Letters to My Granddaughter: the Introduction

[July 5, 2023]  Granddaughter!  Perhaps you are now wondering why I’m writing these letters to you, a growing, beautiful young lady.  You are the oldest of my grandchildren.  And like your father and like me as your grandfather, we are each the firstborn and with that position comes special privileges and also expectations.

While I am confident that your father and mother will help you, I am also responsible for giving you something to treasure and love.  In the “old days,” we wrote handwritten letters and put them in the postal system for delivery.  Today we text or videoconference.  I am doing something in between; I’m writing letters to you electronically through the Internet.

I’ll give you some ideas about life; that is my responsibility and a noble undertaking, and I take that task seriously.  And although your parents are doing a great job, there is nothing like a bit of help from the outside.  Here I am, your Poppy (your name for me, your paternal grandfather), and I’m ready to do just that.

I am writing 100 letters just for you.  Others will read them too, so I will be sure not to reveal anything that might embarrass you, but since I know you, that will be no problem.  I hope to give you some ideas about the good life using events from my lifetime to the present.

What these events will do is give you lessons that helped me be a good person.  No, not the finger-pointing kind of moralistic rules that make you want to puke (like gross anchovies), but the kind of ideas that make you smile, the ideas and ways of living that guarantee you a proper life, a life that attracts good people to you, the kind that some folks call the secret to a good life.  And believe me; you do want them.  Maybe you don’t know it yet, but you will, and you’ll like it too.

Granddaughter, hold onto your britches, big girl.  You’re about to take the ride of your life.  A ride into my life.  I know that you will be asking yourself how in the world can my Poppy, that old guy who moves real slow, talks with a Southern slang, and walks holding my hand like a mangy tired old dog.  How could my Poppy have a life that was anything but stale and boring?  Surely, his life is like watching paint dry on the bathroom wall, really slow and anything but thrilling.  Do you like a little excitement?   I hope so.

100 letters!  What in the world could my Poppy find to write to me about that could possibly take so many letters?  You might think there is nothing Poppy could write of interest or useful.  And perhaps that is true.  Maybe if you think that way, you would be just barking up a tree and getting nothing done but wasting your bark.

100 letters, full of the life of the man who’s raised your own Daddy and helped make him the father he is to you.  There might be something to the stories explaining your Daddy and why he is so good to you.  One day you will treasure these letters.  At least, I hope you do.

Now, I have a dog too.  And my girl dog, all 90 pounds of muscle and grit, a Yellow Labrador, she keeps me young.  I got her at the insistence of your Nonna, my wife and the most gracious and wonderful woman I ever knew.  I walk my girl dog twice a day, three miles, all weather, rain, shine, snow, heat, cold, sleet, and at least one tornado going by.  Was I scared?  No!  Never!  And here is your first hint at what you will discover in my letters.  I ain’t scared of nuttin’.

Then, there is Nonna.  I know you love her as well.  I’m sure you are attracted to her as you always ask for her when we speak on the phone.  Nonna has wonderful traits you can copy and be guaranteed success as a young lady.  She also has a particular kind of beauty, very much like the kind of natural beauty you possess.

Moreover, Nonna loves you more dearly than ever imagine and wants to hug you close.  Call upon her any time.  She will always be there, ready to talk and laugh with you.  Nonna also helps me be who I am and ensures I do not stray too far away.

Once you read my letters, you will see they are not really about me.  Oh, yes, I’m in the stories.  Every one of them.  But these letters are stories about how to live, about how to “really” live with your eyes wide open.  These letters also help you not follow the false narratives pushed on young folks today or the false idols and quasi-religions of those who falsely believe they are saviors of the world, those who believe they know best and who think they are superior to everyone.  These false prophets go by many names.  Do not be confused by them or misled.

I will tell a story in each letter.  There is a lesson to learn from each or two: living, good times, freedom, duty, and fulfillment.  Sometimes the letter tells about tragedy or evil; these two are distinguishable, and you will see that difference.

You will find in each the idea that life is both good and tragic and life sometimes deals us a difficult hand to play in life, but what makes life all worthwhile is that you can find yourself to be a good girl by adopting responsibility and telling the brutal truth, always the truth.

Okay, let’s get on with it.

Laying in the dirt on my back, filthy, sweaty, head spinning, with terrible pain in my left shoulder, I thought, “How the heck did I get here?”  It was sometime early in the morning, just at sunrise, but it was still cool, dusty, smelly, and with no breeze at all.  A big black man with a huge smile and bright white teeth asked if I was in pain.  “What?” I asked, still not with it.  He said, with a booming voice of concern, “Sir, you got tripped up and hit the dirt real hard.  You hurt anywhere?”

Just then, the pain came stampeding back, and my shoulder was on fire and sagging in a bizarre way.  “Good God, sir, I think you dislocated your shoulder; it looks real bad.”  Now, who wants to hear that?  It wasn’t the pain that bothered me so much as being unable to get up by myself and stand without two big dudes helping me.

One of them volunteered to drive me to the nearby aid station to have a doctor take a look.  My luck was to find the doctor still asleep, so they went to wake him.  It seemed like forever for him to arrive and diagnose what seemed evident by that point: a classic dislocated shoulder.  He said, “I’ll fix it, but it’s gonna hurt real bad.”  Just what I wanted to hear, and I’d not even eaten breakfast.

I’d been playing Combat Football with about 35 or 40 Soldiers and Marines on an open, hard-packed dirt field near the heart of Baghdad, Iraq, in the last days of 2010, only a few months before the end of the war.  A week earlier, one of our Marines got hurt badly with the same injury, plus a broken hand and a concussion.  Unsurprisingly, our unofficial motto was, “Work hard, play hard.”

Back at the aid station, the medics seemed intimidated by me.  One said, “There are only two kinds of people we get in here this time of day: combat wounded and engineers.”  I was obviously not combat-wounded.  A short, young female medic asked me if I wanted a cup of coffee, and I nodded yes.  She also sheepishly asked me to give her my pistol and holster (for security).  Now, that felt weird.  Being in an active war zone, I was never without my pistol or rifle, but I knew the rules and handed it over.

“Sir, we never had a Colonel officer in our clinic before.  Can we get you anything?”  “You must be an engineer,” another medic said.  Yep!

All I wanted was to get my shoulder fixed, breakfast, and return to work.  The short female medic politely and, in a meek voice, informed me that my long-sleeve PT shirt would have to come off.  “And how is that supposed to happen?” I said with as much stoicism as I could muster.  She said, “Well, sir, we could pull it over your head like you normally do when removing it.”

I’m no medic, nor do I know much about human anatomy, but given the pain up to that point, I figured her suggestion would be a stupid decision on my part.  “Or, we can cut your shirt off.”  Now, that’s more like it.  I said, “Okay, cut it off; otherwise, you’ll hear a lot of screaming, and you don’t want that to happen.”

After the doctor reset my shoulder and put my arm in a sling, he told me I would be sent to Landstuhl, Germany, by military aircraft, where U.S. military doctors would review my shoulder to determine whether I could remain in a war zone.  “Nope, doc, I ain’t going nowhere; thanks for your help.  I’m a staff officer, not a door kicker.  I’m going back to work.”  Then I got my pistol and walked out.

And that was that, at least for the moment.

I was at the “Boathouse,” back at work by 9 o’clock, where Army Engineers had been since the beginning of the war in 2003.  In comes my boss, a 2-star Army General.  He saw my left arm in a bright blue sling.  “Satterfield, I can’t leave you alone for five minutes without something crazy happening.  What the F happened?”

In the end, I was never sent back to Germany.  I knew the Army 4-star Commander.  They weren’t letting me go.  And that’s just the way I liked it.

The real question is, “How the heck did I get here?”  The answer to that question is a tad complicated.

—————

Please read my books:

1. “55 Rules for a Good Life,” on Amazon (link here).
2. “Our Longest Year in Iraq,” on Amazon (link here).