Flying home today. w00t! I have to pass through airports, which aren't any fun (I've covered this already), but the passage back home is always more pleasant than the departure away.
Having spent six years in the Navy, I am familiar with the feelings of departure and arrival. The difference is, obviously, scale. When I fly on business, it is short and the time spent during these phases of travel brief; the pace frenetic. Leaving port is an entireley different ordeal. It takes several hours to prepare a ship for departure. During that time, while busy, my mind had the opportunity to experience departure very deeply. Securing my workspace for sea; securing my berthing area; locking away valuables; reporting to the fantail to join the crew on line 6 to prepare for departure. Stories are swapped and sailors laugh and skylark. Loosing the 6 inch line that is extending the shore to your ship. Making that disconnection always feels like a ragged cut has severed you from you, and the person that you are on shore is standing on the pier watching the sailor depart. The sailor at sea has taken over. I watch as the pier slips away behind us, thinking of Teresa, and home, and friends on shore; holding on to that shore-person as long as I can. As I become a sailor, I laugh and cut-up with the rest of the crew, getting my job done and watching those familiar Bay landmarks shrink and disappear in our wake. Inside, I mourn the loss of home, knowing that it won't be seen again for two weeks, 2 months, or 6 months...each timeframe different but each departure filling the same time-space, creating the same feelings. The shore-sickness is a sea unto itself, shifting and rolling underneath the surface of the sailor, masked by bravado and humor. It's always there, always part of the sailor. The return home is an acknowledgment of this sickness and it allows us to dive into that character again, daydreaming about the first day home, the sights and smells and sounds of shore, as different from sea-life as dark is from light. The anticipation lasts a day or two, or a week, or even a month. Each day closer brings you back to you, merging the lubber and the sailor until the two have met again, the line tossed on shore and made fast, the gangway lowered and liberty called. Teresa hated me leaving and hated me coming home. Leaving hurt too much and she had to buffer herself against that pain and loss. While the shore-person inside of me might have stayed, she received no benefit from his presence. And when I came home she had to adjust to my physical presence, which is always different than the mind-presence of a person you miss. Plus, I smelled like the ship. She hated the Navy, and with good reason. I hated it then, but hate it less as time separates the sailor from the shore-person that I am now. It is times like this, times spent in airport chairs eating airport food, that I catch glimpses of the sailor I was and experience again those feelings of loss and gain. It is a brief encounter, but one that makes me remember that gulf and appreciate the life that is being lived now.
I was going to write some stuff about this weekend, but I'll let this post stand on its own. More later.
