Blue Star Chronicles

As anyone who knows me or reads this blog knows, my Soldier Son is back in Germany after an excruciatingly long deployment to Baghdad. Also, he is getting married in a couple of weeks to his lovely fiance. We are hurriedly making plans to go to Germany for the wedding and for Christmas. (yeah!)

My Soldier Son is an organizer and planner. He’s never been one to sit around and watch TV. He was the kid who was outside from dawn to dusk. He was the kid who reluctantly came into the house for dinner and played outside every second he could. If there was a physical or mental challenge in the wild of the outside world, he would figure it out and take it to the max. When we lived in Michigan, he would jump into the river to swim as soon as the ice flows gave the first hint that they were melting. He’d come out of the water blue, but happy. He has always been a dare-devil. I remember wondering if I was going to be able to keep him alive into adulthood when he was a kid. He was always on top of, climbing over and slipping through whatever obstacles might have been in his way. I credit him with almost every gray hair I would have if it weren’t for the miracle of L’Oreal and whatever Cherokee blood might be pumping in my veins.

So in the last weeks of his deployment it is only natural that he passed his time there planning for a trip with his buddies once they were back in Germany. A ski trip was planned just two weeks after they got back. Anyone can predict what happened. They guys got home and instead of it being a time for the guys to go off on a ski trip, it became a time for the guys and their wives to go on a ski trip. DUH! I could have told him that if he’d have asked me!

Two weeks after returning from Baghdad all the guys (and their wives) take off to Austria for a ski trip in the Austrian Alps. Sounds wonderful! It was billed as some relaxed time for the guys together after the intensity of their time in Baghdad. A time to unwind. A time to bond their friendships in better surroundings. A time to let off some steam.

They took off on this trip this week. Two weeks before my sons wedding to his fiance. He took her with them. She is an expert skier. He has laughed in the past that she has to wait on him. He thinks that funny because he prides himself on his athletic ability and the thought that he didn’t master skiing the first time he was on skis was funny to him. I reminded him that he was raised in the American South where the word ’skiing’ refers to an activity that takes place in the water behind a boat in the spring and summer. She was raised in the Bavarian Alps where skiing on snow is second nature.

On the second day of their trip she fell and had to be medivaced off the mountain. She’s okay, but her leg is injured. She was in the hospital for a couple of days and is going to have to have surgery in January. I suppose she’ll be limping down the aisle now.

I’m thinking that in years to come, when they are thinking back on their wedding day, she’ll remind him that if he hadn’t planned a ski trip just before their wedding she wouldn’t have had to wear that cast on her wedding day. I imagine that’ll be something she’ll remind him of on his death bed!! LOL The lesson of this little tale is, don’t plan a ski trip the week before your wedding.