I have decided to measure my remaining time here in haircuts.  It’s really a highlight of my existence here every couple-few weeks.  I get to sit there, with a guy who doesn’t speak English very well and therefore doesn’t chat, for ten to fifteen minutes and do nothing at all.  Think about nothing much at all.  When he’s done he might give me a little scalp rub thing and crack his knuckles on my head.  If he didn’t quite understand “high fade with a half on the sides” it’s ok.  It’s hair.  I have a bit of it.  It will grow back.  I do not appear to be losing it at all, which is nice.  But my hair, very dark, is starting to speckle down the sides with gray.  I’m still on the near side of thirty, but Dad went gray long before this, so I count myself as lucky.  I blame the gray on my troops.  At least they make me laugh when they’re not contributing to my new-found migration towards salt instead of pepper.

By my newfound measuring device, I go home in approximately ten haircuts.  That’s way more manageable than six months, or a hundred and seventy-odd days.  We’re about halfway done.  Not with our time in Iraq, just with the tour in general.  At the end of this month we’ll be halfway done with our time here.  At this point we begin to count “down” to the end as opposed to “up.”  This is a purely semantic argument.  It still makes it easier.  Halfway to home. 

I guess it’s a pretty big milestone, but this is also the toughest part of the tour.  We’ve moved beyond the excitement of the new, and haven’t yet arrived at the excitement of leaving.  We’re just here.  Every day.  In Iraq.  I tend to get introspective at milestones.  Today I have been thinking about what I miss.  Not an altogether helpful exercise, but I figure if I write about it, I can stop dwelling.

For some reason today I got to thinking about Minnesota winters.  I miss those frigidly cold evenings when you bundle up and step outside.  The first breath immediately freezes any moisture in your nasal passages so that all you can smell is cold.  It is quiet in a way that only snow can make it quiet.  More than mere silence, the air is void of sound.  Footsteps and closing doors are muffled.  The snowflakes in the streetlights make little conical snow globes of swirling crystals. 

The car.  Have to warm it up.  While I have had my share of vehicular troubles, I have been blessed with cars that always start.  Might not be able to get the door open, but dammit it will fire up every time.  Start it with the spare key.  Turn the heat on high.  Lock the car.  Run back inside.  I go through the trouble of locking my running car not because I or anyone I know has had a car stolen while it was warming up, but because you always here about that one guy.  Really, I have never owned a car worth stealing.  ’93 Tercel with a four-speed manual transmission?  Take my car, please.

Ten minutes later, back outside, the two of us this time.  Several layers of denim, polypropylene,  down, nylon, and wool.  Crammed in a tiny car.  The vinyl seats cracking under our butts.  A bottle of wine at her feet.  On our way to be with great friends in a warm house.  That feeling right there.  That one.  I miss that today.