Happiness Postponed
I have to postpone my R&R. It is killing me inside and I feel like I have let everyone down but it is what it is and there is not much I can do about it. I was going to meet some friends in Dubai before they left for France. Nope. I was going to meet friends in Greece for a few days at this huge house they have rented complete with a sailboat. Zip. I was going home to be with the two people I miss most in the world, my wife and my son. Nada. I was taking my son to Sea World. Nyet.
My wife hates me right now. I can't come home as scheduled. I have disappointed her again. Jewelry only goes so far. I wonder sometimes how far we have drifted apart the past three years. I worry about it. What has happened to the woman I left behind and who will the person be that welcomes me home when I wrap this up? How has everyone else changed.
I am shocked everytime I see a new picture of my son. He is getting so big, so fast. I cried the other night looking at a picture of him. I don't do that very often as my authoritarian, Methodist upbringing does not allow boys to cry.
I tell people coming over here that they are never going home again. You change, they change, everything changes. Things that were never important now are. Mail is critical, DVDs are priceless. Things that were important before now are not. Sports don't matter one whit when you are listening to incoming.
This place has a way of screwing with everything. I feel like a victim of the butterfly effect sometimes. Abu Mukamelfoqwa decides to plant an IED and wastes a truck load of copy toner. Now we have no toner to print with and have a major crisis because Major McWackanut can't get his special event flyers printed. Now he complains about how bad we suck and the next thing you know I am tasked to put together a "Tiger Team" to figure out how to solve this issue and make a presentation to a board of Officers in Baghdad.
I must now figure out how to A: Stop the rebellion B: Clean the roads of explosives C: Perform a Just In Time delivery service to a place with calendar 600 years old. D: Develop a fall back plan in case we ever run out of printer ink again.
Mind you to pull this off they now want me to risk my life flittting about the countryside in a helicopter with an airframe made from metal so thin that a BB can penetrate it. Body armor, schmody armor. It does not help much if a rocket has hit the tail rotor and you are going down in an uncontrollable spin at terminal velocity.
Unless they let me go out and kill the bad guys myself there ain't a lot I can do about the IEDs except whoop and holler and use coarse language. There are times I want to do that too. Killing something would be a pressure relief. Of course it does not have to be as drastic as you may think. Killing a 6 pack is more of what I have in mind.
Oh well. No one promised it was going to be fun.
My wife hates me right now. I can't come home as scheduled. I have disappointed her again. Jewelry only goes so far. I wonder sometimes how far we have drifted apart the past three years. I worry about it. What has happened to the woman I left behind and who will the person be that welcomes me home when I wrap this up? How has everyone else changed.
I am shocked everytime I see a new picture of my son. He is getting so big, so fast. I cried the other night looking at a picture of him. I don't do that very often as my authoritarian, Methodist upbringing does not allow boys to cry.
I tell people coming over here that they are never going home again. You change, they change, everything changes. Things that were never important now are. Mail is critical, DVDs are priceless. Things that were important before now are not. Sports don't matter one whit when you are listening to incoming.
This place has a way of screwing with everything. I feel like a victim of the butterfly effect sometimes. Abu Mukamelfoqwa decides to plant an IED and wastes a truck load of copy toner. Now we have no toner to print with and have a major crisis because Major McWackanut can't get his special event flyers printed. Now he complains about how bad we suck and the next thing you know I am tasked to put together a "Tiger Team" to figure out how to solve this issue and make a presentation to a board of Officers in Baghdad.
I must now figure out how to A: Stop the rebellion B: Clean the roads of explosives C: Perform a Just In Time delivery service to a place with calendar 600 years old. D: Develop a fall back plan in case we ever run out of printer ink again.
Mind you to pull this off they now want me to risk my life flittting about the countryside in a helicopter with an airframe made from metal so thin that a BB can penetrate it. Body armor, schmody armor. It does not help much if a rocket has hit the tail rotor and you are going down in an uncontrollable spin at terminal velocity.
Unless they let me go out and kill the bad guys myself there ain't a lot I can do about the IEDs except whoop and holler and use coarse language. There are times I want to do that too. Killing something would be a pressure relief. Of course it does not have to be as drastic as you may think. Killing a 6 pack is more of what I have in mind.
Oh well. No one promised it was going to be fun.
posted by flythemig29 at 8:04 PM
5 Comments:
I also recently started reading your blog. My 19 year old son is over there now. He married a week before he shipped out.Yes, my son will find things are different at home when he returns. But he will also find our love for him has only grown. Your family will make it...You haven't disapointed anyone. In your wifes heart I know she is very proud of you and all you are doing. Deep down she understands.
I wanted to let you know you and yours are in my prayers.
oh...In my opinion, it takes a real strong man to shed a tear.
God Bless and hurry home
I give a here, here to vikkidreams as I agree with him. I also would like to take this opportunity to thank him and his son for their selflessness. May God bless your son and keep him safe.
flythemig29, well Bro, your always in our prayers.
I am so sorry to hear about your cancelled leave and all of the problems that you have to deal with. It seems an impossible situation but I know that some good old American know-how and can-do will get the job done fine - although it will most definitely NOT be easy.
I thank you and I thank your family - please be sure to tell them that we thank THEM, too. They are not forgotten. Neither are you. As a mother I know how fast kids change and grow. So fast. God bless. You deserve a nice break, that is for sure.
I hope you were able to enjoy your Father's Day. God bless you, sir!
Get home in one piece, that's the main thing.
I only wish my home had changed when I was younger and returned from overseas - but it was the same damn place all the time, every time.
I only wish the kids I went to School with had changed, but they were almost exactly the same at the damn reunion twenty years later - only some were crazier and with more pronounced tilts.
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