Sitting in the warming morning as I thought about the day ahead of me, I looked across the bay at a lone carrier still at the base, On the news the night before, it was mentioned that five ships had left the base earlier that Friday. Imagining five more carriers lined up along that point of land I could easily see why it was nicknamed “carrier row.”

My thoughts turned to the woman in line near me at Midway airport in Chicago. As we stood in line to board our plane, I heard this lady say “My son's shipping out.” Glancing around I could not tell to whom she spoke due in some part to the large size of the fellow right in front of me. My guess was she spoke to no one in particular. As I tried to pick the right words out for a response, this large guy picked up the ball and was able to speak intelligently about the Marines in which this woman's son served.

I stared across the bay again later in the day from a Greek restaurant. In order to allow a larger crowd to have my table, I finished my meal at one end of a table where an elderly couple was finishing up their meal. They go to San Diego twice a year, once in January for some sort of special olympics, and make a point of eating at this restaurant. As we talked about this and that the three of us determined that the “five ships” were not five carriers, but one carrier group consisting of one carrier and four support ships. That made much more sense.