Operator, operator, this is ship to shore

Grant called last night. I have been bugging him for a week to call me. I had some things we needed to talk about, like making plans to visit the states in September. Yes folks, I'm coming back again.

From 5:30 to 6:30, when he said he would call, I sat on my couch playing video games and waiting. You know the kind of waiting I mean. When the thing you want to happen could happen any second but it could also be an hour from now so you pretend to focus on something else but really you're glancing at the clock every five seconds thinking, "now, now?".

Finally, I checked my e-mail. He couldn't figure out how to dial a DSN (that's a base phone number) from the ship's phones. I e-mailed back. "Ask Morrison. He calls his wife." Ouch. Grant said he could feel my rage through the Internet. I wasn't enraged, not yet, but I sure found it strange that a Nuclear technician could not figure out a telephone. He asked Morrison.

I went back to my game.

When the phone rang maybe half an hour later I actually said aloud, "That'd better be you." before I picked up the phone. You talk to yourself when you're alone a lot. At least, I do.

I didn't recognize the caller ID and when I picked up the phone a crackly mumbling whistle greeted me. It was him.

I'm sure most of you have never talked to someone who was calling from a pay phone on an aircraft carrier, so please allow me to describe the experience.

Imagine talking to one of the most important people in your life, only you haven't spoken in months, oh yeah and you're talking on walkie talkies while standing on a pedestrian walkway in a tunnel with cars whizzing below you every few seconds. If you both talk at once you miss what the other person is saying. You have to speak slowly or the other person can't understand you. Sometimes the phone crackles and you hear a whistling. Like wind through the fire escape outside my bedroom.

Sometimes I felt like I was Radar on MASH. I had this little phone in a bag to connect me to the world and I was lucky if anyone could hear me. My grandmother is always reminding me that we are lucky. When my Grandfather was in Navy they only had letters, no Internet, no ship to shore phones, not even get-there-in-a-week priority mail; just the slow old postal service.

I feel lucky.

I leave you today with a Persian Proverb, "Go and wake up your luck."