As an adult many years older looking at this photo of David, I think what a child he was. Just out of high school, joining the Air Force, leaving home for the first time to go to basic training for a country that was at war. And while he was gone, our family moved from South Carolina to the rock house in Alabama, so when he finished basic training, and before he was shipped overseas, he came to a place he’d never lived and never would live. Maybe he thought of it all as one great adventure, but I don’t know how anyone wouldn’t be crazy-scared in the face of all that.
Here’s one of my memories from that time. When he completed basic training, my parents went to get him, I’m guessing at the airport that was a little over an hour away. When he came back, his head was shaved and he was in uniform. It was not the uniform I was used to seeing, and he seemed so different, so grown up, to his eleven-year-old sister. It was night, and there was a light drizzle, so he was wearing a regulation raincoat over his uniform. I remember the raincoat as being grayish and semi-transparent, but I may have that wrong.
After the initial hellos, he and my father went back outside to get David’s things from the trunk. I wanted to tag along. As we stood at the back of the car, he opened his raincoat and held it in such a way that I was protected from the rain. I felt safe and cherished, and I decided maybe having a grownup brother wasn’t such a bad thing.