Time Capsule
By Andrea Joy Adams
The time capsule was in the cool of the basement—an olive-green trunk I would unpack, on hot Midwest summer days, languishing between one schoolyear’s end and another’s beginning.
The smell of old mildew was strong as I pulled out the contents one at a time: the empty pistol holster; the jacket with ADAMS stitched over the breast pocket; the metal objects that seemed strange and otherworldly.
Vietnam might as well have been another planet to me as a little one. I didn’t know at the time that this trunk contained the contents of my father’s former life as a Seabee at war. I had only seen one photograph of my father in uniform, and it was quickly whisked away from view when it appeared.
*
Not until my father had a stroke did I begin to learn some of the impact of the years he served in Vietnam.
I spent several nights with him in the ICU, unable to leave his bedside, fearing the worst. His nightmares were terrifying even to me as an outside observer.
“He’s had those since Vietnam,” my mother stated flatly, eager to diminish the stroke’s significance.
I was curious how my father’s life experience, including his military service, could impact or assist his recovery. Gripped by a foreboding sense that our days together were numbered—though they always had been—I wanted to know more about his life prior to my existence.
On the hour-long drive to and from visiting him in the second hospital, I began listening to a popular novel about nurses who served in Vietnam. The book helped me understand, in part, why no one in my family ever talked about my father’s service.
Meanwhile, in stroke rehab, the physical therapists marveled at his drive.
“We rarely see stroke patients in his age group work so hard to get better,” they said. It’s really impressive, and it bodes well for his recovery.”
I shared the physical therapists’ sentiments with a veteran friend, a Marine. Though he doesn’t know my father personally, he said, “That doesn’t surprise me.”
He knew, but for me, it was as though I had caught a glimpse into a secret society.
A humble man, I didn’t know my father was this kind of person. He worked hard at his day job, of course. He took me to work on Saturday mornings to relieve my mother of the burden of my existence for half the day. Bored, I poked around the otherwise empty office, exploring his coworkers’ desk drawers and smearing my chubby face on the copy machine.
I didn’t really know what being a steel pipe salesman entailed, other than talking on the phone and crunching numbers on a calculator at a broad desk with a large glass ashtray full of cigarette butts perched in one corner.
Taking care of my father after his stroke is allowing me to get to know him, in many ways, for the first time. I take him to the VA to get the medical care he needs. He was recently asked by his providers about toxin exposures and was taken through numerous PTSD questionnaires.
Later, I asked him about some of his answers.
“You said something about being exposed to smoke from ‘burn barrels.’ What were they burning?”
“Shit.”
“What kind of shit?”
“You know—shit. Feces.”
“Why?”
“I guess they didn’t have anywhere else to put it, so they poured diesel fuel on it and lit it on fire.”
“Gross.”
“It was pretty gross, yes,” he said, with a detached tone.
I knew from the book I was reading that there was all manner of gross involved. Though the story was fictional, the characters were drawn from the experiences of real Vietnam veterans.
As a wildlife biologist, I thought I knew gross—my jobs have put me in various stomach-turning situations. Biology—the study of life—involves a lot of death, and what follows. I stuck with animals, both because I understand them better than humans, and because when I learned medical school required dissecting a cadaver, I decided that would be more than I could handle.
My father’s service still repays him sometimes. In his 80s, he qualifies for VA medical care. The prosthetics and orthotics department recently fitted him with a new device to help him walk better. As a young man, he earned his master’s degree on the GI bill. Afterward, he worked devotedly to provide for our family and ensure I had a quality education.
Because my father is a Navy veteran, I qualified for a grant at the University of California while earning my PhD. For two semesters, the Brython Davis awards eased the usual juggle of teaching to pay my tuition, while working a second job to pay my living expenses, while foregoing sleep to do my research at night.
*
I always thought that the time capsule was entirely composed of contents from Vietnam because of the flack jacket and weapons. But when I asked him about the Vietnam trunk recently, he said, “No—that was mostly my hunting stuff.”
This revision made sense: the pistol holster, the shells, the knife—even the jacket, because it was green—could have been used for hunting. There were other artifacts from Vietnam nearby: a velvet portrait of a nude woman; a delicate paper lantern. Their proximity had resulted in a fiction that was easy to create about what was in the basement. Taking time to listen, ask questions and unmoor my long-held assumptions turns out to be much more interesting.
My father never talked about the war before, but now—perhaps because of the stroke, or because we have grown closer since I became one of his caregivers—he offers an occasional story. He looks off into the distance as if eyeing the horizon from shore, naming places I’ve not heard of, describing scenes that are hard to fathom. As I listen in earnest, I’m grateful to better know the man who has lived so many different lives, and survived them all.
****
Andrea Joy Adams is a biologist and writer. Her father, a Navy Seabee, is a Vietnam veteran. Her writing has appeared in Consilience, Changing Skies, and over two dozen scientific journals. Her Substack, Hopecology, explores the cultivation of hope in the face of crisis and rapid change.