It all fits together

This past weekend I attended my third annual reunion with my best Navy friends – girls that I was stationed with fifteen years ago at Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron 15 (HM-15) which was located at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, TX at the time (it has since moved to Norfolk, VA.) 

Some backstory on my journey to HM-15: I initially joined the Navy with the hopes of becoming a Navy JO (journalist.) I liked to write (is it obvious that I still do?)  I also was the editor-in-chief of my high school newspaper and loved it, so I wanted to continue writing in that capacity. I was told by my recruiter that the JO rate was closed, and I would have to join as something else.  Okay. I still wanted to join the Navy, so I asked the career counselor assisting me at MEPS (military entrance processing center) if he had any ideas of something exciting. “Aircrew.” He told me. “Sign me up!” I said. It sounded VERY exciting. I was game.  Months later I found myself in boot camp, set to be an aircrewman.  I graduated boot camp and was sent to Pensacola, Florida immediately following for aircrew training.  Well, JO didn’t work out, and aircrew wouldn’t either, not for me.  I’d arrived to Pensacola after boot camp with tendonitis in both feet and was deemed NPQ’d (not physically qualified) for aircrew training.  Okay. Another setback. No problem. I sat in front of another career counselor after my NPQ paperwork was received and he informed me of a couple of aviation rates available.  I could choose one of those, or go into the fleet undesignated, which he certainly did NOT recommend. It would be wiser to choose a rate, he said.  I heard what he was saying, but for some reason I couldn’t identify then, I was unable to settle on a rate.  I would go to sea duty as an undesignated airman, I decided. The career counselor shook his head as he wrote on some paperwork in front of him and just said, “Okay, then. Undesignated it is.” Then I was instructed to create a wish list with my first three choices of where I would like to be assigned.  I turned it in, and waited.  I can still clearly see the First Class Petty Officer holding a clipboard as I stood in a muster line a couple of weeks later yelling out, “Kolster – HM-15.” My orders were in. “Where is HM-15, Petty Officer?” I asked her. “Corpus Christi, Texas,” she answered.  My third choice. Oh well, I thought. I arrived at HM-15 in September of 2003.  I can say with certainty now that it was exactly where I was meant to be.

Fast forward to the present.  These Navy friends of mine – we now live in Austin, Houston, Denver and Portland.  Two years ago, we met in Panama City, Florida.  Last year we went back to where it all began in Corpus Christi, Texas.  And this past weekend we met at the home of one of the girls in Portland, Oregon. 

Panama City, Florida, Summer 2017

Corpus Christi, TX (in front of the old HM-15 hangar!)Summer 2018

Multnomah Falls, Oregon June 2019

It was my first time to Oregon and this Texas girl was nervous it would be too cold for my taste, even in June.  But it was beautiful!  We ended up being blessed with the perfect weather.  We ate (a LOT of amazing food), we hiked, we went whale watching and we met up with two other HM-15 girls the last evening who live near enough by for a drive up.

We reminisced and I thought back to that group of young sailors we were then.  All in our twenties, all carefree and mortgage free.  I told one of the girls “can you imagine going back to HM-15, those days we were there, and having someone tell you that we’d meet up like this all of these years later?” She laughed, and then said the thought was going to make her cry.  I pondered that for a while – what I would have thought then about my life now.  And what a relief it would have been to know that I would stay in touch with these friends who felt like family to me.  Friends I not only worked with at HM-15, but who I lived with in the barracks.

Would the younger me believe who I would become? Wife to a man I met while serving in Corpus – mom to his six children – a published author who never did get to become a Navy JO but who would return to writing anyway? I probably would not have believed that back then.

All of this looking back has me seeing all of these puzzle pieces fitting together in my life in a way only God could have orchestrated. He put the military on my heart when I was 18 for a reason.  He put me in Corpus for a reason.  He’s paved this way for me that at times hasn’t always made sense to me – but looking in the rearview mirror now it is crystal clear.

I was supposed to go to HM-15.  I was supposed to build those friendships that have stood the test of time (and distance!)  I was supposed to share those times with them and am blessed to have the reunions now so we can all be nostalgic together.

I was supposed to meet my husband there and begin what has been the greatest adventure of my life since marrying him and beginning our family.

I am happy to go on these getaways with my Navy girls and happy to remember who we all were back then and laugh at the memories. Happier still am I to return home to my family and the life I have today.

I’m so grateful for it all.  Thank God for the paths placed in front of me (to include the detours) and for the one I walk on now.

Until next time . . .