A call in the desert.

Just last night I returned home from a 10 day field exercise designed to train people about to deploy to the middle east how to operate in a desert environment. The camp we stayed at was small, under-developed, and hotter than the center of the sun. . .Also there was no cell phone service.

The other camp on this base, by comparison, had a swimming pool, movie theater, and possibly the best galley that I will ever see in my military career. . .Plus my cell worked over there.

This meant that almost every night after training was done, we would pile into trucks and drive over to mainside for food and the ability to call loved ones. Other times a select few would drive over to the park and drink beer (alcohol is prohibited in the camp we were staying at). One of these nights I volunteered to be the designated driver for the beer crew so I could escape most of my more annoying teammates and make a phone call to my wife at the same time. While we were over there I got a call from my mom:

Me: What's up?

Mom: Hi, I just called because I wanted to let you know that Dad's in the hospital in Portland.

Me: What?! Is he okay?

Mom: He's doing fine, we're just waiting on test results right now.

After she assured me that they had no idea what was wrong but he was not going to die in the middle of the night I got

Well I should probably also call your sister and let her know too.

You think?


And to top it all off, she said at the start of the conversation how much she hates when my grandma doesn't call when conditions change with my grandpa (he was living in a nursing home, now he's not, long story and you may be able to tell that my family doesn't do well with information transfer). I called her the next day to make sure that Dad was alright and also (I kicked myself for not doing it the first night) that she was doing alright. As the week progressed I had to call whenever I had the chance to find out what was going on "So they said it wasn't a stroke?" "So they said it wasn't a heart attack" turns out it was a bone infection that he got somehow during a tonsilectomy last month.

However, I spent almost every night after that outside, looking at the moon, and thinking "what if." My dad is a healthy guy, He has never smoked or used drugs, and the first time I saw him drink a beer was after I turned 21. And for him to be in the hospital from a mystery-ailment was quite surprising. So I would stand outside of our K-span (metal building shaped like a miniature airplane hanger) and smoke my cigarette and look at the moon. And think. My dad has been the one unchanging element throughout my life. My sister has gone to college and moved away, and my mom has gone through cycles of support and borderline-disdain towards me. But dad was always the silent, supportive being in the house that you didn't even have to share your problems with him to know that he understood them. And tomorrow on fathers day I get to call him on the phone in his hospital room.

Maybe I'll tell him how much I want to be like him someday. But if I don't, he'll understand anyway.