Anytime the caller ID on the home phone reads
”
U.S. Hits,
”
I know the call is coming from my son, Specialist E4 Ryan T.
King in Iraq. I have yet to hear from Ryan at a normal time of day,
except for Thanksgiving Day when the
”
Big Cell Phone
”
rang around noon and, I WASN’T HOME!
”
Go figure,
”
I grumbled.
”
The one time he calls where I don’t have to jump out of bed into
a consciousness state and I missed the call.
”
Anytime the caller ID on the home phone reads “U.S. Hits,” I know the call is coming from my son, Specialist E4 Ryan T. King in Iraq. I have yet to hear from Ryan at a normal time of day, except for Thanksgiving Day when the “Big Cell Phone” rang around noon and, I WASN’T HOME!
“Go figure,” I grumbled. “The one time he calls where I don’t have to jump out of bed into a consciousness state and I missed the call.”
Though the telephone number from which my son calls me from is displayed on the caller ID, you cannot make a return call. It won’t go through – I tried.
It was good to hear his voice on the answering machine. But the important thing was that he called. The bonus was Ryan said he would call me in 11-12 hours.
All day long I was distracted, thinking about the days that lay ahead. As the day he comes home draws nearer, the anxiety increases for us all. The military says he will arrive home anywhere from December 9-17. It makes it rather hard to plan a trip to Fort Carson, Colo. to welcome my son home, so like him, I’m on stand-by, ready-to-go.
The reality is military families never know the exact departure date of their loved ones until they are practically in the air. What others on the outside don’t realize is this not knowing is for the safety of the troops.
For emotional reasons, I feel connected having my watch set to Iraq’s time zone, which happens to be 11 hours ahead of us here on the West Coast, which meant Ryan would call around 11 a.m. his time, midnight my time.
Often I look at the time and imagine what Ryan might be doing – I know he has done his share of guard duty, working dangerous checkpoints while keeping his trips to Baghdad at a minimum.
I’m probably more familiar with guns than the average mom in today’s America, but that’s another story. With that in mind, believe me, there is no ambiguity when Ryan called around 10:30 a.m. Iraq time that I heard the sound of live gunfire in the background!
Every gun has a distinct sound, whether it comes from a single action handgun or a Browning nine-millimeter automatic and in the background there were some serious guns – big guns.
So how does a conversation between a mother and son go with the rapid sound of M 50 caliber machine guns going off in the background? Like this:
“Ah, Ryan?” I say. “That’s gunfire I hear and from the sound of it, I would say it’s roughly five hundred yards away.”
“Yeah,” he says, quietly chuckling. “It’s all right – don’t worry about it.”
Oddly enough, I wasn’t worried, but I had to ask, “You guys are doing the shooting, right?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Where are you Ryan?”
“We’re still in the same location.” This means Tikrit.
Meanwhile another round goes off. The heavy sound of the machine gun resonates over the telephone wires telling us that we were “Live from Iraq!” Ryan’s composure reflected his training, though he admitted sometimes his heart would jump up into his throat, he was “all right.”
“We had a rocket go over our heads,” he laughed again and I laughed with him.
That’s when I noticed he had the same trait as me – to laugh when we are nervous.
Our conversation was very disconcerting for Jim because he wasn’t used to having conversations with any kind of distractions in the background, let alone gunfire.
“I don’t know how you can have a conversation with him with all that going on,” he says. “I can’t even hold a conversation with kids in the background screaming, ‘Mom – he hit me!’ There must be a parallel here because my ex-wife could ignore the noise.”
Well one thing is for sure, Ryan isn’t there for target practice and guns going off are part of his world. We just want Ryan home to be a part of our world – to laugh without fear.
