Freedom Bird: A Scene from Coming Home

(Hello all, this is a scene from my memoir. For many, the challenges of returning begin at day one, moment one. What was your first day home from combat like? What was it like seeing your friend, lover or family member for that first time after them being away for so long?)

This plane ride, like any other, is cramped and slow. 20 hours leak by and the same group of music videos appears on projector screen. For the umpteenth time I hear the singer from 311 repeat, “When I am alone with you, it makes me feel like I am home again,” and I cannot help from dwelling on feelings for Lauren.

On the next song of the music video rotation, Allison Krauss sings, “There's a restless feeling knocking at my door today, there's a shadow hanging 'round my garden gate, I read between the lines of words you can't disguise, love has gone away and put these tears in my eyes,” and it is one of those moments where I feel life is providing a well-conceived soundtrack for me.

Everyone on this flight is tired. Tired to our marrow and fatigued in our minds. When the pilot announced five minutes ago that we would be landing in the U.S. soon, everyone cheered, but only because it felt appropriate. And even then our cheers were like golf claps.

The Navy Corpsman next to me – who I spoke to at beginning of the flight -- suddenly looks more vacant and lost than what his stories revealed to me. Seven months in the combat trauma center in Fallujah does that to a man; and returning home, for most of us, is an even scarier thing. I wonder how his wife will react to his lost stares. Will his child see him and cry? Will Lauren be able to see inside me? Will she understand what she sees? 

The plane descends in finality, and it is fitting that the first sound that greets my return to America is the “reverse thrust” of the large airplane. This is the second time I have came and gone, and now that I am back I have no clue what I am supposed to do. I wonder if this time my life will really change. Can I really step off this plane a new man? I will try.

Behind my desire for different things, I know, the war was bad when we stepped on this plane for home. Three years remain on my enlistment; it is very possible I will go back yet again and my life will be comatose because of this. Coming and going; fighting an eternal war; not knowing when it ends; never truly returning home. This is my life. How can I commit to anything when my life is defined by consistent, challenging changes?

Now that plane has landed and stopped, I step near the exit and the heat of Southern California feels the same as Al Qa’im. The San Bernardino Mountains prevent me from seeing too far eastward and I try to remember what home looks like. I wonder how Baltimore feels today.

I am shocked by the small turnout of well-wishers greeting our return. Not that I feel like we deserve a grand welcoming, but a year ago we came home off our planes like a Super Bowl winning team.

Iraq has changed.

I have changed.

Now that I am home, I am going to do things different. But, admittedly, I have no idea what that means. After all, I only learned a few weeks ago how fallible I really am and as the saying goes, “knowing is only half of the battle.”

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