Family Weekend - part 1

Mike's family weekend was 10-3 through 10-5. We arrived early thinking he had a 2 hour leave on 10-2 but that didn't turn out to be the case. We did get to circle his barracks for 1.5 hours, til the DS's noticed me and asked if I needed help. I told them what I was there for, and reluctantly, who I was there for...JUST in case he was waiting somewhere for me. He wasn't. According to him, when he told me the next day, he was in the large group of what Anastasia called "dirt bags" (they were Soldiers sitting on the ground - to her they looked like bags of dirt. Hey, she's 7!) And he watched us drive by all 903 times.

We left and went through a drive through, brought food back to the hotel in Elizabethtown and proceeded to pass out without eating any of it. At this point I'd been up for 37 hours, 16 of it spent driving on the highway. I was totally wiped out.

We were all up early the next morning and went to breakfast and then headed back to the base. His ceremony was due to begin at 13:00 but I wasn't taking any chances. The night before the DS said the doors would open by 12:30...so we were there by 11:45. They had some tanks and a Humvee out for people to get their picture taken with. The girls had a blast on/in them.

We wandered around the front of the Olive Theater for a while, met up with one of the other Mom's I'd talked to on GAP and eventually got to go inside and get a seat. There was a group of bald men in camo sitting up near the front and I was afraid if I took one look at them I'd start crying so I sent my mom and the girls up to take a picture of them, hoping we could figure out which was Mike by looking at the pic on my camera. No chance. I can see it enlarged now and I still don't know which was him.

They are all bald, wearing camouflage and can't make eye contact with you. It's a semi-hopeless endeavor. Then a woman announced that if your Soldier was graduating, he would not be seated in the theater yet. Ok. um. Mike wasn't technically graduating so...damn. He was in that group of bald men. This wasn't going to be easy.

The ceremony started and it was great. Lots of emotion and tears going on in the dimmed theater lights. I think most people were just so on the edge of exploding from the happiness of being so close to their Soldier. I know I was.

Ceremony ended and I passed the mom I saw earlier as she was going after her Mike who had gone back in the theater and I was going towards the barracks to see if I could find Mike.

Did I ever mention how many Mike's there were in this Platoon? Lots!

As we were standing there waiting for either him to find us or for everyone else to leave and he be the only one left...he ran past us. And all of a sudden I couldn't understand how I couldn't have found him before. He looks like...Mike. He's been bald before. He's even had a mohawk or 5. So I've seen him bald. For some reason I couldn't find him but now...here he was. He got back in with his Troop and we waited til they did what they had to do and he happened to see us waiting and nodded.

I have never been so happy as when I got to walk over and hug him and I tried really hard to not cry. Really. I did. I just started leaking a bit but I got it under control. He introduced me to others, who had leaking moms and dads, so it was obviously not embarrassing him. We met the Soldier we were adopting for the weekend and then I signed them both out and we were on our way.

Gotta go get some food on the stove...part 2 to follow momentarily...