A soldier returns ... and his mom hopes for meaning

The cavernous hangar on the airfield at Fort Campbell, Ky., echoes with the voices of families and friends, each waiting for a soldier – theirs – to return from a year in Iraq. In the bleachers along the side walls, hand-lettered posters tell the story: "We love you, Daddy!" "My hero!" "We missed you!"

My husband and I are sitting in one of the top rows. We flew from San Diego this morning so we could say to our son in person, "Welcome home."

The crowd quiets a little in anticipation, then erupts in a roar of pure joy as the hangar's massive metal doors are slid open. There in the sunlight, some 200 soldiers, moments ago on a North American airlines 767 charter plane, stand together in formation as they have these many months, then march inside.

"There he is! There's Roman!" my husband says, pointing to a tall young man in the second row. That soldier looks straight ahead at first, then turns his head to scan the crowd, spots us waving, widens his eyes, and smiles, shyly it seems.

But reunions will have to wait a while longer – for a speech and an invocation and, according to the program I'm holding, two whole verses of "The Army Song."

When Roman looks up in our direction, I wonder if he also sees, as I do, all who are with him and us in spirit at this moment: His sister and her husband, who are back in northern California. The relatives who sent him care packages of peanut butter and homemade cookies, mixed nuts, and funny DVDs. Neighbors who added his name to prayer lists at their churches. Strangers who came to know him through essays I'd written, and who e-mailed me to say, "Sgt. Diaz and the men of Bravo Company are in my thoughts and prayers." Friends who wept at the news last week that Roman was, after two deployments totaling 27 months, coming home for good from this too-long war.

The 10 soldiers from Roman's unit who came home this past year in flag-draped boxes are among us, too, as are their wounded comrades, more than 30, recovering now in the States. Every heart in this hangar holds the families and the far-flung communities of all those men. The actual head count here totals, I'd say, somewhere near 500, but thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions even, sit shoulder-to-shoulder in these bleachers.

My father, Roman's grandfather, is here beside me, even though he was laid to rest in a veteran's cemetery 18 years ago, when Roman was in kindergarten. In World War II, Dad landed on the beaches of Normandy, fought through to Paris, and at the war's end, saw – close-up – the horrors of the Holocaust in places like Bergen-Belsen. My dad, one of the most decent human beings I have ever known, would say about those experiences only a rueful "War is hell."

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