Independence in 2026

This year freedom hits differently for me.

No longer something I casually notice.

My definition of "freedom" has changed. Once thinking it meant to come and go as I please because I can, now I feel it means being safe in a simple and familiar space. We all have beliefs and things for which we stand strongly. The true question is, when faced with those beliefs, would you really risk death for them? That's what our enlisted personnel do, every day.

I have always stopped to thank our servicewomen and men in the airport when I see them, offering a soda or a bag of chips, hoping they're going home and praying them safety if they're returning to duty. When I see a war hero hat, I always thank them as well. I love seeing the smile widen on the faces of family members of older veterans, knowing that the work of their hero is remembered and the country they served is not completely full of division and advocacy for agendas.

I have also noticed a faraway look pass over the eyes of our soldiers when I thank them. As the memory drawer opens in them, for what they have seen and what they have yet to endure.

I am not a refugee, I do not want to be treated as such, and I would rather lock that repatriation flight into my box of mementos and walk away.

However, this Independence Day, my freedom means a little more to me than it ever did. Home. Safely. And to be safe.

In March, I was offered a relief flight out of the city I love so much. I am not ready to talk about that experience, but within a 6 hour time frame, I left everything familiar and returned "home". Extracted in the middle of the night, like a fire victim escaping burning with literally the clothes on their back.

A 6 hour ordeal that remains in my focus, I think about this flight every step of these days. Especially all those working on the Task Forces involved and Regional Security and Foreign Service officers with quick thinking, emails and phone calls, document checks and manifest registrations. Through designation of a family contact in the event of an emergency and handing out Coca-Cola cans manufactured in Atlanta on a turbulent flight monitored by fighter jets, there was one officer who kept me calm.

I left Qatar that night confused, uncertain, unclear, with hundreds of unknowns, and what that all meant to me came to the surface in shaky hands and feet. Walking to the plane, in the dark of night and the silence of a deserted airport with a cleared gates and runways, I was clutching onto Fred the bear.

One kind voice with a handsome face said, "Don't worry, Kathleen, we're going to get you home."

He checked on me twice on the flight. A smile, a nod, a glance at Fred. On his final walk through the plane as we descended into the relief airport, I caught a velcro patch with his name. It wasn't there before, and he wore glasses then. Otherwise, everyone involved had been nameless. No insignias, no lanyards, no phones, no paperwork. No velcro patches with names.

Upon landing, he was nowhere to be found.

I wanted to say thank you to him, yet he disappeared into that night.

Half a joke, I also wanted to say, "feel free to look me up when this is over."

I entered the arrival center in the relief country, sat down, and cried. Bawling my eyes out on the phone to my sister for how scary war can be. How this was all surreal. How I had 6 hours to decide my life. What I left behind. What I grabbed in my bag. What I might return to when this nightmare is over.

Half a joke, maybe this will never be over.

Maybe I will meet his eyes again in a National Mall concert or the Metrorail or in an airport passing through... and maybe the internet will be kind and help me find him again. Internet, please do your thing.

To Officer Wordell, and the entire repatriation flight crew, thank you for your service.

May you all be gifted with and carry onward the spirit of freedom, of being safe, and existing.

Sláinte.