Three weeks ago, after kissing his feisty wiener dog Fergi on
the head and newlywed bride on the lips, Mark Cuthbert laced up his
boots, threw his green duffle bag over his shoulder and left for
work.
Three weeks ago, after kissing his feisty wiener dog Fergi on the head and newlywed bride on the lips, Mark Cuthbert laced up his boots, threw his green duffle bag over his shoulder and left for work.
Every afternoon since, Fergi has kept watch out the front window for him to arrive home from a long day, but this time he won’t walk back up the driveway for eight months.
A 1st Lieutenant in the United States Air Force, Mark, 25, volunteered to head with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) to Iraq. Most meteorologists in the Air Force have state side jobs, but Mark felt compelled to head to the desert with the Army.
“If I don’t go and do something useful with my time in, I won’t feel like I’ve done what I can for this country,” he said as he tried to explain why he volunteered to his family.
Born and raised in the Chicago area, Mark’s future plans never involved the military before college. When he was a little kid, he taught the other neighborhood children how to jump over their baby gates. While on a family vacation during high school, Mark and a friend attempted to buy a bear from a national park.
When he was a senior in high school, Mark wore a clown wig and rainbow suspenders in his class portrait just to tick off his parents. He was the captain of his football team in high school, but never watches the pros on TV.
While attending the University of Chicago, Mark joined ROTC with the United States Air Force. Before commissioning, Mark double-majored in math and physics and dreamt of one day becoming a well-respected physicist. After graduation in 2002, he began a three-year path with the military that took him down to Florida, then across the country to Monterey, back down south to Tennessee and now thousands of miles away to the Middle East.
How a pink-cheeked, blue-eyed Irish guy from Southside Chicago is going to withstand the 130 degree weather is beyond me.
During the past three years, Mark has gained training that he has taken with him, but he has also gathered other things in his life that he had to leave behind.
As he lay in bed the night before he deployed, thousands of thoughts ran through his mind. Faced with the unknown, Mark rambled off what to get people for Christmas, that he’d want “Amazing Grace” at his funeral if something happened, and he made his wife promise that Fergi would get at least one spoonful of peanut butter a week.
After seeing Mark off on a humid, cloudy Saturday, I packed up my things and the dog, hopped on a plane and in my pocket when I arrived home in California was a United Airlines napkin with my husband’s requests scribbled on it.
While some people who were born and raised in one place dread moving home, I have realized that while Mark is deployed, Gilroy is the only place in the world that I would want to be.
A walk on the levee with my best friends since my Brownell Elementary days, or a comforting meal with my mom and dad at Victoria’s after an afternoon of cradling my head in my hands is what will get me through knowing my other half is in a war zone.
As a writer, it’s my job to take situations of different natures and put them into words. But trying to explain the feelings of watching the most important person in your life board a plane and head into the land we see each night on the news, full of hate, uncertainty and disarray, is impossible.
My godmother once told me “Your parents have given you roots and wings” which couldn’t be more true with my life. And during this time of uncertainty, my wings have brought me home.
Christine Tognetti is back home working as a lifestyles writer while her husband Mark is away. She can be reached at ct*******@**********rs.com or (408) 846-0103.
