Emergencies Only Happen During Deployments

We spent the past few days gearing up for another semi-long deployment. Matt practiced asking "What's for dinner?" in a desperate tone of voice, Mike calculated our taxes, and the Queen of Multi-tasking read three books between alphabetizing the spices and folding thirteen loads of laundry.

This time around Mike will miss Matt's entire track season and his first appearance on stage since his 1999 turn as an orange peel. None of us are complaining. We know we have it easier than most Navy families, especially the ones with small children. Just this morning, as we were saying goodbye to each other, Mike and I noted that the mind-numbing routine and loneliness that plagued earlier deployments are no longer issues for me. Between Dr. T, Reiko, the Knitwits and Oakleaf knitters, Shonan Ladies, Oakleaf Explorers, and the Japanese and American Wives group, I am awash in opportunities to engage in adult conversation these days.

Before the USS Blue Ridge had left the pier this morning, I was already on a train bound for the Kirin Brewery in Yokohama. I heard shouts of "Kathy! Kathy!" as I raced up the escalator and executed a rather elegant scissor-kick leap into the nearest car just as the door was closing. My nonchalant glance around the car came up empty in the familiar face department. That would be because the rest of my party was standing on the platform gaping at me as the train gathered speed. Whoops!

Not to worry. I hopped off at the next station where I hooked up with Yuko, we jumped on the next train together, and everyone else was waiting for us on the platform in Yokohama. By eleven we had completed the brewery tour and were ensconced in the tasting room. "Hey, hey, hey," said Mimi. "I can't mix beer with the medicine I'm taking. Do you want mine?" "Gosh, maybe I should force myself to drink your 12-ounce Kirin and that little shot glass of Zero Kirin in addition to my ration so you won't cause some sort of terrible international incident." I did my diplomatic duty while Mimi tried in vain to figure out who was trying to reach her on her cell phone.

Someone with four brothers got a lot of Christmas shopping done in the Kirin Brewery gift shop before posing with some of her friends. (Mimi is not in this picture because she was still trying to solve The Cell Phone Mystery.)

Back in Yokosuka - after a detour to Aoki Bakery where I left my best umbrella and Stone Cold Sober Mimi left her Kirin Brewery gift shop purchases - I had already changed into my jeans when the telephone rang. "It's Mimi. Remember that call I got at the brewery? It was the school. Matt had an accident, they couldn't find you, and were calling me as your emergency contact person." "Uh-oh."

I checked my messages and, sure enough, the school nurse had left her number. Her line was busy so I headed to the school where I found Matt stretched out in the nurse's office. He had fallen backwards down a short flight of cement steps and scraped his back and arm. He got up and, according to his friends, might have hit his head when he fell a second time and blacked out for about ten seconds. His teacher/track coach sent him to the nurse's office where he vomited a couple of times during the course of the afternoon. The nurse said I could take him home but as I was pulling into the carport Matt decided he ought to see a doctor about his headache.

So off we went to the emergency department where he assured a nurse and corpsman that he was not a victim of domestic violence (whew!). The doctor asked me to check Matt's shot record and I made a note of that on the only paper I could find in my purse, the Kirin Brewery pamphlet, which I'm sure made a swell impression. A CT scan showed that Matt did not have a concussion so we were sent home with three pages of instructions. I gave him a couple of Tylenol and I'm pretty sure he's feeling much better because he just wandered into my room and asked in a rather annoying and quite desperate tone of voice, "What's for dinner?"