Remember the troop families

I was standing in a field watching my son’s soccer game one Saturday morning when I looked up and saw a military cargo jet, so big and gray it might as well have been a whale, cutting across the sky in a slow, deliberate arc. You could not ignore the shadow the jet was making on the grass or the grumbling it made in the clouds. It had just taken off from across the street, where the Bangor International Airport and Army National Guard base sit. It is the place where international flights bringing troops to and from points abroad arrive first in the United States. It is also the last place on U.S. soil that many troops see before heading overseas.

I hear the jets several times a day, most of them at night, as my house is just one mile away from the airport and base. First I hear the whistle of the jet engines. Then there is a grumble and a roar. By the time the airplane is flying above my house, I am thinking, almost reflexively, about all the times my own military husband, Dustin, has left and come home again on one of those same gray jets.

For residents of Bangor, the daily comings and goings of military jets filled with troops is a regular sight. Because this is not a large military community, however, what those jets mean to the families left at home may sometimes be lost.

On outbound flights, for example, when the troops arrive in Bangor and wait for the plane to refuel before beginning the next leg of the trip, they have long since said goodbye to their families. They might technically still be in the country, but for their families, they are already gone. So when I saw the jet flying above my son’s soccer game, I spent a lot of time thinking about the wives and children who are now going to soccer games alone, because their husbands and fathers are flying above my head, on their way to Iraq and not to return for possibly many soccer seasons, or maybe not at all.

I thought about wives who said goodbye to their husbands at a military hangar early that morning, then returned to an empty house and a towel still damp from their spouse’s shower. A house never seems more quiet than in that moment. There are so many reminders (shoes kicked off at the closet door, a book beside the bed, a wet toothbrush) that the person who is now several time zones away was just there with you. Then, of course, I thought about the servicemen and women who really aren’t excited to be flying over Bangor, no matter how beautiful this city is, because they already feel light-years away from their homes and families.

But that’s just when I see the jets headed east.

When I see a jet coming the other way, returning to Bangor before taking off again to take the troops home, I feel a spontaneous rush of excitement. I think about the wife who is counting down the hours until her husband lands at home in California, Colorado, Virginia or Florida. I picture her putting on 20 different outfits to find just the right one, then combing and re-combing her children’s hair and realizing how much they have grown or how many teeth they have lost since their dad saw them last. I think about the men and women on the airplane who can’t wait to leave Bangor because then they finally will be headed home.

One recent morning, I joined the Maine Troop Greeters at Bangor International Airport to welcome home a flight on its way to Colorado. One by one, the greeters and I shook hands with the returning men and women and said, “Welcome home.” Then to one of the young men, I said, “Well, I know, you aren’t really home yet, but you are close!”

“After 14 months away, I can’t wait to get back on that plane and go home to my family,” the man said. He went through the line of greeters, then quickly excused himself to a corner of the lobby to use his cell phone. I knew he was probably calling his wife. I remember receiving those phone calls from Dustin: “I’m here! I’m actually in the United States!” he would say. “I just have to get back on this plane for another leg, and then I’ll be there to see you!” My heart would flutter so hard I’d think it was going to jump right out of my chest.

That morning, I knew there was a wife in Colorado feeling the same thing. And I couldn’t have been happier for her. Because I know that later that night, when I was getting in bed to go to sleep, another jet would fly above my house in the other direction.

Maine author and columnist Sarah Smiley’s writing is syndicated weekly to publications across the country. She and her husband, Dustin, live with their three sons in Bangor. Sarah Smiley’s new book, “I’m Just Saying ...,” is now available. She may be reached at sarah@sarahsmiley.com.