my boy :: the man
i have longed for him to succeed, to excel, to become his own true person and, revel in that truth.
last weekend i caught a true glimpse of his transformation and it warmed the cuckolds of my heart like you wouldn’t believe.
i can finally breath and watch him bloom.
last thursday we got up early {uggh..6 am} to watch the airmen’s run. he ran by in flight formation……and i missed him. I was so excited and thought i had set the camera up correctly to get an action shot but was crying to much too see. everyone else saw him and was shouting…’there he is, there he is’… .and for the life of me i didn’t see him.
days later as i rifled thru the 20 or so pics (i just kept clicking the camera button as they all ran by) i saw i that i did get a shot…bit blurry yes, but i got a shot.
hours later we are sitting in bleachers {freezing our butts off} waiting for the new airmen to march in for the coin ceremony {i’ll post again about the significance of the airman coin, it’s a fascinating story}. In they march looking fine in their ‘blues’.
we were all cheering and shouting as his flight came in. omg! he’s a handsome dude even if i say it myself.
when we actually got permission to greet them and hug them my niece took the camera from me…said she needed to capture the moment.
None of us had seen him for 2 months and here he was….finally.
i saw him, hugged him but just couldn’t get over it, remembering who we sent off to basic, this boy we’ve struggled with through the years and seeing this young man, all grown up, standing tall and in charge, in front of me. i kept touching his face, looking up at him and crying all over again.
that sneaky niece of mine took quite a few pics of me blubbering on like this but i won’t subject you to all of them. it was a fairly long scene to say the least. Ha!
So we’re standing there talking and laughing and joking and my mother, her head wrapped in a scarf cause the wind was so bitingly cold on her ears, asks him a question and he answers with a ‘yes ma’am’.
I have never seen my mother do this before but the woman just swooned into his arms. it’s not that he wasn’t ever respectful when speaking to her but the way he spoke, with that “military bearing’ he presented, just melted my mother’s heart and……she swooned.
no other word for it.
of course the niece captured the play by play moments again, but this was the best shot by far.
we got to hang with him on base the rest of the day. he showed us around everywhere. Lackland AFB is a large expanse of area, the largest of all the training bases in the US. in one of the letters he wrote to us he said there were a few things that he was missing…
…being able to put his hands in his pockets
…a nice juicy steak
…and something sweet
{that boy man has a sweet tooth like you wouldn’t believe!!!}.
so we headed out to eat lunch and buy him a large vanilla milkshake that he savored till the absolute last drop. it was hard leaving him again but i knew we’d be back the next day for graduation.
toodles,
G
