Whew! You're Home!

While the rest of the world Alabama was preparing for a certain football game, I was helping a neighbor welcome her husband home from Afghanistan.  The Air Force members come back from deployment with little fanfare, which is sad.  They usually arrive at their home airport alone or with one or two other Airmen.  No hero's welcome or TV news reporters.  Just their eager families waiting to catch that first glimpse.

We see him!!

She had called me the day before to ask if I would come to the airport to take pictures of the homecoming.  She also swore me to secrecy because they wanted their privacy as a family to reconnect.  Of course, I agreed, grabbed my camera and headed to the airport.  What awaited me was a bunch of emotions that resulted in me shaking and crying so bad that a couple of pictures were blurry.  Every time we meet someone coming home from a long deployment, it takes me back to each and every deployment that I have had to face in my 14 years of being 'the one left behind'.

Chip's first time of being away from his family was a short (ha!) tour to Osan Air Base, South Korea.  We had just had our first child and *poof* he was gone.  Hunter was almost 4 months old when he left.  When Chip returned home a year later, he found that the chubby little baby who didn't sleep much had turned into a toddling powerhouse who went on and on and on like the Energizer Bunny.  He also came home to a wife who had realized in his absence that she could survive just fine on her own.

Little did we know at the time that that was the first of many deployments.  Eight months after he returned, September 11, 2001 changed our lives forever.  He deployed.  He was called in about 9 in the morning and was on a plane by 5 that evening.  I was three months into a difficult pregnancy (Sarah), Hunter had just turned two.  By the time 2009 rolled around, we calculated that Chip had been deployed 3-6 months out of every year since 2003.  Andrew, our youngest, was born in 2005.  He was the result of a homecoming from Afghanistan ;)

As I was standing at the airport in Montgomery, Alabama with my friend, I was thinking about all of those times.  How many times had I stood at an airport waiting for my airman to get off of a plane?  What emotions ran through me during those times?  Relief was number one.  Relief that he had made it home safely.  Relief that I no longer had to do everything on my own.  Relief that I had relief!  Fear was second.  Would I still know this person who had been gone so long?  Would he still know me?  The kids?  Could we live together again??

After so many deployments, it doesn't bother me so much to do everything on my own when he is gone.  I've learned a lot about myself (and others).  You learn to pull up those big girl panties and rock on!  You get pissed, without really meaning to, when you hear someone say 'my husband had to take a business trip to Atlanta and he is going to be gone THREE WHOLE DAYS!!'.  You bite your tongue, suck it up and muddle through no matter what.  You learn that you can take care of three kids under the age of 6 while sick, tired and worried for months on end.  You learn who your friends are and who you can rely on...and most of the time, the only person that you could rely on was yourself.  You can change a tire, fix a leaky toilet, soothe a sick baby and deal with a HUGEmongous rattlesnake...sometimes all at the same time!

He's Home!

As I watched this precious family reunite, I thought about all of that.  Watching the kids jump on top of their dad and all of the smiling faces makes all of the crappy days that brought you to this point just fade. It was hard, but it is over...for now...

Welcome Home Brad!!