I forgot to shut the curtains last night in my bedroom, so now I am blinded by the sun that is shining right in my face. The sun however is not what woke me up I have been up just lying in my bed staring out my window for the past two hours. I have been distracted lately about this particular day and hoping that it would never come.
I am gazing out my window with a blank expression and a clear mind when I am suddenly interrupted by the sound of the shower turning on from the bathroom. I realize then that it is 7:15 in the morning and that I should go down stairs and begin what is going to be one of the worst days of my life. I walk down stairs in my favorite pink robe and house shoes hoping that going through my normal route might make me feel better. The first thing I do is go outside to retrieve the newspaper from the street. He likes to read the paper as he waits for breakfast. As I walk down to get the paper I glance around my street at all if the houses that have one or more stars in their window. Many of them just have the blue star which means their loved one is in the country on a base. But there are a few with silver stars which is when their loved one is overseas. The only star that symbolizes that he will not be coming home is gold and there is one at the end of the street.
I then stop in the middle of my drive way staring at my front window at a blue star that he must have taped up last night. The feeling hits me that my husband of two years is going to leave to train at Dale Mabry Field. The field is only a short drive away but it is the thought that at any moment that blue star can become silver one and even the unthinkable gold star.
I start mixing together pancake mix hoping that cooking will keep my mind off what is to come. Beside pancakes I cook everything he loves eggs and bacon. Soon the house is filled with aroma of all the wonderful breakfast items. As I am cooking my mind wonders back to the blue star in the window that I don’t even realize that he has come down from the bedroom. He his dressed in khaki shirt with a tie and khaki pants and in his hand was his brimmed hat. I stare at him as he walks into the kitchen trying to be string and hold back my tears. There is a big part of me that knows that he will be fine and that I don’t need to worry. He is a smart, strong, and brave man and always has been.
I quickly turn back to my cooking before he notices my eyes watering; I flip over the pancake to find that I was so distracted that it is now a jet black and no good to eat. I am not longer crying but laughing so hard that my abs start to hurt. This finely breaks the silence of the morning as I dump the pancake into the trash. I make him a plate of food that I did not burn and set it on the table. I ask how he is and tell him that I go the newspaper so he could read it.
“I don’t want to read the paper I already know what it is going to say. Nothing but bad news about the war” he says.
I just say “Okay, so what do you want to talk about?”
He starts rambling on about the war, he doesn’t want to read about it but he has no problem talking about everything going. I just pretend that I am listening when in fact I know almost everything about the war from him or reading the paper and listening to the radio.
I can’t believe that we are in another world war. I have heard about the first one but I don’t remember anything thing about it because I was very young at the time. I just know that this war has a lot more deaths that have happened compared to WWI.
For about an hour he is either talking about war or we are sitting in silence at the table. I clean the table while he puts the few belongings he is allowed to bring on base in the car. Since Dale Mabry Fields is so close I can drive him to the base.
As we drive up to the gate of Dale Mabry Fields and I am amazed at all the men that are training. There are planes flying around and men climbing obstacles. I do notice that there is segregation between the black soldiers and the white but that doesn’t surprise me at all. When we get out of the car a man walks up to us and.
He asks us “Do you want a tour before you leave?”
I reply “Yeah that would be very nice,” this means I can spend more time with my husband and I will see what he will be doing.
He begins by showing us the many barracks that the men eat and sleep in. He also told us the history of the base and how it became a base. I enjoyed walking around the base and looking at all the different things that are on the base. We were told that most the training on the base is flight and mechanical training. This makes feel a little better that he wouldn’t be training to fight on the ground. The one thing that fascinated me the most about the base is that there are French and Chinese people training at the base. They are called free France and free China; they fight against their own country.
Just like that the tour was over and they were telling me that it was time to leave. I spend the next few minutes wrap in his arms crying my eyes out. We eventually have to spate and I start walking off the base to my car. I can barely see everything is blurry and I can hardly breathe because of all the crying. As I drive away I look back in the mirror and see the love of my life walk toward the barracks where he will be sleeping for a while. All I have now to go back to is an empty house and the hope that the blue star in my window will not become silver or gold.
Good start -- do a bit more research to include historically specific details....
