A holiday play in three acts

​Prologue 

Among the torrent of thoughts and ideas washing over me as the December holidays approached, was a moment of reflection for the parents of our military academies’ Classes of 2025 and 2028. Parents of the other classes were likely in their new groove, but the first year and final year parents experienced something different.

For the Class of 2028, this represented the first year of a military academy winter break, navigating LMD, airport transport, and pondering how to adapt Christmas traditions to new realities.

For the Class of 2025, this represented a major episode of the Parade of Lasts – the final Christmas before graduation and  commissioning, knowing full well that while the past three holidays seemed different from pre-academy life, a cloud of uncertainty hangs over those to come. 

For all, the holidays remind us that your experience is the right experience. Here’s one such experience.

Act One: In which time slows yet moves too fast

Being involved in military academy parent Facebook pages for more than eight years, I’ve seen plenty of posts about extravagant getaways and action-packed itineraries. Here’s proof one size does not fit all.

This would be my daughter’s first real break in a couple of years, as the last two were truncated by Air Force bowl games where she should represent the Spirit Crew as a cheerleader. She made it clear that the extra time did not represent an opportunity to engage in additional activities, instead, it meant more days to sleep in and lounge about.

That plan we executed to near-perfection.

Oh, of course we managed a few things – dinner and a hockey game with a dear friend, catching up with aunts and uncles, a trip to the country’s largest candy store (my girl has a serious relationship with sugar). But most days began quite late in the morning, involved a leisurely walk to stretch our legs, and a kitchen lesson (she specifically wanted to know my secret for medium-rare steaks cooked in the kitchen, rather than on a grill). 

The days eased by as we assembled a new couch-recliner, watched movies, and binge-watched a Netflix series. Yet it seemed we suddenly were exchanging gifts on the eve before her departure. Not a traditional Christmas morning, but joyful nonetheless.

As I watched her disappear into the TSA pre-check line, I found myself still smiling, thankful for our time together. I recalled a USNA mom sharing with me that she didn’t spend more than a couple of days with her son after Plebe Parents Weekend, as her son spent most of every Thanksgiving, Winter, and Spring Break on adventures with friends. 

Your experience is the right experience, indeed. 

Act Two: An intermission in which we embrace solitude and the new normal

When I started my coffee on the morning of Christmas Eve, it occurred to me I had not spent a Christmas alone in more than three decades. At first, I felt a bit wistful but soon engaged in my normal post-visit routine of stripping and changing the beds, doing laundry, and other mundane household chores. 

I couldn’t pretend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day weren’t happening and I didn’t need to. Having a submariner son deployed during those holidays taught me not to get hung up on dates on a calendar. Special times aren’t reserved for holidays but rather for the times you are together with those special to you.

I wouldn’t describe the house as quiet or still but, rather, peaceful. Summer into Fall presented significant personal challenges for me but those brough me to place of clarity and inner peace I didn’t know I lacked. I had those now in full measure and the holidays allowed me to reflect on the journey.

Act Three: In which we welcome a new year overflowing with changes

At the airport the Saturday before New Years. No surprise, it was all the chaos and confusion one would expect on the weekend before a holiday. As a certified hater of crowded places and long lines, I would normally eschew traveling on such a popular day, but another military academy parent lesson learned involved understanding that you adapt to the schedule, the schedule doesn’t adapt to you.

As a seasoned traveler, I find it frustrating to see blatant breaches of etiquette from those closer to novice level, but understand extending grace is the best response. Sometimes that means not only allowing people to slip in front of you in a long line then coaching them through getting their bag tags while another gaggle of people move ahead of you as well.

Karma has a way of paying you back, though. A pleasant conversation with an airport worker led to him looking about, winking at me, then waving me ahead, getting me to the front of the priority lane for security. I thanked him, he nodded, then offered me a fist bump as we weaved through the teeming masses.

Sitting on the runway during a delay – so it goes during a holiday travel weekend – I contemplated two things – first the itinerary for the visit with my submariner and second a momentous year to come.

A few years on the submarine rendered my son practically incapable of sleeping in and lounging about. Heading down, I knew those 20-hour shifts and the relentless pace of life aboard a submerged vessel meant a much different cadence than the one I enjoyed with my cadet. And while the semester’s end pretty much freed my daughter of responsibility, my son’s looming shore leave meant the approach of a season of change.

As his schedule had allowed, we discussed a number of key topics he wanted help resolving during this visit.  As the plane finally lifted off, pointed south, I knew I was headed to, essentially, a working vacation.

While the cadence was certainly different, we managed to work through some of the items he wanted to accomplish while finding time to both get out and about and relax.

The highlight would have to be getting an honest-to-God tour of his boat, the USS Florida, which is in an extended maintenance period at the Kings Bay Naval Base. Seeing the immense scale up close was a little jarring but actually descending inside to get glimpses of things so few people will ever see quite literally blew my mind. We walked through an endless maze of corridors, passing Tomahawk torpedo tubes like we were strolling down the cereal aisle at the supermarket.

He pointed out the torpedo tubes and how ordnance was loaded. I sat in “the” chair in the nerve center of the boat. The array of screens, buttons, dials, gages, and all manner of other visual inputs overwhelmed me despite the fact that they were all dark. It didn’t take much imagination to feel the intensity that would fill the space when, as my son sometimes put it, “uninvited guests arrive at the party.”

Many people have seen pictures or videos of the living quarters aboard a submarine but let me assure you, there’s nothing more sobering than seeing them with your very own eyes. When your submariner says they need to pack light, you now comprehend it in a whole new light. Of course, my son shared a few hacks he learned on how to stow a bit more stuff (especially snacks) than actually fit in his assigned space. Not sure they were all within regs but, a guy’s gotta eat.

But when you see the racks, whoa. Now when they casually refer to the one set of racks as “coffin racks,” you get it, you 100% get it. I tried to imagine spending a night in these beyond-claustrophobic spaces, then I remembered that they don’t spend a night in the racks, they spend months sleeping in them.

We bumped into several crew members casually doing their work, inspecting some widget or another, writing a report, and it all seemed so casual (after shaking hands, one crew member said, “hey, wanna see the diesel?” Helm yeah, I did!). Yet these men and women spent most of the past year in these cramped quarters and, without violating OPSEC, in some rather tense situations. I also had the pleasure of meeting the new CO, who went out of his way to find us after a grueling day of one-on-one meetings with his new crew.

There were no pictures, of course, all electronics – phones, smart watches – were left in the car, so I focused on trying to burn some of the images into my aging memory banks. For every explanation he provided, I responded with a handful of additional questions. As we walked from the gangplank back to the truck, my mind reeled with follow up questions as well.

The next day, the weather broke, and we made our way to St. Marys. We strolled the waterfront and stopped by the little submarine museum, and if you have a submariner stationed at Kings Bay, I highly recommend you take them there as a tour guide. Each display unleashed a torrent of information and perspective, whether it was a little detail he learned during SOBC or a first-person experience.

In those two days, I learned more about my son’s submarine experience than I had over the previous three years combined.

While early discussions for New Years Eve centered around going to any number of places for events, we wound up with a quiet dinner at his house, watching football. We reflected on 2024, the highlights and regrets, and contemplated 2025 and what it might bring. We acknowledged it would be a year of change – he would leave the Florida, his home for these past three years, head to Pensacola for a few weeks of training, before beginning yet another Navy-sponsored adventure, this time in Bozeman, Montana.

Wait, Bozeman, Montana? Isn’t that state landlocked? Well, yes, and believe me there is quite a story behind that but that’s for another day. One task he asked me to assist with involved securing lodging for his stay. We had been trading links to online platforms the past few weeks and used this time to manage target lock. A text message and a phone call sealed the deal. Mission accomplished.

He would be getting to Big Sky Country just about a month after his sister learned the location of her first base and just about two months before she commissioned and began a new adventure of her own.

With all of this ahead of us, we rang in the new year and called it a night.

History often attributes the phrase “the only constant is change” to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, proof that what we military academy parents experience may feel new to us, but it’s something of a universal constant.

Epilogue

If an airport the weekend before a holiday is chaos, a major airport on New Years Day makes that chaos look like a church service. That being said, everyone seemed in the mood to cooperate and while it took plenty of time to get through security and navigate the terminal, everyone appeared to understand the assignment and it all moved pretty smoothly.

I received an unexpected video call from my daughter, just checking in before her early morning flight back to the Academy, and exchanged messages with my son, plotting the second half of his holiday leave. I settled into my chair, sipping a well-deserved beverage and reflected on a holiday unlike any I’ve had before. As has often been the case over the past eight years or so, it wasn’t everything I wanted but was, perhaps, more than I could have hoped for. Tomorrow is back to reality but for now, I’ll bask in the holiday glow.

My holiday experience proved to be the right experience. I hope the same for you and an excellent 2025.

A reminder that my new book is on the Amazon shelf: Flying High, Diving Deep:  Lessons learned, memories made, and relationships forged as a two-time military academy parent