With Thanksgiving Day past and the rest of the holidays close behind, my thoughts often return to my younger days in the military and the holidays. Now back in the day when iron men served on steel ships, there was no internet or cell phones. If you were stationed on a ship and in port, your best bet for communications with your loved ones was the line of payphone booths that lined the docks.

If you were at sea, your only means was the good old United States Postal Service. If you were in another country pretty much the same thing. Navy mail being sent back to the states could take months or years or never make it at all, sometimes.

In addition to a very hard and dangerous profession, I always have found one of the most difficult parts of serving in the military was the isolation from family and loved ones. I think it was a particularly specific part of serving on ships in the Navy often times at sea for months at a time, and any readers who have been there done that will vouch for the difficulty of life at sea for extended periods of time. I can't imagine how the submarine sailors did it!.

I personally found the worst time was around the holidays. After putting in a long workday and standing some sort of watch, the Navy is particularly good at keeping everybody busy at sea, I would finally settle into my bunk and put my headphones on and fire up my Walkman cassette player (younger readers may have to Google that) and think about everybody back home and wonder what they were doing and wonder if they were wondering what I was doing.

The military always puts out a good spread of food for the service members, but it's not the same sitting at a table and the mess decks surrounded by other service people as it is sitting at home with your family.

Watching the little kids make a mess, the cats and dogs cruising under the table begging for scraps, chewing a big mouthful of food then catching your siblings attention and opening your mouth and showing them the food(guilty). Even a little food flying through the air.

Having a whole bunch of family and friends crammed into the house and everybody rushing to the front windows every time another car pulls in the driveway, while you observe Morris, the cat on the counter in the kitchen licking the turkey that just came out of the oven, and your sister threatening you if you tell anyone!.

For me personally Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, the commercialism of Christmas totally turns me off. Thanksgiving is all about giving thanks, so when you are with your friends and family this holiday season, please take a moment and give thanks to the thousands of military people all over the world who are not with their friends and family.

James Taber is an occasional contributor to The Bridge Weekly. He lives in Woodsville, NH.

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