Scenes from Life: Just Like the Movies

Can you believe it's already the first Monday in October? That means the temperatures are dropping, the leaves are changing, and it's already time for another installment of Scenes from Life. This month we're featuring a United States Airman, a sweet-tempered mother of four, who is about to move her entire family from Washington D.C. to Azerbaijan and whose blog, {just}Lenae, chronicles her life, her family and her faith with a rare mix of vulnerability and strength. So pour yourself a cup of hot tea, pull on a pair of warm, hand-knitted socks, and snuggle down under your favorite blanket --- we're heading to boot camp!

Thanks, Lenae!

Just Like the Movies

I didn’t realize it at the time, but my arrival at Lackland Air Force Base for basic training in 2004 was very much like what you see in the movies: It was night and the bus was full, the air thick and pungent with tension and wondering. Few people talked; the ones who did cracked jokes too loudly, and those with cell phones fingered them in their pockets, perhaps thinking of the last person they’d spoken to through it.

Whether you’d been educated on boot camp by movies, a recruiter, that kid from your high school class, or your uncle, you knew what was coming as the bus pulled ever closer to the base. When the brakes whined to a dramatic halt, it began as you were sure it would: with the flying silhouettes of horrendously enraged training instructors, screaming and zipping between the lines of shocked civilians.

Much of that first night is a blur, as it’s intended to be. We signed papers and sat and waited and endured more screaming and hustling to other locations, where we also sat and waited. It was probably hours before we finally arrived via another bus to the large, ugly, cement building where the trial by fire would rage for six weeks. We lined up, of course, and there was the taking of accountability: the instructors yelled your name and if you were anyone but the first person, you stood with clenched fists and contemplated how best to respond to yours in order to avoid being targeted. Yell too loud? Ah, yes, there’s the girl who yelled too loud: “Well, aren’t YOU just SOOOOO happy to be here?!” But don’t be too quiet: “Speak UP! DO! YOU! HEAR! ME!”

Obviously I was in a female flight, and many of the other females? Did not handle this very well. I was blessed to have grown up with a Marine for a father – enough said. The recruiters had given us a decent amount of advice on how to prepare, but there were those who thought better: Guys who shaved their heads in anticipation (“You think you’re in the Air Force now?! You have to EARN it!”) and the sad individuals who selected brand-emblazoned clothing for their first encounter with TI’s (“Get over there NOW, Nike!”) On the first night in my flight, there was a woman who chose to bring a conspicuous pink, rolling luggage loaded with her belongings. She was ‘Princess’ for the rest of the week.

***

It’s been long enough that my memories of basic training are mostly a handful of blurred stills, hazy round the edges like Holga prints. I remember faces here and there, like the girl with strawberry blonde hair and azure blue eyes in my flight who was “recycled” (rolled back into a later group) for sneaking Snickers in the bathroom. And there were instances of mind-boggling frustration: Standing with our noses pressed to the wall, practicing reporting statements*; going in the wrong direction in the dining hall and being screamed at more thoroughly than I ever have in my life; marching marching marching for hours, everywhere, while an instructor darted along the fringes of the formation, correcting posture and pace.

In short: It was everything you see in the movies. And it wasn’t.

***

I’d been dreaming of joining the military since I was a sophomore in high school. My plans shifted in detail a few times, but when I was sitting in that bus on a cold January night, getting nearer to the shocking, jarring experience that is boot camp, all I could think was, “I’m finally here.”

I was, in a sense, secretly delighted that all the clichés were there in full color. Everyone loves to trade their boot camp stories and I’ve heard every perspective there is on it: some deemed it all a theatrical waste of time and others, like myself, believed it to be grating but necessary.

In high school I ran cross country, and none of the races were easy. They were winding trails up gravel hillsides, swooping down steep, tree-lined paths, lungs constricting, muscles aching, feet throbbing until they carried you over a finish line. Then, I was a runner.

Birthing my children was intense and consuming, eyes narrowed and brow wet, before that heaving, explosive release of baby into still, delivery room air. Then, I was a mother.

Air Force basic training was unannounced, nail-biting inspections, running to cadence, being handed a pile of brown t-shirts. It was drinking three glasses of water before you touched your food, that first, heartbreaking call home when you got the answering machine instead of a person, and checking your uniform once, twice, three times before you slid ever-so-carefully into your perfectly made bed.

It was singing the Air Force song in the mornings before breakfast, and the grudging nod of approval and blessed silence as your flight –your group of a couple dozen women from every state in the union and every background imaginable—marched well, without flaws, on sharply turned heels around corners. It was shaving a full minute off your run time, feeling your pants get looser about your waist, and each week ticking by until the pinnacle of Warrior Week, where you crashed and stumbled and willed your way through obstacle courses and rifle qualifications and the ever-anticipated gas chamber… all to that afternoon where you stood –in lines, of course—and had an Airman’s coin pressed into your hand.

Then, you were an Airman.

No matter what compelled you to sit down at a recruiter’s desk … regardless of what you thought of as you drifted to sleep at night beneath a scratchy olive green blanket…. Beyond who might have sank onto a bleacher seat to watch you take the enlisted oath, one individual in a glistening array of men and women buttoned into the royal blue dress uniform of the Air Force… That moment, arm raised and chin lifted high, was as fulfilling as the movies depicted and overwhelmingly more, an impossible accomplishment displayed in an open palm, a glorious ceremony to send you out into the clear sky of service.

*Reporting statement: “Airman Smith reports [as ordered].”