He's back.
He's home.
He's safe.
He's alive.

I hadn't heard from my friend Dave for nearly two years. There were rumblings and grumblings in Iraq, and he'd told me one day while we were chatting: "Don't be too surprised if you don't hear from me for a while." And then, nothing.


Dave and I go way back. When I was sixteen and in high school, I took the fencing class offered up at UAF, the local college. The beginning fencing class had been opened to high schoolers, because it made more sense to teach it all together rather than teaching the same thing four times over to a smaller class. I was one of the promising students. Dave was the class's TA, a college student from the intermediate class helping wrangle the unruly high school students.

It made sense that the TA would spar with the beginner who was a little over the caliber of the bulk of the rest of the class. ( It made sense that two people at the outside edge of the geek spectrum would bond with each other. And we did. And life ... progressed. And we lost contact.  )

I wasn't sure whether I should dance and scream for joy or kneel on the grass and sob. He was a character from a closed chapter in my life. ( I could never go back. But he was alive. )