A long way from home
This month, Major Jay Skinner will see green for the first time in almost a year.
Since March 2, he has watched his dog play in his front yard in Mountain Brook via webcam, but out his window he can only see browns and grays. He’s been in sandstorms where he couldn’t see more than 100 feet in front of him and weathered heat that climbs up to 122 degrees.
“It’s like standing in front of your oven with a hot blow-dryer on you and occasionally throwing some fine sand up in your face,” he said.
Jay has been deployed to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait with the 135th Expeditionary Sustainment Command, an Alabama Army National Guard unit based in Homewood. He was stationed in Ft. Hood, Texas, since Jan. 13, with only a four-day leave before going to Kuwait.
Although he has served as a reserve officer in the JAG Corps for nearly a decade, this has been his, and his family’s, first deployment.
The emotions that fill his wife, Kathy, and kids, Thomas (16), Hollon (15) and Henry (11), back at home are mixed. Times have been trying without their father’s and husband’s presence, but they are filled with pride that he is serving their country.
On the 13th of every month, Andi Gillen, a friend from St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, arranged for a friend to bring the Skinners dinner. The meal has provided not just physical sustenance but a reminder that one more month is down, and Jay is one month closer to coming home.
At the Skinners’ house, yellow ribbons hang in a tree in the front yard and from a wreath on the front door made by Kathy’s 3-year-old preschool class at Independent Presbyterian Church. A flag with a star in the middle sits in a front window just as it does in the homes of other soldiers deployed with Jay.
An avid technology user, Jay has stayed as connected as he can with his family via text, email, FaceTime, cell phone and Skype. Kathy has texted him photos of everything from their kids’ progress reports to a paper that she is unsure where to file.
Every morning Kathy has woken up to a new email from Jay. From eight time zones away, he times his daily message to arrive with the sunrise. Kathy has saved all of them in a special file on her computer to later print.
When daughter Hollon turned 15, she texted him just after she earned her driver’s permit.
For son Henry’s 11th birthday in the spring, Jay Skyped with all fifth graders at Crestline Elementary.
But there has been tangible communication as well.
Kathy has mailed him jars of Peter Pan peanut butter, his favorite, after she learned that the store in Kuwait only sells Jif.
Students from all the grades at Crestline have posted letters for Jay via postal service, and he has written them back.
Jay also arranged to have an American flag flown in Kuwait in honor of Crestline students and one in honor of Boy Scout Troop 28 at Independent Presbyterian Church. After they flew there, Jay shipped them back to Birmingham with a certificate, and both are now on display at Crestline.
Jay said his life in Kuwait looks like the movie Groundhog Day, where he manages the day-to-day operations of the one-star command’s legal office at Camp Arifjan and serves as the administrative law and operational law officer for the command.
“Unlike at home where you are constantly going from event to event, we are able to focus on projects and missions without having to also figure in carpool, cooking dinner, getting kids to school and so on,” he said. “My wife has to do all that, and I will be the first to admit she has the harder job.”
His days have been spent in an office answering legal questions and advising staff on legal matters, and his meals all come cafeteria-style at the camp dining facility. He said the food is “okay, but nothing to write home about.”
That routine will shift this month when he returns home.
After eating Golden Rule barbecue, his favorite, Jay looks forward to resuming day-to-day life, practicing real estate law and spending time with his family and close friends at St. Francis.
But perhaps most of all, Jay anticipates sitting in a rocking chair on the porch at his family’s “happy place,” a cabin in Mentone, and watching the sun set through the trees. He knows there will be green there.