‘Welcome Home’–For Years His Family Waited for His Return. Now, He Waits for His Daughter.
APRIL 24, 2024| IVAN F. INGRAHAM
My wife and I sit in a large auditorium in El Paso, Texas, waiting in anticipation, along with other families, for our daughter’s return from deployment. Upbeat music fills the air and the feeling in the assembled crowd is of a group of fans awaiting a rock band to take the stage. This isn’t far off. The main characters are our own family members—the balloons, signs, and flowers overt displays of affection marking the safe return of mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, daughters and sons.
I watch young children playing and dancing to the music. Each is more interested in the other kids than in sitting patiently next to their nervous parents. Children have an innate ability to find fun in anything, even if it’s just running around together, or making up some game whose rules don’t matter. I glance at young mothers holding very small babies, likely for the first introduction to their fathers since deploying nine months earlier.
Through a side door, a crowd of soldiers is seen forming up, faceless in an amoebic mob dressed in MultiCam utilities, yet comprised of individuals, each with their own experiences and desires. The air comes alive with anxious expectation, but, like most things in the military, this prolongs the waiting for their arrival. Hurry up and wait goes both ways.
https://thewarhorse.org/veteran-welcomes-home-deployed-daughter-who-waited-for-him/
