This week has been so busy and it's only Tuesday. Oddly still, as much as we managed to get done, we still don't have anything tangible to show for it. Hopefully by the end of the week we'll have some noticeable progress.
We're one signature, or rather 3 signatures from one person away from being all set. Then it's just a matter of getting one last uniform cleaned and pressed and Derrick will be ready for his school. Three weeks and he'll be on his way. Crazy how the past few months have just flown by.
Through all the craze of the past few weeks we've had our share of quiet time too. In that time Derrick has been able to reconnect with many friends from his past. All the way back to his first unit. Echo Battery 2/11. Oh how I vividly remember those days...
We were a one car family and on the days I needed it Melanie and I would have to wake up at 4am to drive from the south end (good ole Wire Mountain I) of Pendleton through the soupy thick fog all the way up to Las Pulgas. Another thirty minutes (because the visibility was next to none) back home and 14-16 hours later I'd make the trip back up to get him just about the time I'd want to be tucking Melanie into bed. I guess we've always dealt with crazy long days. Even worse were the middle of the night drop offs for three months of CAX. Ah the fun we had as an Arty family. And then there were those home 18 months gone 6-7 rotations. If you take a minute to do the math, I bet you can figure the time of year Derrick returned from his deployments. Military families who understand deployments know what I mean. ;)
The hours were crazy, we seldom saw each other but man we appreciated everything. The unit cohesion was like something else. I've only seen it like that twice since.
Like Archie & Edith Bunker used to sing, "Those were the days."
Today we were driving home from another fruitful trip to IPAC (the big admin office) and talking about some of the guys Derrick's recently been in touch with and a thought came to me. Call it irony, random coincidence or me just analyzing things too much but here's what I realized.
In late 1999 Derrick was on his second deployment, what was supposed to be a 6 month UDP. He was supposed to come home a few days before Christmas but because the world was coming to an end, ya know Y2K, he was involuntarily extended a month. That was our first Christmas apart and we survived it alright. What I feared most was the new year and any possible hostile situations he might be called to assist in. We all survived Y2K and I think everyone pretty much forgot all about it until I brought it up now. It's always been a bigger deal for me, but because of the unknown and that I wasn't able to spend the turn of the millennium with Derrick.
Here we are a decade later. Holy crap a whole decade! We've got several deployments behind us now and fortunately there isn't one in our near future. Instead we're looking at a school. *AN AWESOME SCHOOL- but still a reason he'll be away again.* He'll be home for Christmas this year but will be leaving shortly after. Another New Years we'll be celebrating apart. Not our first, or even second but 4th.
The irony, coincidence or just me over thinking comes now: The turn of the century/millennium we couldn't be together because I was in the states and he was here in Okinawa and now, ten years later for the following decade we won't be together. This time because he will be in the states and I'll be in Okinawa.
Isn't it funny how life plays out? I bet this thought would have passed me by if Derrick wouldn't have reconnected with some of the E-btry guys from way back when.
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