Entered on 2001-08-27 at 8:13 a.m..
The next watch
WARNING: The sappiness content of this page is very high.
Last Friday I went home to attend my father�s retirement ceremony from the US Air Force. My father will officially retire as of the first of October after a little over 25 years of service. It was, as they say, �the end of an era.� As my grandmother, mom, brother and I all sat back and watched, my father�s good friend Chris Krisenger stood up and recounted the past 25 years of my dad�s life in the Military.
It was very interesting to hear the account through the ears of a 22 year-old, because for so much of it I was so young, I was oblivious to it all. While I knew that my father few C-130�s, and knew that he flew with the weather squadron into hurricanes, I didn�t know that he had flown into 24 of them. While I also remember that my father few at Pope Air Force Base in the early 80�s, at the age of 5, I didn�t know that we had invaded Grenada. (I still don�t know why.) Nor did I know that my father was one of the first planes over the point on the first wave of the invasion, where Col. Krisenger pointed out, �The pilots were trying to avoid lead poisoning.� Or even more recently, I didn�t know that just days after my father began his new job down at Norfolk that he was involved with the planning of and then our de-escalation of our invasion of Haiti.
He never brought any of it home; never mentioned it to Steve or me. The service was interesting because in my mind my father was never defined by his job, and I took for granted how much it must have meant to him. So now both my father and I at the same point in our lives: trying to decide where to go from here.
During his portion of the service, my father gave out gifts from the suitcase that he had used to go off to the Academy with So old, that the address didn't eve have a zipcode. To my grandmother he gave her the final charm for her bracelet, a retired Air Force Crest. To my brother one 2nd Lieutenant�s bar, for the second he has to finish school. To me a set of prop and wings that every student gets when they finish pilot training, because he felt I'd make much more of an impact on the field than he ever did. For my mother nothing, just a suitcase full of memories, and many more to come.
The service ended with a poem entitled �The Watch� read by my brother. The poem was a very elegant way of releasing my father from his duties, and passing them on to the others that are coming after him, the changing of the guard if you will.
I find this very fitting since today I found out that a good friend of mine from highschool, Hilary is pregnant with her first child. Yes the generations are changing places. I don�t really feel old, as much as I feel out of place and unprepared. If I had to choose someone to be first, though, Hil is the first person to come to mind. Although, she is so skinny, she might need to use a cane to balance herself :)