P52, Somewhat: Week 7, "Love"

It's hardly surprising that the P52 topic this week was "love," being that this is the week of Valentine's Day.  I have plenty of things I love: my little boy, family, friends, pets, books, shoes, chocolate....the list goes on and on.  I could think of plenty of things to photograph for this week, from the mundane to the extraordinary and from cliché to unique.  But I couldn't narrow down my options and decide what sort of photo I wanted to take!

To: Minha ruiva! [My redhead!]
Love: Seu devoto! [Your devoted!]
(Brazilian Portuguese [English])

But today, my sweet Jack solved the question for me, sending me a gift with a story.

Most people who read my blog have heard of Jack.  He's my....well, I don't know exactly what to call our type of "us-ness"....but there's definitely something here.  He's my friend; he's the person who knows every single one of my secrets; he's the first person I want to talk to when I've had a bad day, or a good day, or a day that's notable for any reason at all.  I could spend all night extolling the virtues of Jack, but that is not the purpose of this post.

♫♪ Let's start at the very beginning....♫♪

In December of 2002, I was married to a guy in the Marine Corps and we were living in Ramona, CA just north of MCAS Miramar where my then-husband was stationed.  Several of the other kid-free military wives in our apartment complex had begun volunteering at a V.A.-run recovery center in downtown San Diego where a number of recently-wounded Marines were living while undergoing extensive physical therapies for a range of injuries.  The other wives invited me to come along with them, and it sounded like a worthwhile cause, so I went.

On my 3rd visit to the recovery center, I was on my way to the room of a nice Marine I had met on previous visits.  As I walked through a big open sitting room, someone reached out and took my hand.  I turned to see that my hand was being held by a man in a wheelchair who was so bandaged he more closely resembled a mummy than a Marine.  He pulled me into the chair beside him, and there I stayed for several hours that day, exchanging conversation by way of a dry-erase marker board the doctors had given him.  I quickly discovered that, under all the bandages, was a funny, kind, intelligent man with a very uncertain future.  He had been there only a couple of days, and the doctors were sure he was going to survive his injuries, but did not know yet how much he would recover full functionality of all his limbs and senses.

By the end of the following week, I was hooked and began hitching a ride to the recovery center every single day with the one other military wife that went daily.  Over the following weeks, his throat and lungs healed and he regained his speech—although he sounded like a frog being run over back in the beginning, so much so that between his voice and his charm, the female nurses on his wing jokingly referred to him as the "Frog Prince."  Some days I would arrive to find him exhausted from physical therapy or in pain as they weaned him off the pain-control medications, but he was always happy to see me and never once accepted my offer to go away and let him rest.  As we got to know one another, he started to ask me to stay with him when he was being evaluated by various doctors.  I got to hold his hand as the bandages came off his left eye for the last time.  And I arrived to visit only hours after the doctors decided that there just wasn't any realistic hope that his hearing would ever come back.  That was a low day for our friendship, and the very next day I got the news that my husband would soon (Feb. 2003) be deploying to the same area that had so broken my new-found friend.

When it was decided that I would come back to Florida to stay with family during my husband's deployment, Jack made me promise that I would stay in touch.  We exchanged email addresses and phone numbers and mailing addresses.  And, true to our promises, we stayed in touch—through his medical discharge from the Marine Corps, his release from the recovery center, my divorce, his college graduation, and a number of moves and jobs for us both, including Jack's job in Germany as a civilian contractor at Ramstein Air Base.  Through all this time, we maintained increasingly frequent contact and exchanged pictures and even tried video chat once or twice.

But nothing would prepare me for meeting Jack again face to face in October of 2009.  It had been 6½ years of letter writing, instant messaging, text messaging, TDD phone calls (which are painfully slow, for the record), and video chats.  It had been 6½ years since I had even hugged my darling friend.  I had never seen him able to stand for more than a few minutes at a time, never straight and tall, and never unassisted.  Then one day that October, I arrived home from work to find Jack sitting in my driveway waiting for me to get home....without any warning that he was even coming to Pensacola—or that he was even back in the country!!  I'd never seen his face fully-healed, but I recognized his smile immediately.  He swept me into a long-overdue hug, and there we stayed until Kaleb started squirming and fussing to be set free of his car seat.

As I watched Jack meeting Kaleb for the first time, it struck me how handsome he was!  6½ years is time enough for most things to heal and for all but the most stubborn scars to fade.  But handsome or not, he was my same friend.  He was the same funny, kind, intelligent man I had met all those years before, but now with a more certain idea of his future.

Jack worked for a time as a contractor at MacDill AFB in Tampa, and would make trips to Pensacola to visit his "nephew" Kaleb and me.  I loved having him so much closer, and getting to see him at least monthly.  In early July of 2011, Jack was offered a job at an architectural firm in Japan.  It was an amazing offer, so he made the move the following month.  I miss him, but our communication has maintained a much higher quality than last time we had such distance between us.  Skype has been a most wonderful tool, as we can chat face-to-face; he can talk to me, and I can type to him.

Because he doesn't want me to "forget" him (or so he says), Jack sends me flowers at work around holidays....and sometimes for no reason at all.  Now that the week of Valentine's Day has rolled around again, Jack has had several tricks up his sleeve.  Last Friday he had a dozen Chocolate Covered Strawberries delivered to me at work by Edible Arrangements.  It was sweet, and I shared them with a few students and co-workers.

Today Cupid struck again.  Today's gift was adorable, but also brought back a torrent of memories from those first, sweet days when our friendship was new and my friend was broken.  The note included reminded me that, although he is all healed up now, that he still depends on me to be at the core of his support net.  And he told me, yet again, that he will always be around for me.  Because he loves me.

Gentle Goddess, I love that man!

"Fallen for You" photographed by Sarah Getz for P52 Photo-A-Week challenge, 2-13-2012.
Jack thought this guy looked as he looked when I first met him!

And as if the bear himself wasn't precious enough, check out the message we found on the bottom of the box—near the air hole—apparently printed there for the benefit of the FedEx carrier or whomever else might be handling the box!

I only hope that all my friends have such sweet, emotional experiences this Valentine's Day!

Oh!  And, Jack, I love you.