CH-53 Flightline Photoshoot
“I leave tonight.”
Brittnee and I had talked about this session for weeks but it was dependent on so much: namely, when Ryan was deploying and when my baby arrived. Baby Jordan was born and we had one weekend left before he deployed, so somehow, the stars aligned for this flight line session to happen.
When we got to the hangar, I asked Ryan how everything was going with prepping to head out later in the week. “Oh, I leave tonight,” he replied.
I glanced at Brittnee and the look on her face said it all. This session - the planning and coordinating and getting the kids out the door and packing snacks and toys - was a great distraction for what was to come. Their departure had been pushed up; what else could she do?
Sometimes, the best coping mechanism is distraction. We say, “If I can just stay busy, I won’t remember that my husband, my kids’ dad, leaves for six months.“ It’s better to just plug away than stop and think about what we’ll be dealing with. As someone who identifies as the queen of distraction, I can confidently say there’s a time and a place for confronting your emotions and on deployment day, nobody has time for that.
As we started walking to the 53s, it started sprinkling. There were so few clouds in the sky but somehow, a perfectly-placed one sat over the flight line and dumped rain. We sat huddled under the tail of the aircraft and watched a rainbow appear, stretching from their neighborhood to the parking lot from which Ryan would leave later that night. “It’s a sign,” he said.
When the rain stopped, this positively insane sunset appeared. For that hour, their family lived in the distraction. They weren’t a family about to be separated by thousands of miles; they were a unit playing together in the rain, soaking in those final moments.
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