Indoctrination Day down at USD. The weekend a
whirl of final preparations - finding birth certificates, packing a duffel bag
(actually, the Hobbit did that - and typically, over-packed him), final moments
at home for a while.
I rousted him
out of the rack at 0600, but he begged for another 45 minutes. We compromised on
30 - it was his last day at home for a
while.
We drove down mostly in
silence - I tried to share a few last bits of guidance, before he was wrapped in
the sometimes stern embrace of a Marine Corp Drill Instructor. The usual stuff:
"Do the right thing. If you find
that you've done the wrong thing, 'fess up quick."
"Five minutes early is on time. On
time is late."
"Attitude isn't
everything, but it's easily more than half way
there."
"You're ready for
this."
I told him that he was moments
away from meeting some of the best friends he'd ever had - he just didn't know
their names yet. Men and women with whom he'd forge bonds that lasted a
lifetime, hammered to high tensile strength on the anvil of shared
experience.
He was nervous - I told
him it wouldn't be that bad. I told him that the worst time I ever had in the
Navy was during SERE training, after I'd gotten my wings, but before flying the
Hornet, and the worst of that only lasted a long weekend. You get through bad
times a day, an hour, sometimes five minutes at a time. You tell yourself, "I
can do this for five more minutes," and when that time is up, you do it again.
And so on.
The unit XO is a former
shipmate of mine, and we chatted for a while in the way that people who have
been to war together tend to. We mostly reminisced about the old days on USS
LAST SHIP: The memory of the painful moments whose intensity we can't recall
were distant, vague - another lifetime. But all the happy ones sprang fully
formed and fresh to mind, almost unbidden. That pint of beer in Perth. The
perfect golf shot in Hawaii. The things men can't talk about, but know anyway.
I went back to the car to get my
camera, seeing that I wasn't the only one who'd be embarrassing his child. When
I got back, I found that SNO was well on his way to making his new
friends.
And
you know what? I was a little bit jealous. He's got so many great things ahead
of him, the doors are open in every direction. He hasn't crossed any thresholds
yet, the ones that cause all the other doors to slam shut in the anteroom.
Nothing is permanent.
He hasn't yet
felt his own living ship, moving under him, carving purposefully through the
waves, heading out to sea - heading into the
unknown.
He hasn't seen the cobalt blue
of the ocean south of the line on the way to Australia - a color found nowhere
else in nature, its character evocative of unimaginable depths, streaked with
mercilessly piercing rays of sunlight. A color you will never know unless you
sail those seas, profoundly moving, and despite my best efforts, entirely
indescribable.
He hasn't yet looked out
upon the endless ocean, and seen - nothing. Nothing at all but his fragile craft
in the midst of infinite enormity. Felt somehow cut off from the world of men,
their dirt, highways, high rise apartments and machines - and through that
strange alienation, felt the face of God, moving over the
waters.
He hasn't braced himself into a
forty knot breeze on the weather decks, arms flung wide, exulting from the very
point of the bow at the feeling of flying over the endless, wine-dark sea.
He hasn't come back from his first
solo flight, exultant in an achievement that seemed impossible only a few weeks
before.
He hasn't sat in marshall with
his mask dangling from his helmet as the sunset turns the world to burnished
bronze, and laughed out loud at the unbearable beauty of it. And then put all
that away, to fly the best approach he possibly could, because everything,
everything
trembles in the balance.
He hasn't felt
the deep and savage joy of flinging himself into a fighter merge at over a
thousand knots of closure against an adversary as motivated to gain advantage,
as he is himself. And then emerging
victorious.
He hasn't spent long months
in monastic denial, only to purge it all away in a single night ashore with a
dozen men he'll love more than any man ever loved his brother - men he'd fight
for, and die for if it came to it - knowing that they would do the same for him,
unquestioningly, without hesitation.
He
hasn't had to test himself against the limits of his personal endurance, and
been surprised to find that far beyond those limits were deeply hidden wells of
strength , unknown previously untapped reserves of
will.
All this lies before him, and
other things besides. Long, tedious hours on watch, on CAP. Hard work that seems
senseless, but demanding of perfection. The memorial service of his first close
friend, killed in the service of his country. The things he cannot yet afford to
buy. The things he never will. The long separations from those he loves the best
in this world.
All that lies in front
of him. Today, he took the oath. Today, he joined the
line.
And I'm very, very
proud.
Posted @
08:35 PM
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Posted in
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Sendit
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Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." - John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Ceasar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friederich Nietzsche
