Good Morning from the West Coast

The sound of two alarm clocks, each of different exasperating tunes, echoed through our small bedroom chamber. We struggled to pull our eyelids apart, only to be greeted with the type of early morning darkness. The alarms are still ringing in the background and as I coax myself that it is just still too early to wake up, Steven rolls out of bed and prepares for the long trip ahead of him.

"Great," I thought, "now I have to wake up too." I continued to lie in bed, taking in as much time and warmth from our blankets before stepping foot into the thwarting morning chills. Overhead on the window sill, the alarms blared and only when they started to irk me did I reach out for the kill. The iPhone's are finally silenced, with one another alarm just barely escaping before I, too, shut it down as well.

Stevenson returned from his warm shower and I got out of bed. I packed whatever was left necessary for his departure, such as his camelback, phone charger, pillow, fresh bed sheets, etc. Dawn is approaching as I gathered all his things and I could feel the light kiss upon my shoulder. Whoops, I shivered. It's cold and I hadn't retrieve a sweater yet. I paused for a moment to process my thoughts and then reached inside my white wardrobe to pull out a woven cardigan. Warm bliss! I quickly covered myself and finished the last of my errands.

It's almost time for drop off and Steven is already dressed in full gear. We are on our way to the Unit's HQ and its dead silent in the car. Last night we didn't get much sleep. He came home from work 12:30AM and, after having dinner and filling his green duffel bags with training gear, we slept at around 2:00AM. Steven turned on the radio out parades generic top 40 club music, possibly to accommodate those who are just coming home from a night of hard drinking and socializing. One of our songs popped up and Steven quietly sang to himself as I looked out the window. We were greeted with traffic, most of which are from his unit and they moved in the same direction as we. Small talk began to fill the void and I was soon grinning, with one thought in my head.

"A few months from now and it'll be my last car ride with him," I realized. "I wonder what that would be like." Fast-forward it to the future and..

Photo Credit: 000018 by Adriano Sodré on Flickr.