MCAS Miramar Flightline Homecoming
This military homecoming on the flightline at MCAS Miramar was a long time coming.
When your partner is on a ship, you can go weeks - months, even - without seeing their face. There’s internet on the ship but it’s not anywhere close to being able to handle a video call. So, you settle for sporadic emails, intermittent chats over Google Hangouts, maybe a quick phone call here or there when they’re close enough to shore. You refer back to old videos or voicemails just to hear their voice, feel comforted by that. You swipe through your phone’s photos and dream of taking new ones.
Hannah summed up this deployment aboard the USS Nimitz as “rough.” Forced to quarantine and leave early due to COVID-19, this deployment was extended four (!) times before returning to San Diego more than 300 days after it departed.
When Hannah first saw the jets appear in the sky above Miramar, her gasp was audible. The minutes it took for the planes to land and taxi felt like hours. Finally, we were released to meet the pilots at their jets and as soon as Hannah and Corey reunited, all was well.
