Coming Home

Some sailors in the squadron ran their households while on sea duty as if they were only gone for the weekend….writing a check for the light bill from 12,000 miles away. The rest of the family men had to put certain things out of our mind or it would greatly affect our performance and safety. We prepared our affairs, possessions, and loved ones before we left and then just let them go. Wives essentially became single mothers. We thought about them in a sort of helpless manner avoiding the details about what might be happening back home. This was a time when wives had a great need to express those details. Coming home after six or nine months was a shock to our system....an abrupt end to this emotional and perceptual freeze-frame. Our wives had different hairstyles, our babies turned toddlers strained to remember this man, someone else had repaired our cars, and the furniture was out of place. Yet we were very much the same person in the same place we had been before we left. We had counted the days, remembering what we were returning to, only to find that life had pressed on while our memories were stuck in a time capsule….and for a while….a little homesick even after we returned.

The worst things: To be in bed and sleep not, to want for someone who comes not, to try to please and please not. - Egyptian Proverb

One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night. - Margaret Mead, anthropologist (1901-1978)

Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes. - Jim Carrey

Oh Dark Thirty

Veterans Day should be more significant to me. The nation has turned troop recognition into a past time but for me it seems strangely impersonal. We were treated differently when I served. We rarely wore our uniforms in public. No one here today knew me then. No one knows my rating or in which branch I served. Only one person all day, a student, addressed me as a veteran even though I was wearing a large ribbon with the word on it. No friend or relative, not even my ex-wife who was my partner in service, dropped a note of recognition. And I can’t think of a decent word to say about my VA treatment. All that said, I don't mind. Tracking Soviet nuclear subs is not what I remember the most. What lives with me is how the experience changed my personal life. Some are good (living abroad), some are bad (discovering epilepsy), some are ugly (standing night watch on the suicide ward on Treasure Island), and some are most curious. Concerning the latter, when I get up early for work and leave the house before there is any morning light, a small part of my guts are back at RTC Orlando. I smell something that is not there...the peculiar odor of the metal paint pens used to stencil our clothing, ditty, and sea bags. My head is a bit heavy as if I pulled the middle watch....wandering alone in the cool, dark air without much direction, waiting for eight bells.

So I guess Veterans Day for some is all about serving our country. At various times today I felt that. But when the alarm goes off every morning at "oh dark thirty" it's way more personal.

"Tattoo, Tattoo, lights out in five minutes." - (uncredited voice)