Counting Buses, Keeping Promises

This article was sent to us by Makenah V., an 11th grader stationed in Kentucky. Do you have a story to share with your fellow military teens? Visit our writing page to find out how you can submit to Bloom!

Her black SUV drove up in front of their new house in Kentucky and pulled into the small driveway. Delaney opened the passenger door and stepped out of the car for the first time in nearly five hours. She walked to the trunk to get out the stuff that she was able to fit into the car instead of into the U-Haul moving truck. Once she had gotten all her bags, she walked up the stairs to the front door, punched in the house code, and walked inside. 

The house was not very big, but it was a good size (compared to her previous three houses), containing four rooms and three baths. Delaney walked past the kitchen and living room to the last door on the right, which was going to be her new room for hopefully longer than a couple years. She sat her luggage down at the foot of the bed and plopped down on the mattress, ready to take a long overdue nap. 

As Delaney drifted off to sleep, she thought about her dad who was deployed overseas: he’d begun his stay over there on her sixteenth birthday, almost a year ago. He was scheduled to come back to the States in another few weeks, which filled Delaney with joy and peace as she finally let sleep overtake her. 

A week later, Delaney was on a video call with her dad. 

“Do you like your new school?” her dad asked her. 

“I guess so; I’ve learned not to get too attached to things when we move because I know it won’t last long.  Everything is pretty cool here though, you’re really gonna like it,” Delaney said as she looked at her dad on the screen.  “I’ve made a couple of new friends though. Their names are Katie and Laura; they are twins and the same age as me. They also have a brother named Barrett who is a year older than us and we became friends too.”  

“They sound cool, but I don’t know how I feel about you being friends with a boy yet,” her dad said with a frown. 

“It’s not like we are dating Daddy. We are just acquaintances through Katie and Laura,” Delaney assured her dad with a faint blush on her cheeks. 

“Ok, as long as it stays that way for a while…” her dad said with a sigh. 

They talked for another thirty minutes or so; when their time was almost up they said they missed and loved each other. 

And, like he did every time, her dad finished the call with, “I promise I’ll be home soon.” 

Delaney smiled and answered, “And I promise I’ll be here waiting on you when you return.”  

After they hung up, Delaney closed the computer and laid back on her bed to think about the joyful day when her dad would come home. Delaney and her family would have to be at the building at twelve o’clock to get a seat and wait for his bus. Her dad would then get off the bus and march into a group of one hundred men and women. Some ceremonial things would occur before the officers would allow the soldiers to disperse and run to hug their families for the first time in a year. 

Time flew by as Delaney spent more and more time with her new best friends, filling the two weeks with fun times as Delaney looked forward to her daddy coming home. She and her dad had one last video call the week before he was coming home, and she caught him up on everything. Once their time was up, they told each other good-bye and made their repeated promises to each other. 

Finally the time was here that Delaney had been counting down the hour to. She woke up around seven o’clock with hardly any sleep since she was so excited. Today was her seventeenth birthday, but -even more special - it was also the day of her dad’s return. Delaney got ready, then she and her mom drove to the place where her dad’s bus would arrive. They got there just in time to get a seat on the front row with a good view of all the soldiers. 

The thirty minutes of waiting seemed like the longest minutes of life Delaney had ever experienced. However, just as she was about to go crazy with excitement and nerves, the first bus was announced to have arrived. Everyone who had a soldier on Bus One made their way outside to see their soldiers coming out of the bus doors. 

Delaney and her mom had gotten a text that her dad, Staff Sergeant Blane Guthrie, would arrive on bus eight. So, for the next forty-five minutes or so, Delaney listened to bus after bus being called: “Bus Two… Bus Three… Bus Four… Bus Five… Bus Six… Bus Seven…” 

Finally Bus Eight was announced to have just arrived! Delaney and her mom jumped up and ran outside! Delaney was beyond ready to watch her dad walk off the bus and march into the building. After getting through the large crowd, they finally got to the rail that separated the families from the buses of soldiers. Delaney looked at all the faces of the soldiers getting off the bus; after she had counted twelve soldiers she finally saw her daddy for the first time in exactly a year. 

After that first look, all the emotions that Delaney had felt for the last year were too much to control; she started sobbing and turned to her mom to wrap her arms around her. As her tears flowed, Delaney knew it was a moment that she would never forget. 

Once her dad had made it around the corner of the building, Delaney and her mom went back inside to find their seat and wait for the ceremony to be over so they could finally embrace the man both of them had desperately missed. 

The ceremony lasted for nearly an hour. Then, at last, the officers let the soldiers disperse to go greet their families. Delaney held her breath as her eyes followed her dad’s maneuvers through the large crowd of soldiers to get to where she and her mom stood waiting for him to reach them. 

When he was just a few feet in front of them, he stopped and just stood there looking at them. Delaney could stand it no longer!  She let out a cry, ran, and jumped into her father’s arms. Time slowed as he swung her up and twirled her around in a circle, as he used to always do when she was a little girl. Slowly, he sat her back on the ground, kissed her forehead and set her aside so he could walk over to her mother. After they hugged and kissed for a while, her dad turned back to her and said with a relieved sigh, “Let’s go home.”  

On the way home, Delaney thought all about her life over the last month: finding out the Army was sending her dad to another state as he got back from deployment, moving into a charming new town, meeting her two new best friends, and her dad’s return.

Before Delaney had moved to Kentucky her life was okay… Sure, she had to move around a lot, had gone to five different schools in her thirteen-year education, and she’d had to leave behind some relationships with some really close friends. However, as her dad pulled up to their new house, put the car in park, and she got out of the car and walked up the stairs, she finally understood what people meant when they said, “The Best is Yet to Come!”