Graduation was over, the ten days he had at home, which included a weekend at the beach, prom, and countless dates was over. Now it is back to work. He left early Monday, May 6th to catch a bus in Knoxville, Tennessee that will take him to Jacksonville, North Carolina. He was going to arrive at Camp Lejeune, or so I thought. He would be at Camp Lejeune for twenty-nine days and while at the camp he would learn how to shoot different kinds of guns, throw hand grenades, learn martial arts, and many other combat training skills that he would have to have in a deployment. I thought, "This is Hunter's cup of tea, he loves this kind of stuff, it is only going to be a month, and he will have his phone. This won't be bad at all!" I was wrong!The next morning he woke up and had to put his phone in a box that would stay there until two days before graduation. I did not hear anything for weeks. One afternoon I was at track practice when his mom sent me an address. So I guess it was back to writing letters like during bootcamp. I wrote that night, the next night, and the next one. I had a track meet one Wednesday, and after my events I rode back home with my mom. I checked the mailbox, like I had everyday since January 26th, I found a letter. It was pretty thick and it had a week's worth of letters in one envelope. It was kind of like a journal. He explained he was out in the field and sleeping in a tent. He said he borrowed the paper, envelope, and stamp from a guy that was in his tent. He said he hated it, it was worse than boot camp, and that he wanted to come home. I wrote back that night and every night until three days before graduation. Even though I had not received anything else at all.
It was the week of graduation and I found out the graduation was on a Tuesday and I was still in school. "Why would they schedule a graduation in the middle of the week?" I thought. I read on the internet that the base holds two family days two days before graduation. That would be a Sunday. I begged my mom and finally talked her into driving, what I thought was only six hours, the long trip to North Carolina just for the day so that we wouldn't miss any school. The day before we leave our Tahoe decides it is not going to start. We did not want to but we load up and take off in a tiny, very uncomfortable Mustang.
We woke up and start one of our many road trips at 4:00 a.m. in order to make the family day starting at 1:00 p.m.. I was so excited. Even though I had not heard from Hunter in two weeks and he had no idea I was coming. Our GPS led us and we finally arrived at Camp Leguene. Seven and a half ours later, not six. We pulled up to a booth that had two Marines in it. They looked confused when they heard that we were there for a family day for a Marine that was about to graduate. The man asked us to pull over. Before we knew it two Marines with enormous machine guns were walking toward our little, black Mustang. Mine and my mom's eyes were huge. We explained to them all why we were there and they said, "Ohhh, you are supposed to be at Camp Geiger! People get that confused all the time. It is just a little breakdown camp where we do training." One Marine said. The men gave us the address and told us how to get there. Now we have fifteen minutes to spare. We find Camp Geiger and I felt so relieved there were a lot of cars there so we figured we were finally in the right place. We pull up to another booth where another Marine came out. He asked for our pass. We didn't have a pass. He then told us to go in the welcoming center with your license, registration, and insurance and that they will print us a pass. At this point I was extremely frustrated. We park back at the welcoming center and realize that the insurance we printed off was for the Tahoe not the Mustang. My heart sank. I did not think I was ever going to get on that base. I was calling my dad and he was running to my Uncle's house to print it and fax it. Only problem is, he doesn't have a fax machine, the library was closed since it was Sunday, and I was out of options. My mom then decides to call our local Rite-Aid and see if they will fax it when my dad gets there with it. They said they would! I open the door to the Welcome Center only to see that it was back all the way out the door. While I was waiting in line, cell phones started going off, one after another. I looked down at mine and sure enough there he was. We got the pass and started on to the base. He was waiting outside the barracks when I got there and when I saw him all the stress of the day just went away. Until I had to leave him again that is...
