A.) been promoted
B.) successfully finished probation or
C.) been added to our little family in some other fashion i.e. hired in from another FD e.g. last night we added a Deputy Chief hired in from a neighboring department.
D.) can you (and by "you" I mean "me") use i.e. and e.g. in the same sentence?
E.) I don't really care, I'm just curious
F.) if you don't like it call the blog police
As I was saying, last night the above mentioned got their badges and were welcomed in to our humble, little, FD family. It's a nice event and it seems to get bigger every year, although we did add six (Jesus, six of them!) new guys off probation. The six included the previously famous Shawn and the equally famous Wes and so, that's what drew me to last night's event. I figured the least I could do was come in and congratulate them, since they were the fodder for so many laughs on my part.
Which brings me to my point. Kind of.
By the time I got back home it was 9:30 ish. Typically, around this time I'm calling it a night. But, last night, since Sophie was stuck in the house for the evening, I figured instead of just taking her out to the backyard to go about her end-of-the-evening business, we'd go for a walk around the neighborhood. It was a lovely November evening, cool, crisp, and clear and we wandered around one of her familiar courses unremarkably.
But at one point, while Sophie took a break in the yard of a neighbor, I looked up at the stars and saw the constellation Orion.
Now, to be clear, I'm not a big astronomy guy. I can find the Big Dipper and the North Star but beyond that, I'm not going to be able to help you find anything useful and/or educational in the sky. And I hope you can appreciate the restraint I'm using here to not make a joke about Uranus...
But I digress.
The reason I always look for Orion, which is actually pretty easy to find this time of year, it's in the Eastern sky and it looks like this-
The three vertical stars in the center of the picture are referred to as Orion's Belt and that's what I look for. But back to the why.
In early 2003, when the Boy Child was somewhere in the Middle East, in the build up to the invasion of Iraq, it was something that helped ease the jangled nerves of an Army Dad.
I'm not sure why it brought comfort to me. I think it had something to do with the thought that, I could see this object, millions of miles away, and, on the other side of the planet, he could too. I'm not sure if he could, of course. Even if he knew to look for it. But the thought that he could helped deal with the reality that one of the beings I was responsible for, was no longer in a position where I could do anything about anything that might happen.
As a parent, that was one of the most difficult things I had to learn. I wrote about that time in greater detail for Memorial Day but, seeing that belt last night, on Veteran's Day, every memory came flooding back to me, as it often does when I look for that particular constellation.
I think the only thing I posted on social media yesterday was the link to a website that helps homeless vets (something no vet should ever be, but that's a post for another time) and I did send him a text yesterday, but I just wanted to say here, for the world (or at least my handful of regular readers) to see...
Not just for Veteran's Day, but for every day, I love you and I'm so very proud of the man you've become.
Peace.
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