A Sailor And A Soldier

It is official I am now the mom of both a sailor and a soldier.

Our Sailor, Rene` left home as a very young lady, she wouldn`t even be legally an adult for twenty more days. She was very organized as she still is. I guess you would want to be that type if you were going to live on a ship and have a space three feet by six feet in which you have to keep all of your personal belongings, uniforms, and then you have to sleep there too. She traveled around the world while deployed several times and while she was doing that we never knew where she was, how long she would be where ever it was that she was. or when she would be back on American soil. All the information we got was after the fact. We sent her care packages which we had to take extra care in packing because they would be dropped from a plane into the ocean and then retrieved and brought aboard the ship. She worked as an information tech (IT) and was very good at it.

Our sailor is now safely tucked away on the snow covered, soon to be flooded prairies of North Dakota where she is working on her maters degree in occupational therapy. If you ask her, she would tell you that being in the Navy was hard work, a eye opening, character building, life changing experience that she wouldn`t trade for anything. She had to make some hard choices when it came time to continue in the Navy or go to school.

Our Soldier, Jared did things quite the opposite. He worked, went to school, and worked some more and now at twenty-three he has gone off to the Army. Everything was last minute as he is not organized, neat, ant pulled together. Maybe he will learn some of that stuff along the way. We know where he is and will be able to communicate on a regular basis. He has living quarters that are actually room sized. He will be driving trucks loaded with who knows what. When he gets deployed we will know in advance where it is he is going and for about how long.

Being a military mom requires patience, more then I have some days, prayers, lots of them, hope for the future of the world, and an understanding that the people who commit to serving our country are strong, brave, caring, hard working, honest, intelligent,respectful, responsible people.

A Sailor and a Soldier are still my babies and my hero's, too!!