of me no more that 40 feet above my head.

For the first time in twenty years I talked about what I had seen. They wanted to know every detail and I even drew them a picture. We didn't have the Internet when I was growing up. I'd never heard of cigar-shaped UFOs, only saucers. When word got out, my mom told me that my uncle and grandpa had seen a cigar-shaped UFO in the skies above Detroit years ago. My own father had seen a triangular-shaped UFO in the skies once. I felt a lot less alone.

Last year I had the opportunity to speak to a Ufologist, one-on-one. He encouraged me to talk about what I had seen. And so I did. At his presentation on UFOs I met a past president of MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network, and told him of my experience. "That is a significant event," he said.

In more ways than one.

Jet

A Tax on Dreams

My dear friend Karmen - eccentric, wonderful, amazing, Karmen - once said that lottery tickets are a tax on dreams. Boy, I know that.

Here's how it plays out for the poor. We're broke. Desperation kicks in. Money is tight, sometimes, non-existent. You know that economic stimulus check everyone got? I never even saw it. It went directly towards bills, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

The lottery jackpot goes up as more people feel the pinch in their own life. When it gets high enough, I feel the itch. "OK, I'll buy a ticket." But . . . I end up buying three. Three bucks I don't have. Three bucks flushed down the toilet; "Bye, bye!"

Twelve numbers, six duplicates and not a single match. What a waste.

Sigh.

Karmen also says that Silly Putty is like Rosary beads for agnostics. At least the Silly Putty is kind of useful. A loser lottery ticket is just another piece of paper.

Jet

Lemonade

In the wins and losses columns, the losses seem to be winning as of late. I try to be Zen. "Oooooommmmmm! It's OK that my laptop was stolen that contains my novel and pretty much everything I've ever written. The diamond necklace? Not a big deal I'll get over it. Oooooommmmmm!"

But the truth is, it hurts.

I feel like I just can't trust people lately. Recently, another scammer took advantage of my good nature. I lost money, but more than that, I lost my ability to see the best in people.

I used to be happy, silly and fun. I still am those things, but now I am also guarded and suspicious. Not a great combination.

There are a lot of people talking about hope. I could use a little. I've been unemployed since June and there are no jobs. The classified section has been cut in half since June. Ten or twelve web pages are now down to four and a half. And of those jobs I am qualified maybe one. It is rough out here.

I'm working on the lemonade. A little short on the sugar.

Jet

Separating the Two

Friends,

I went for a short walk this morning. The walk ended up being short - only a mile - because of the driving wind and snow. It stirred some memories.

We lived in the country back then and getting snowed-in happened fairly often. During one snowstorm my brother, sister and I all came down with a nasty fever and we didn't have any aspirin in the house. No cars moved on the road up the hill. My father bundled up against the cold, strapped on a pair of cross country skis and struggled into town. He was the only person on the road. We recovered from our fevers and had a good time together as a family with dad as our hero.

We heated our little home with wood. Keeping up with wood cutting ended being a year long task. In another harsh winter we found ourselves without enough cut wood to get through the winter. With temperatures at 40 degrees below zero and snow as deep as four feet or more, getting into the woods proved difficult. Our house, usually snug despite the cold, had ice forming on the inside of the walls. Buying a load of pre-cut wood was out of the question with money woes threatening.

Instead , I have the powerful memory of my parents struggling out into the snow to cut enough wood to get us through. Our German Shepard/Huskie mix dog came along, too, jumping through the deep snow. They returned with a load of wood from an unidentified tree that burned like coal, saving us until we could get back into the woods to cut some more. It turned out the be Ironwood, the only kind of wood that is so dense it sinks in water. It also turned out to be the only Ironwood tree in our woods.

As I look back now I realize the quiet struggles of my parents. My father was a teacher and my mother just started her career as a community worker. They struggled with simple things like paying the mortgage and giving us a good Christmas. When I was little they started a handcrafted broom business out of our basement. Feast or famine best describes the endeavor in the most literal of ways. A loaf of bread is never just a loaf a bread when it is all you have.

The best present I ever received was a Fisher Price Little People castle. The good kind with a pink dragon in a cave, a secret room under the stairs and a trap door in the tower. We didn't expect much as kids, but that Christmas morning exceeded anything I could have imagined. I learned later that my parents had no money that year. They bundled up some brooms and took them into a local store. The owners knew my parents and could see the struggles we were enduring in their eyes. They traded brooms for gifts. The best ever.

My boots felt stiff and good this morning. The harsh wind numbed my legs and cheeks. Snow flakes landed in my eyelashes without melting. With the bad comes the good, it just ends up being a matter of separating the two.

Jet

With What Comes

My Dear Friends,

My friend, Granny Gold, went on a pilgrimage in Portugal a few years ago. As she stood in front of a Madonna statue, she had a euphoric epiphany about all the people she loves and cares about and how they relate to her. I was counted among the people she thought of during her epiphany. That is an amazing feeling to be apart of someone else's spiritual moment. I remember reading an account of that moment with tears in my eyes.

Years later I asked a question about amazing people we have met. Mine was a Nepali artist who opened my heart with the simple touch of his hand as he said good bye. Granny Gold's? An ex-addict she met who saw the world with an incredible eye. The woman once said to Granny Gold, "Maybe another day, something else beautiful will happen."

"You know, Jet," Ganny Gold continued, "maybe we could all write the story of our lives using this as a framework. It's not what comes to us in life, it's what we do with what comes to us: that's who we are. Special people are coming to all of us every day."

Maybe that is what this little blog will be about; what we do with what comes to us.

Best wishes,
Jet