It's Veterans Day.
And I have to go to work.
I will admit that, at 8:30 in the morning and without nearly enough coffee in me, I have some feelings about that.
I served in the Army for thirteen years.
There are employers that give veterans the day off. Some give them a half day. Some find other ways to recognize the people who served.
Mine isn't one of them.
And once a year, that rubs me the wrong way.
Not enough to turn this into a rant.
Probably.
Veterans Day feels a little different this year anyway.
Kati and I have spent the last several days working through our increasingly ridiculous collection of digital stuff.
Photos.
Videos.
Documents.
Pieces of our lives scattered across computers, hard drives, cloud storage, phones, and a NAS that I have apparently decided should become the Library of Congress for the Von Bank family.
Somewhere in all of that, I found photographs from one of my deployments.
I wasn't looking for them.
They were simply there.
And suddenly, so was he.
A much younger version of me.
Before Kati.
Before the kids.
Before this house.
Before CranioDad.
Before most of the things that define my life today existed anywhere except somewhere out in the future.
There are pictures of people I haven't thought about in years.
Places I haven't seen in years.
Moments that, at the time, were simply life.
Now they're history.
My history.
And looking at those photographs, I know something that guy didn't.
He thought he knew how this story was going to go.
I had a twenty-year plan.
I was going to stay in.
Finish my career.
Retire from the Army.
I made it thirteen years.
Then Zoey was born.
And suddenly the calculation was different.
I knew my daughter was going to need me. I also knew that staying in meant accepting that another deployment could come. Another set of orders. Another stretch of time when the Army got to decide where I needed to be.
I wasn't willing to risk not being there when she needed me.
So I threw away the twenty-year plan.
Seven years from retirement, I chose to leave.
At the time, I suppose that meant choosing not to serve anymore.
Looking at the life that came afterward, I'm not sure that's how I see it now.
Maybe that's what Veterans Day means to me this morning.
Not discounts.
Not free meals.
Not somebody thanking me for my service.
And apparently not a day off.
It's the reminder that I'm still here.
I served.
I came home.
And life kept going.
Eventually the uniform went into a closet and then a box, and another life began building itself around me.
That life became a wife.
Four kids.
A career.
A house.
A church.
A dog who believes personal space is a character flaw.
Walks to the mailbox.
Baseball games.
Camping trips.
School assignments.
A website full of stories.
And somewhere around fifteen thousand photographs that somebody apparently has to organize.
So today I'll go to work.
I've got one-on-ones with my staff.
We'll talk about leadership development, their teams, the things we're building, and how we can take better care of the people around us.
There are loose ends to tie up because tomorrow is only half a day for me.
Two meetings.
Then I'm gone.
Friday, we'll be camping.
The temperature forecast keeps dropping, because apparently November has decided David's birthday needs additional character development.
I've also developed a cough that I'm hoping disappears before sleeping outside becomes part of the plan.
We'll see how that goes.
But this morning, I'm thinking about those photographs.
About that young soldier who thought he knew what came next.
About the decision, years later, to walk away from the future he had planned.
And about the thousands of photographs that came afterward.
There are parts of those thirteen years I miss.
There are parts I absolutely do not.
There are people I still carry with me.
And there are pieces of myself from those years that probably never went away.
They just became part of whatever came next.
Service is part of my story, but it isn't the whole story. Those old photographs remind me who I was. The thousands that came afterward remind me what happened next. I had a plan for twenty years in uniform. Instead, thirteen years in, I chose a different future because my daughter needed her dad to be there. I couldn't have known then everything that decision would make room for. Kati. Four kids. This home. This career. This wonderfully complicated life. When someone thanks me for my service, my answer has always been simple. It was an honor to serve.
It still is.
Much love.
Stay safe.
Wash your damn hands.
And I will see you, next time.
