Thursday, January 22, 2004

The Military Family

Military members get tossed all over the world as they serve their country, and their families get moved around with them. People come in and out of your life very quickly, and yet amazing friendships can form in just a year. The other neat thing about the military is that it's very hard to lose touch with anybody. The networks and connections that you form are intricate and plentiful. And strange coincidences are prevalent.

That's why I wasn't surprised that I heard from a high school buddy via email this week - just days after I thought about him and wondered what he was up to. Turns out he lives just a few minutes away from my mother in Arizona. I wish I had known that in time for our Turkey Day trip.

The really neat thing about this friendship is that we were at the same place for six years straight - an unheard of thing in the military. Both his family and my family were stationed at the same base at the same time and had the good luck to stay there for two tours (a tour being three years). Our first aquaintance was during the rocky times of junior high. But we managed to get over that through our church youth groups. We've seen Fatima, Rome, and Lourdes together. We've worked on Catholic youth retreat teams together. And we graduated from high school together. There's a great shot of me, him, and another six-year-long youth group friend locked in a group hug on our high school graduation video. It's at the end of the ceremony, as the video fades from color to grayscale and goes to slowmo to show a montage of everyone hugging and celebrating. That moment of the video means more to me than the five minutes of my Valedictory address (most of which I roll my eyes at because I sound so naive and could think of a million better things to say now) because it represents so many years of my life in Germany, so many experiences, so many friendships, the depth of my faith at that point in my life...so many amazing things.

Now I'm getting all teary-eyed. Excuse me while I smile at a few memories and wallow in fond nostalgia.

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