Within a few days I noticed this handsome Marine First Sergeant coming home late every evening looking a little tired after a long day. We had never spoken but occasionally exchanged a nodded hello or a smile. I assumed he had a family living in his apartment with him because his doormat indicated that and I noticed a little girl's bicycle just inside his door. But I never saw anyone else. Sometimes he would leave his door open a crack. Because I had one of the cheap apartments, with no balcony or patio, and therefore nowhere for my little girl to play, I would frequently take her outside to this concrete area between four apartments, including both of ours, and let her ride around on her little sit-and-walk cars (Fred Flintstone cars I always called them).
I remember one Saturday afternoon he was doing a high speed dub of a music tape for his daughter called "Music Box Dancer". My daughter must have thought Alvin and the Chipmunks were playing around in there and strolled right on into his apartment to see what was going on in there. This of course prompted a brief introduction. But a few days later when my 11 month old fell over backwards off of her little car and hit her head on the concrete, I needed to know where the nearest emergency room was. I was afraid she had a concussion and I was still unfamiliar with where everything was in this town. I knocked on Mike's door frantically asking him if he knew where it was. Mike actually didn't know either since he had access to the Naval Hospital and didn't use civilian facilities. This was before everyone had a computer at their fingertips to look anything up so he pulled out the phone book and started looking. He offered to drive us but I still didn't really know him yet. I felt he was certainly trustworthy but was still a little uncomfortable with that. Turned out, all was well with my little girl. After waiting about 3 hours in the waiting room of the ER she was finally up, running around and back to her old self. But that incident, as irritating as it was, was sort of how Mike and I began to know each other.
We were, of course, neighbors and started dating after that. I was still a struggling single mom so after several months he asked if my little girl and I would like to move in with him. He already had a second bedroom which had just become a giant closet for him. So we did. In late August of that year we got married. Initially we had planned waiting a bit to get married but his upcoming deployment had been moved forward a few months and so we moved the wedding date up as well. In the interim we started adoption proceedings using the services of base legal. By the time he returned from deployment all the paperwork was complete and we soon after finalized the adoption.
Definitely going through a six-month deployment just a couple months after getting married was not easy. But I'm not the first to go through it and certainly won't be the last. He returned home with orders to the reserve unit in Grand Rapids, Michigan, known as an I&I (Inspector & Instructor) and he would be the I&I First Sergeant. It was during our two year stay there that our daughter was born. After a which, we returned to Camp Pendleton for what turned out to be the last four years of his Marine Corps career.
The years went by so fast because they were filled with so much. There were great times and not-so-great times. But I wouldn't change a thing if given the chance.
