Leaving America

9/1/2009
Flight to Korea. I consider this my first official day as an "Empty Nester". Until now there have been details for our move and travel to visit family. Sitting to my right on the flight to Korea is another Air Force Spouse on her way to join her husband as Osan AFB too. She too is leaving behind grown children and even grand babies. We both keep reassuring each other that "this will be great", as I'm sure it will be. Bringing into focus how far she and I have come is the young Army wife on our left. She is traveling on her won with a rambunctious five year old and a tired one year old. It seems just like yesterday that I was making that same flight from Germany with our young children. Funny how it always seems that dad has to go ahead and we end up making the trip alone with the kids. I remember flying back from Greece with Garrick when he was a little over two years old. He kept going back to the nice Greek lady on the flight who gave him all kinds of sweet treats. I was too young to know that I could tell her no. Just about the time we were to land in New York to make our connection to Colorado, the candy had its way. Garrick was sick all over both of us. You can imagine how happy anyone was to be sitting next to us right then. I managed to take off the sweater that I had on. Thank goodness for the t-shirt underneath. Being the great mother that I was. I had not packed any extra shirts for baby Garrick. I had lots of pants, but no shirts. So he and I strolled into the US Customs area with Garrick shirtless like a mini body builder. I'll never forget the looks that I got. As soon as I was able to get our suitcase, he was decent again and we were on our way to the next flight.