That Person Would Be You

Chapter 1 - Lily

We were all driving to the airport in complete silence. All but my mum that is, she would never be capable of that, especially not when nervous. So, she did what she did best, chit chat.

"Today the crepes were not as good, we'll just have to have crepes again when you come back." Crepes were mum's speciality, a French family had given her the recipe for "thze perrrfect crrrepe" when she was a teen on a camping trip. Today's crepes we're nothing under mouth watering, crunchy and thin, but mum insisted that they weren't thin enough, not crispy enough, not good enough. Not for her perfect boy. Not when he was going away. Not when he was going to Mogadishu, the place famous for Black Hawk Down. It's not that bad, we tried to convince ourselves, it has been "inching towards stability" since 2012, or at least that's what BBC's country profile said about Somalia. It wasn't the best of profiles, I had to admit. If this was Tinder I would not have swiped right.

Good food, research and humour- the only ways I knew of dealing with something so bad, so personal, so heartbreaking, so nerveracking. 

I drove, the radio humming in the background as mum spoke with Andrew, now about whether the flight would be on time or not. I was going to ask at what point do they get all geared up, because he had to take a bunch of flights before he got there and by now I didn't even know which ones were military and which ones were not. Surely it had to be aboard some plane, they couldn't get ready after they got there, to the war zone or whatever it was called. I wanted to know, but I was sure my mum did not- knowing more about this would only freak her out; so I asked nothing and kept driving.

"Is anyone catching the same flight as you are?" My younger sister, Liv, asked from the passenger's seat, next to me. She was going in the back with my brother, but mum decided she needed more time with her baby. Actually, the seating was a bit more complicated than that. Initially my brother was going to drive, but at 2 am the lights in his room were still on, he didn't sleep much (none of us did) and walking to the car someone said that he looked like he was about to fall asleep right there and then, so Mum said he shouldn't drive. It was too dangerous, something I found ironic to say the least in this case but decided not to say anything. Mum told my sister to drive but she didn't feel like it and told me to do it. I didn't feel like driving either, but I was the last one in line and had no one else to give the hot potato to so, here I was, driving.

"Yeah, a couple of blokes. Some of them flew yesterday or before and stayed at the layovers." He answered.

"And spend one less day with their families? That's odd." My mum said in an almost angry tone. Offended in name of the other soldiers' families.

"Well, some of them went with their families who should be returning today, or their girlfriends." Andrew continued. Woop! Girlfriend bomb dropped (ouch, shit metaphor!). His girlfriend had broken up with him after news of his mission. She just "wasn't ready for a long distance relationship, specially not one in these conditions". Which made me wonder what the fuck did she think his profession was like? How on earth did being a military played in her mind that she only now, when she was faced with it, discovered she wasn't ready to be in a relationship with a deployed Lieutenant. You'd think that in almost a year of relationship she would have thought about it, specially when he wasn't one to hide that this was his passion, that he wanted to be deployed! Not that I knew anything about this whole girlfriend situation. No, only mum knew was told about it. And she definitely didn't talk to me about it saying that she thought he took it a bit hard, no! She had definitely not done that!

"You didn't take a chance to travel a bit? Is your wallet that bad?" I joked before the silence got too much. He reached from the back seat to ruffle my hair. "Oi! Don't do that! I'm driving you tosser!"

"My wallet is just fine, I was being nice and spending time with my family. Something to which you decided to latch on to." He said and I laughed.

"I'm not family? Good to know."