The Hardest Thing

When My Mother Died

When my mother died,
She was in a little house with doors open
To the sounds of children burbling, and windchimes,
With sunshine colored walls and a bed with leaf-green sheets
That smelled of trade winds.
There were growing things,
And -- really -- a rainbow.

She had homemade tomato soup, and...a popsicle?
Sure, why not a popsicle.
There was a little autumn cat who snored amiably from the closet,
And, it seemed like, not too much pain until the last day.

There were daughters who gave hugs
When they handed her something she wanted.
Sisters together
Until it was done.

There were neighbors, who came right away.

If I could have all this, I think I'd feel like
It would not matter if dying was too slow
Or too fast.

I could live with it.
--Victoria Mundy Bhavsar


My last post was a celebration of and a memorial to my Mom's life. This post is a reflection on the process of her dying. My sister and I agreed that we were not particularly traumatized by Mom's actual passing. We had years to prepare ourselves for it mentally and emotionally. But that passing was not a singular event...it was a long series of events.

And more than most posts, this one is written entirely for me. It's long, boring, has a sad ending with not many points of cheeriness along the way. But somehow, I get the sense that I've got to tell this part of the story. Whether anybody reads it (especially all the way through)...well, that's less important once it's been told.

I came out to Hawaii this summer to help out my Mom. I didn't really explain the situation here at the time because she was such a private person that I knew she'd be royally pissed at me if I publicly announced her condition in this forum. But I'm kinda getting ahead of the story, I think. It really started, for me, on Friday, 13 January, 2006.

That winter had already been a winter of changes. I had sold my house and moved into a new house on Oahu's North Shore, just been back to the East Coast for a whirl-wind visit with family, high school and college friends, and submitted my e-resume asking to short tour from the D14 Command Center to go to any one of three ships (CO on KISKA or ASSATEAGUE (forgetting it was changing homeport to Guam), and for some wild-hair reason, OPS on HAMILTON). The changes weren't over.

Mom called that Friday morning. I think I had just gotten off the night shift at the Command Center that morning, so I must have napped for a little while before the phone rang. She had been to the doctor, and had confirmation that she had cancer. She told me the type of cancer, and I still, to this day, after an entire summer of living with it, can't remember the technical name for it. Some intimidating and evil sounding name that basically translated into a cancer of the fatty and connective tissues in her torso. A type of lipo-sarcoma. She was going in for surgery the following week. After the surgery, the doctors would reevaluate and determine the best course of action, chemo or radiation or both. She asked me not to tell anyone in the family before she got to talk to them, meaning her brother and sister. She had already told my sister, and was calling my brother next. We made arrangements for me to fly out to Virginia the week after her surgery, once she was back home from the hospital to help with her recovery.

Ok, very calm on the phone, able to ask the right questions (even if I choked up a little on some of them), able to think about future plans and what needed to be done next and most immediately. Once we hung up, though, I lost it for a few minutes. My boyfriend Rickey, had overheard enough of my end of the conversation to know that something momentous had happened, but I had to much repeat most of the details, probably more for myself than to actually tell him what was going on. He let me blather on for a few minutes, then cry and be upset for another minute or two, before he got tired of the histrionics, and told me to calm down, just because she had cancer didn't mean she was going to die right away, that she could beat it, that there was nothing I could do right then, that being upset about it wasn't going to help...all that pacifying bullshit that bounced right off the shock of the intrusion of the big C into our lives.

Mom had her surgery. The doctors removed a nine pound tumor from her belly. Let me say that again...a NINE POUND TUMOR!! Jeez, the woman wasn't any bigger than I am. Where the hell did she fit nine pounds of cancer in her gut? I mean, my sister and I each only weight seven pounds and some odd ounces at birth. The growth had swallowed one of her kidneys and had been wrapped so tightly around her spinal cord that the doctors damaged the nerves to her left leg a little bit trying to scrape it all off. Their initial evaluation was that she would have to drink a lot more water with only one kidney left, and she might walk with a limp in her left leg. A few weeks later the more detailed results came back from the CT scan. They hadn't gotten all of the cancerous cells out. Some of the little buggers were still taking refuge in the tissue around her spine.

The chemo wasn't too bad for her. Mom had the constitution of an iron horse, but it did weaken her, made her feel kinda dragged out, and she lost her hair. She must have done the chemo sometime while I was OPS on HAMILTON. I remember going to see her on leave, shopping for a wig with her, and then going to the salon to whack off all my hair (which had been almost down to my hips) to send to Locks of Love in solidarity. When I got back to the ship, more than one person did a double-take at my open stateroom door to see who was using OPS's computer before realizing it was me.

Radiation followed the chemo. She made lots of trips between Blacksburg, where she lived, and Charlottesville, where the doctors at University of Virginia were treating her. But the treatment seemed to work. The cancer wasn't growing anymore...just a few cells sitting there in stasis. She was getting frequent CT scans so the doctors could track any growth. In the meantime, she had learned that the cancer was most likely not hereditary. She was frantic at the thought that it was something she might pass down to us. She also tried to modify her diet to help her body slow the cancer's growth, eliminating meats, caffeine, sugars, alcohol and other highly processed foods. *Tried* being the key-word there...Mom had a powerful sweet tooth.

I'm a little fuzzy on the next sequence of events...She moved to Hawaii in December 2007, retiring from a job that wasn't what she wanted at Virginia Tech, becoming my dependent with plans to care-take my house while I was in Bahrain. Somewhere along in there, I think the cancer started growing again. She became part of a study at City of Hope Hospital, in Los Angeles for an experimental drug. Her participation in the study required occasional trips back to the mainland, which was ok because my sister and her husband lived close by and she could stay with them for those visits. She participated in the study for maybe eight or nine months before she was disqualified because the tumor started growing again, though slowly. That was early 2010.

Mom consulted her doctors, who gave the chemo-radiation combo less than a 20 percent chance of slowing the cancer's growth rate this time. Mom declined further treatment at that point. She didn't want to go through the nastiness of the treatment with such a poor chance of any positive effect. We all (her kids and siblings) supported her decision. There wasn't any other option for us.

Gradually, very gradually, her capabilities declined. When I left the islands late last summer, she was still able to travel by plane, though she was slowing down around the house. When I came back in December, it was getting harder and harder for her to walk. The nerve damage in her left leg was causing problems for her mobility. I remember watching her try to get up from her chair on Christmas morning. I had been nervous for her for a couple of days, thinking she was unsteady on her feet because she couldn't straighten her left leg all the way. She walked hunched over so that both feet would touch the floor. I had been surreptitiously looking at canes on line, thinking if I could find her a nice one, she'd be more likely to use it. But Christmas morning, it all kind of came to a head, and she almost fell. I panicked. Holy shit, it was *CHRISTMAS DAY*...where the HELL was I supposed to get a cane for her so that she could safely walk around her house, to the bathroom, the kitchen, her bedroom?!?

Thank goodness for awesome and handy neighbors. Ash, who lived next door, fashioned her a lovely cane from some scrap wood he had laying around his shop. It wasn't hard for me to ask for his help...but I know it was desperately hard for Mom to acknowledge that she needed the help.

'Long about that time, I started to get really nervous about Mom living by herself. The last few weeks I was in Hawaii, my sister and I talked constantly about what to do. I planned to come back for Spring Break, which would cover two weeks. We reached out to other family members, and with their help, were able to have someone stay with her once I left in January, with very short periods, like two or three days, of her being alone in the house.

And thank goodness, also, for the loving generosity of family. Mom's cousin Carol came and stayed with her for a month before I was able to return in March. Which ended up being perfect timing, because three days before my flight out, Mom fell and broke her leg. Carol was there to help her. What a blessing!

Mom stayed in Tripler Army Medical Center for nearly a month. And then went to a rehab facility for another three weeks. My sister came out soon after I did and was able to stay through until Mom came home. Jay, my brother, flew in from Nairobi to stay for three weeks before Vicki came back. And she stayed until I got here at the end of May. My Aunt Linda, Mom's older sister, came out for a couple of weeks at the end of June, then Vicki came back. We pretty much patchworked our way through the summer. It was stressful, making sure that we always had someone here to help Mom. It got much worse as the summer started to come to an end. I had to leave to go back to school, Vicki was running out of family leave, male relatives were no longer appropriate options for caretakers. Mom would *NOT* entertain the idea of a care facility. Her own parents died after spending 17 years in a nursing home, and I think that significantly influenced her view of care facilities.

When Mom returned home after rehab, she allowed her doctor to engage with a hospice organization. Her doctors had recommended hospice in December, but she was reluctant to call them yet. Hospice is usually prescribed when the doctors think a patient has six months or less to live. Gawd, talk about a harsh reality to have to face about your own mortality, "Yes, please, call in hospice...let's start counting the days." But my sister and I finally convinced her that hospice was more for us, to help us help her than any commentary on how long she had to live. Hospice, once engaged, will stay for as long as the person lives; they don't go away just because someone lives longer than six months. And thank goodness for Islands Hospice. Amazing people, amazing organization, amazing services. In so many ways.

They helped us with getting in-home care givers so that we, her family, could get out of the house. They provided medical supplies. They answered uncomfortable questions about what to expect. They supported us as family-members/care-givers by just being there, knowing they were available to call if we needed help with something. Heather and Olivia were Mom's primary Nurse and CNA, respectively, and they are so very good at what they do. Both so cheerful, bright, capable, caring and fun!

But regardless of how awesome Hospice was, the bold, ugly truth is that the summer sucked; the situation sucked; watching my mother die...sucked. My aunt told me during one of our many deep conversations while she was here that this was likely to be the hardest thing I have to do during my life. My back got up a little when she said that. What did she mean *this* was supposed to be the hardest thing? I've commanded warships, for gawd's sake! How could *this* be harder than that?!

Silly Girl. Of course Aunt Linda was right. Or I hope she's right. I'm not sure I could do anything much harder than taking care of my mother during the last three months of her life. It wasn't that any of the things I had to do were physically demanding, or mentally challenging. But I was emotionally exhausted by having to do the same tedious (and sometimes slightly gross) tasks over and over again, day after day, without knowing when I would not have to watch this person that I loved suffer anymore. Mom didn't like not being able to move around her house without a wheelchair. She didn't like that she couldn't make her own meals. She didn't like that a trip to the commissary turned into a major production. She didn't like that she had to wake us up in the middle of the night if she had to go to the bathroom. Linda (who was absolutely chock full of great words of wisdom) said, you can stand on your left ear if you know how long you have to do it for. That not knowing, that uncertainty of how long the situation would draw out, was one of the things that drained my energy. I'm a planner...how do you plan for something when you don't know how long it's going to last?

One of the lessons I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to learn from this summer is to live in the present. Don't look back too often, dwelling on the past, and don't anticipate the future too much and miss what's going on right now. It was really difficult this summer, though, because well, what do you do when the present is shitty? My default reaction is to change it...do something different. Take positive action to alter the situation so it's not so shitty. I couldn't do that this summer. No going someplace different, no arguing with cancer, no walking out on Mom. I had to recognize that the present is temporary. Good or bad, the present will not be around for long. So enjoy the hell out of it when it's good, and learn to recognize the bad for what it is...not permanent.

I learned plenny about myself this summer too. I don't know why it should be a surprise to me, after grinding my teeth through innumerable small boat details that I thought were taking too long, but I'm impatient. I don't like to not be doing something. It annoyed *the hell* out of me when Mom took five minutes in front of the commissary's tea selection to find something that "would taste good." Or when I asked her a question, a simple question...do you want butter on your toast? and she would take a few moments to answer. Or when it took her an *hour* in the bathroom to get ready for bed.

I also default to cold professionalism when faced with uncomfortable emotional situations. One night my sister went out for the evening. I hadn't helped Mom get ready for bed for a couple of weeks, and told her to just tell me what she needed me to do and I'd do it. She was used to Vicki's seamless assistance and got frustrated at having to tell me how to do everything. Then she started to apologize for having to tell me to redo stuff because it wasn't done correctly. Then I got frustrated at her apologizing, and lost any semblance of personality or bedside manner. Vicki and I talked about it the next day...she told me I was scary then. They didn't want to piss me off because I went all icy. Eek. Mom and I straightened it out. It was a simple lack of clarity on each other's expectations. I was following my training on how to take directions, which I thought I had made clear by my initial "just tell me what to do;" she made it too personal when she started apologizing. She expected me to know what to do.

Which brings up another aspect of this summer that my therapist helped me to recognize. Death doesn't come all at once. There are small deaths along the way before that final breath. And it's not just physical capabilities that are lost. Long before my Mom actually passed away, our ability to meaningfully converse with one another died. Her ability to make important decisions about her care went away before she did. The physical losses were almost easier to deal with--I was still there to make her cocoa for her each morning; but the relationship and control losses were more insidious and difficult to recognize for the tiny deaths they were.

And yes, I sought professional mental help this summer. I'm a little reluctant to broadcast that, but my EAP-referred counselor helped me make it through an extremely difficult time with more grace and less self-inflicted emotional damage than I would have been able to muster without her. I'm not embarrassed to admit that I needed guidance to deal with a situation I'd never faced before. EAP provided a tool...I used it.

I needed a lot of help this summer. And I got it--for which I will always be completely grateful; I don't think I can express how grateful. For Islands Hospice. For neighbors, for friends and boyfriends (exes included), for Mom's church. For the Coast Guard...in many ways. For family. For my sister. And for Mom.

In her life, Mom taught me the strength and confidence that comes from being independent, slightly stubborn and doing as much as I possibly can for myself. In her death, she taught me the absolute necessity of being able to recognize when I need help and the strength and confidence in being able to ask for it.

Karen Planson Mundy, 1943 - 2011

Karen at age 22, about a month
after she was married

My mother, Karen Planson Mundy, passed away last Friday night, 19 August, 2011, at about 6:30 pm local Hawaii time. She succumbed to cancer that she had been fighting for nearly six years.

I loved my mom, but I didn't always get along with her very well. She used to say we were too much alike, but I think it's more that we were alike in one significant way that colored all our other interactions. She and I both have the stubbornness of a recalcitrant mule. Look up hard-headed in the dictionary, and you'll see both our pictures there, side-by-side.

She raised my sister and me as a single mom from when I was about three on. We saw my Dad during summer vacations and holidays, and he helped out financially, but she managed the day-to-day tasks of caring for two young girls while holding down various jobs and then attending Virginia Tech as a graduate student. One of my early memories is being prepped for school at the gawd-awful early hour of 3:30 am and then wrapped in blankets to sleep in the car while she worked at a local dairy farmer with the morning milking. She got fresh, raw milk as a side perk.

Sister Linda, brother Steven, and Karen
growing up on Long Island, NY, 1947

We had a chicken coop at the first house we lived in after my parents split, in Buchanan, Virginia. With chickens that lived in it so we could have fresh eggs. We always had a clothes line outside of every house we lived in, and we used it. She made her own bread (which I *hated* as a kid because it was dense and weird, and wasn't store-bought like all the other kids' sandwiches). She mowed her own yard. I always liked taking a cold beer out to her on a hot summer day while she cut the grass, mostly because she'd let me take a sip from the top like her own father had let her.

Mom was fiercely independent, never wanted to ask for help. One Christmas, when I was probably about eight or nine, we really didn't have enough money for a Christmas tree. We always put our presents around the "Christmas Castle," a wonderous structure made of empty boxes covered in wrapping paper and stacked together to make a castle. But Mom's friends at church knew her situation, and all pitched in to get us a tree, dropped anonymously on our front door on Christmas Eve. What a great Christmas that was! Oh, and she always played "Santa," handing out the presents one at a time from under the tree. The rule was, the next present could not be opened until the last present handed out was appropriately oohed and aahed over.

Another Christmas, when I was older, in college, I think, she and my sister played a funny little joke on me. They got me a two-part gift, and made me open the less obvious part of it first. I opened this package that was yards and yards of a very nice green plaid material, opened on one side, and backed with a white cotton backing. I had *no idea* what it was supposed to be. They howled with laughter as I tried to guess what it was. It all made much more sense when I opened the second half of the gift...the down comforter. The first part of the gift was the duvet cover.

Karen Mundy, photo taken for
Waialua Community Church, 2009

While we didn't always agree on many things (religion, how to drive a car, ear piercings and tattoos, appropriate friends, gawd, and boyfriends!), I never doubted that she loved me. And that she was (almost embarrassingly, sometimes) proud of my career. I could always ask her for whatever I needed, and as long as she was able, she would always, always, *always* give me what she could.

My sister and I found a box of memorabilia yesterday. She kept EVERY SINGLE letter and card we had ever sent her. And some of the very worst artwork any kids could ever make. I thought she had cleaned out most of that stuff when she moved from Virginia to Hawaii almost four years ago...but nope, there it was.

Thanks, Mom, for all the years of your love, generosity, strength of will and body, and independent spirit. Rest in Peace, as I know you are now.

A Hui Hou

It is with a good dose of sadness and a full measure of aloha that I have to say "a hui hou" to my blog. For now.

In Hawaiian, "a hui hou" means "until we meet again." So, it's not good-bye. I do think I'll be blogging again within a few months. But for right now, I cannot give the blog the time and attention it needs for it to be what I want. You may have noticed that a lot of the posts have been pretty superficial lately. Or maybe you haven't noticed...but I have. I like to write insightful things, or at least tell good stories, and I haven't been doing either of those things very well with my last few posts.

So, in the meantime, thanks to all my readers for your words of support and encouragement, your wonderful comments and just plain ol' being out there. Check back in a couple months. Hopefully I'll be back to writing again soon.

I can't believe I'm admitting that I can't do it all. Or at least "all" as well as I want to be able to do it.

PBPL Conference Notes

OMG!! My 100th post! When I sign onto Blogger, it tells me how many posts there are, when the last one was and probably other stuff. I don't usually pay much attention to it, but 100 is kinda a milestone!

But that's not the subject of this post. The Patrol Boat Product Line Program Review is. It was in Norfolk, week before last. No one else much in the office was very thrilled about going, and I can't really say I blame them...nearly 48 hours total in travel time from Hawaii for a three day conference (at least I wasn't travelling from Guam). I don't know *how* long it took ASSATEAGUE's EPO to get to Virginia, but it probably was a really, really long time. Despite the travel time, I was really excited for the opportunity to go. I wanted to hear how the Product Line was doing, what is still left to be done, advocate on behalf of the D14 cutters and well, hang out with a bunch of engineers...'cause that's always fun! Call it as close to getting underway as I'm likely to get for a while.

I won't bore you with all 12 pages of my typed notes from the conference, but there are a few gems that I want to pass on. It's not in chronological order, or anything like that either. Kinda more organized by what piqued my interest (because this *is* the world according to Charlotte).

About midway through the first day, RADM Ronald Rabago, Deputy Commandant for Engineering and Logistics (CG-4) spoke to the group in his role as Chief Naval Engineer. He shared his three priorities as well as some guiding principles. And while I'm always leery of paraphrasing senior leadership for fear of mis-quoting or mis-representing what they say, I offer the following only as *MY INTERPRETATION* of what he said and *MY OPINION* of what he said that I thought was important (can I emphasize that any more?).

His three priorities are: People, Resources and Processes. The people part is pretty standard for CG-speak. Regarding resources: we need to focus on getting the money in the right places, which may require Operational Commanders to make tough choices. But better choices can be made with better information, specifically maintenance cost per operational hour. One of my favorite quotes from all three days was "Without maintained ships, there are no operations" (I wrote that one down, word-for-word). And process is about making sure who does what and how business is conducted is institutionalized and preferably codified. RADM Rabago mentioned that PUB-4 is coming out soon, which will be the capstone document for engineering and logistics, similar to PUB-1 for the CG as a whole.

I found his guiding principles to be extremely heartening. This is an abbreviated list:
-Pride in work: Engineers must take pride in what they do; if they don’t, something is not right and must be fixed.
-Stewardship: This does not just mean how to cut the budget. Stewardship is more a mentality and commitment to leaving the situation/condition/process better than you found it. Good stewardship means that a lot more can be done with limited resources.
-Share the Good News: Make sure the good news of hard work done well makes it up the Chain of Command. It creates value within the community. RADM Rabago wants to personally hear about successes and good, hard work done well.
-Core Values: The core values of honor, respect and devotion to duty apply to day-to-day work. They should be a touchstone for each engineer.
-Loyalty Matters: The field needs to give leadership the benefit of the doubt in some cases. Supervisors reward loyalty with trust. This does not to mean to be silent about concerns, but instead means to support a candid dialogue about issues.
-Community of Naval Engineers: Naval engineers are a special group of people, taking care of ships. They must create an active, participatory community. We don’t know how to do the difficult job of taking care of ships without the community support.
-Ownership: Own your world; accept it, feel responsible for it. Every EO and EPO must take ownership of their ships, and use the PL to leverage the ability to be the best in the fleet.

I especially like the ones about sharing the good news, ownership, stewardship and pride in work.

It seemed like the buzz-phrase from the conference was vocalized best by CAPT Ed Nagle, Surface Forces Logistics Command Industrial Operations Division (SFLC IOD) Chief. He said we are a "data-driven Coast Guard." He was talking about it specifically in regards to a new IT tool that IOD is bringing online to track project management, but it applies to so much of where the Product Line as a whole is going. One of the main drivers for a number of the new processes being implemented by the Product Line (besides better, faster and more efficient service, of course) is to nail down that elusive maintenance cost per operational hour figure...how much does it cost in maintenance to run the ships?

It'll be interesting to see what gets done with that data once it's had enough collection longevity to be useful. The figures will be different for different classes of ship, different missions, different operational hours. How will it be used to make strategic decisions (homeporting changes, maybe?), or operational decisions (when during the year a fisheries patrol gets done?) or even tactical decisions (that acceptable level of risk that ADM Papp has mentioned a few times?)? I read an article for one of my classes last semester that analyzed what sources of information state legislators trust regarding performance measures (Bordeaux, "Integrating Performance Information Into Legislative Budget Process," Public Performance & Management Review, Vol. 31, No. 4, June 2008, pp. 547–569). The author acknowledges that analysis is thin in this area, but states that legislators tend not to give very high value to data presented by the executive agency itself, relying more heavily on information from interest groups and constituents. While the article deals specifically with Georgia State Legislators, I wonder how much of the same theory applies to the federal system as well. Regardless, though, I still think the "data-driven Coast Guard" allows us as an organization to make better decisions on all three of those levels, strategic, operational and tactical.

There was a strong and consistent exhortation by all representatives of the Product Line for supported units (Sector EOs and cutter EPOs) to provide feedback by all the means offered by the processes. Using CG-22 (on SFLC Central's webpage) to document discrepancies noted in any engineering drawings, tech pubs or Maintenance Procedure Cards (MPCs); using Quality Discrepancy Reports (QDRs) and Supply Discrepancy Reports (SDRs) when parts are received by a unit that are the wrong part, the wrong number of parts, or the part doesn't work; using 3rd A-Team meetings to provide feedback to the Program Depot Maintenance Branch on how the availability process worked; doing the leg work of submitting Time Compliance Technical Order (TCTO) suggestions when they've got a good, workable idea that improves the function of the cutter (instead of making "Chief Alts" and not documenting them anywhere); volunteering as a "prime unit" to validate MPCs, TCTOs and tech pub changes; tracking man-hours expended for various maintenance efforts (including wash downs and clean-ups); checking the "Discrepancy Found, Yes/No" box on the MPC. Lots and lots of emphasis placed on the role that the front line Naval Engineers had on improving things for everyone, including the next generation of Naval Engineers.

A couple of relevant quotes:
-"The Product Line makes sure the cutter can finish the marathon (the service life of the cutter); the Sector EO and cutter EPO make sure the cutter can finish the sprint (their two or three year tour).
-"Submitting QDRs and SDRs and CG-22s may not immediately help you and your current world of work, but it improves the processes for the entire system."
-"Things are tough right now. It's like going down I-95 at full speed, and changing all four tires.”

There was a presentation on the Fast Response Cutters (FRCs). I had seen the mock-ups of the ship, but hadn't really paid too much close attention to the specs. OMG! What a great ship it looks like it's gonna be! I hope, maybe, maybe, maybe, if all the stars align and the gods of the sea and assignment process smile down on me, maybe I just might get one. But it's a long shot.

There was a ton more great and useful information presented throughout the three days, but rather than bore you with all those details, I'll just mention one more--Ready for Ops/Safe to Sail (RFO/S2S). I don't know if that's the acronym that is going to be used, or if it's even going to happen, but CG-751 is asking the Product Line to develop a RFO/S2S MPC that must be completed every time before a ship assumes a Bravo status. Basically, from a supply, maintenance and casualty perspective, is the ship safe to get underway? That's not to say, necessarily, that if a cutter doesn't have every last widget they're supposed to have onboard, they wouldn't be able to get underway, since the Sector EO would have maintenance release authority. But in theory, it includes the engineering and maintenance perspective in operational decision making and can be used as a metric to determine prevalence of operational commander waivers and lost operational days. The Product Line would be the entity determining what required what kind of waiver for the ship to get underway. I guess the Small Boat Product Line uses something similar currently, just curious as to how that would translate to the cutter fleet.

It goes back to thoughts I've had before about where a CO's responsibility ends. I see three main players in this situation: the engineers, the operators and the Operational Command. The engineers need time to fix stuff and make sure it's not going to break. The operators (CO mostly, I think) wants to have the resources available to get the tactical mission done (which includes both equipment and personnel in my mind). And the Operational Command needs to know that they can cover all their mission requirements. In the end, I think some formalization of the process could only help alleviate some of the natural tensions among the three.

Placeholder

Sadly, this post will just be a placeholder. I have a bunch of post ideas that are brewing in my brain, but haven't really taken the time to see any of  them through to fruition. Here's a sampling:
--Gremlins...I *really* need to work on a general history, taxonomic classification system and brief exploration of culture of gremlins.
--The Patrol Boat Product Line Program Review just concluded. I took eight pages of notes...surely I have *something* to say about some of the presentations and discussions.
--When did Lieutenants start looking so young? Jeez, I only made LCDR two months ago, and I'm sure not comfortable with people shortening it to "Commander" yet.
--Howling into the wind v. providing useful feedback. This is directly related to PBPL conference thoughts, but can be much more broadly applied.
--The Fast Response Cutter. Also related to the PBPL conference since there was a good review of capabilities and support structure. But I really, really want to serve on one. There's also the broader thought-process about the rest of my career--competing priorities and squishy timelines.
--The gentle tension between engineers and operators, maintenance and mission, OPCON and PBPL. Who should win and why.
--That exploration of CG missions that I mentioned a bit ago.

Got a long plane ride tomorrow and I've got to organize my notes from the conference, so hopefully that will inspire some ponderings for the blog.

Responsibility Deconstructed

Responsibility is something I've been thinking about for a while, mostly in the context of how it relates to a Commanding Officer's responsibility for her ship and crew, but also as it extends to family and other general circumstances. We use the word so very much but I've never taken the time before to really consider how it deconstructs. What is responsibility, really? What are the elements of responsibility? I don't think I can cover all the intricacies, but what I came up with is this...responsibility is some conglomeration of ownership, agency, accountability and acknowledgement.

Huh, that doesn't help so much.

So, accountability--I used to think that responsibility and accountability were fairly synonymous, at least as the terms are used in CG-speak because they're used in tandem so often. With further consideration, though, I think that accountability is the enforcement arm of responsibility. Responsibility without accountability is pretty wet-noodled, wishy-washy and ripe for abuse. I mean, even if it's personal accountability in the form of integrity, some sort of long arm of the law is necessary to ensure the responsible person does what they say they're going to do and what they're supposed to do.

Acknowledgement--in the form of public acknowledgement of the individual's position of responsibility. *That* person is responsible for *that* thing, and everybody involved with *that* thing knows it. Other, unrelated people can know too, but the people that have some of their own stake in the matter must know. Kinda like why they make us all learn our Chain of Command in boot camp and include it in the IDP. That way there's not a whole bunch of people trying to be responsible for the same thing (too many Chiefs, not enough Indians) or everyone saying "it's not *my* responsibility."

Ownership and Agency--are they really the same thing? I think they're at least pretty closely related. Ownership is the personal recognition that you are responsible for something, while agency is the ability to actually do something about it. I like the description of agency here on Seth Godin's Blog: "Responsibility comes with the capacity to act in the world. If you can decide, if you can act, you have agency."

An example might help clarify each of these areas. Say you're a squirrel. As a squirrel, it's your responsibility to collect acorns. *You* know you have to collect acorns. You have ownership of the act of acorn collection. You own the acorn stash. The acorns are yours.

All the other animals in the forest know you collect the acorns. You fight over the acorns with the crows and the deer and the skunks and the...heck, I don't know what all else, the pigs and the fungus? They all know you want the acorns too, and on some level, they acknowledge your right to (some of) the acorns. Ok, so maybe the squirrel analogy doesn't work for acknowledgement so well. But you get the idea.

If you don't fulfill your responsibility of collecting the acorns...well, you'll starve. That's a pretty straightforward impact of not doing what you're supposed to do = accountability.

And you are able to collect the acorns. No one has caged you up, restricted your movements so you are unable to search out and store the acorns in your desired cache. You didn't have a mishap jumping from tree to tree where you whooops, missed by just a little bit and fell to break your leg on a rock. There is a bounty of acorns...no droughts or floods destroyed the annual acorn crop. You have the agency to collect acorns. (But what if there was a drought or flood, would you still have agency?...we're in a federal budget crisis. Do we still have sufficient agency over our budget? How do these externalities fit into the concept of responsibility?)

So maybe it breaks down like this: you have know you're responsible for the acorn, the world has to know you're responsible for the acorn, you have to have the power to do something about the acorn, and there have to be consequences if you don't do something about the acorn. I know it's a ridiculous and simplistic example, but am I missing anything?

Summer Plans

I love having choices. Options are *great* in my world. They make planning (which is What I Do) so much easier. And thanks to my wonderful Coast Guard, or at least my fantastically supportive Program Manager and his boss, I had a couple of options this summer.

The entering argument was that I had to be in Hawaii to help out with some family stuff. Well, I guess there was an option there too. I could have chosen not to come out to support my family...but that would have led to a life-time of regret (regrets are a total waste of time) and was quickly discarded as a viable choice. I could have taken leave and just had the whole summer off. Couple of problems with that: 1) that's a whopping lot of leave, 2) I think I would have lost my mind with boredom from not having something constructive to do, and 3) what would I blog about along the way?

So my aforementioned Program Manager and his boss got in touch with a contact at District 14 and asked if they'd be interested in having a warm body, with some experience in the AOR, to work for them this summer. Long story short, I'm doing some time at D14 (dre/drm) as the interim D14 Patrol Boat Manager until the end of July when the PCS fellow gets in, and also working on some projects with the Command Center that haven't gotten a huge amount of attention due to chronic personnel short-falls.

How COOL is THAT!?!

PS - I almost made my post/week this week. I know it's kinda a short one, and it's a day late...but I'm trying.