Which brings me back to the first time he came back from being out to sea for six months.
We had gotten married a week before he left for his six month deployment (no, I was not pregnant), and so, as you can imagine, I was very excited for him to come back!
Back then, there were only men on the ship, so as the carrier was pulling into port, it was playing "They Boys Are Back In Town" by Thin Lizzy.
The sailors were up on the flight deck manning the rails.
I'm on the pier, trying to scan every single man up on that flight deck, hoping I can see him. Yea, unless you have a good set of binoculars, it's like looking for a needle in a haystack.
My in-laws were there with me, along with his aunts and uncles too, waiting with anticpation to greet him again. I just wanted my husband home. I wanted to hug him, to kiss him, to take him back to our apartment I had gotten for us while he was deployed.
Finally, the carrier docks.
Then it takes a good 1/2 hour or so for them to get the stairs ready so the men can come off the ship.
Now let me tell you something about how they let them off the ship. The men who's wives had babies while they were deployed get to get off first, along with the senior staff of the ship. Back then, my husband was pretty far down low on the pay grade scale, considering he had just joined, so it was going to be a while.
While searching for him, I saw a friend of ours who had already gotten off (he was one of the new daddies) and asked him, "Where is he?" And he said he had seen him back a little ways.
So I go walking back to where my in-laws where and then all of the sudden, my husband comes up from behind me and grabs me. I screamed so loud! He swung me around and then we were hugging and kissing and crying because we were so happy to see each other!
My husband's dad was able to get us in mid-hug........Awwwww.........
That was over 13 years ago.
Sometime next year we'll do this long deployment again for the sixth time.
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