Mother's Day offers peace to mom home from war
By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer
'AHUIMANU — Renise Reyes has been a mom for nine years, but today will be a Mother's Day she'll savor for a long time.
Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser
For starters, the Hawai'i Air National Guard airman won't be in Saudi Arabia shouldering an M-16 rifle during a war. And she won't have to worry, as she did for nearly five months, about how her children are faring back home.
Renise Reyes, a senior airman with the Hawai'i Air National Guard who recently returned from Saudi Arabia, will savor Mother's Day at her grandmother's house with her daughters, clockwise from top: Vanessa, 9, Shaianne, 6, and Alexis, 3.
About how they spent Christmas morning or how they celebrated Vanessa's ninth birthday and Shaianne's sixth birthday. Or how 3-year-old Alexis was doing in preschool.
That was tougher duty for a single mother to pull than anything she had to do while deployed to Prince Sultan Air Base.
But Reyes, a senior airman with the guard's 154th Security Forces Squadron, is home for Mother's Day.
Nothing could be sweeter.
She and her three daughters will be at Grandma Watanabe's home tonight in Manoa and, if Reyes is lucky, digging into a plate of shrimp tempura.
"Nobody makes shrimp tempura like my grandma," she said.
Reyes has spent a lot of time away from home since she joined the Hawai'i Air National Guard in August 2001.
Six weeks of basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Three months of technical school, again at Lackland. A deployment to Qatar for three months. And a second deployment to Saudi Arabia from Dec. 15 to April 23. She worked 14-hour days doing flight-line security and law enforcement at the busy air base.
Reyes family photo
"It's hard," Reyes said in the kitchen of her parents' home where she and her daughters live. "Everyone around you is thinking of the same things, too."
Renise Reyes worked 14-hour days doing flight-line security and law enforcement in Saudi Arabia.
Home, of course.
Before the war, they were allowed one 15 minute call a week and unlimited e-mail. After the shooting began, the phone calls stopped.
It was hard on her children.
"When I talked to them on the phone, my middle one would say 'Where are you?' and 'What are you doing?' " Reyes said. "Well, you can't tell them. I told them it was like a big beach with a lot of sand and no water."
That helped, but they still wanted her home.
"My middle one would say 'Tell your boss to send you home already. Tell them you're done.' " Reyes said.
She could not have done it without her parents' help, Reyes said.
"My mom was a big help," she said. "She paid the bills and filed my income taxes for me."
Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser
Her parents took the children to school, corrected homework, bathed them, drove them to after-school hula performances and choir. There were birthday parties to arrange and birthday cupcakes to send to school.
Renise Reyes, spending time with daughter Alexis at their home in Kane'ohe, says she's been back home for two weeks and she's still trying to remember everything her children are doing.
Everything a mother would do, they did.
It was a lifestyle that her father, Roy Watanabe, had forgotten about.
"For us, it was like starting over," he said. "It was like having young kids again. I thought we were done with that. It was a busy schedule."
His wife, Joyce, said that if the girls' other grandparents had not helped over Christmas and Easter vacations, she doesn't know if she would have survived.
Now her daughter is busy trying to catch up.
As Reyes prepared to pick up her two oldest children from 'Ahuimanu Elementary the other day, she pondered the irony. Even when she was here, she was working so hard that she couldn't always be there.
"It's funny," she said. "Now that I'm home I'm the mom and I have to drop them off and at the school they say 'Oh, you're the mother.' "
She's been back two weeks and is still trying to remember everything they're doing.
"My mom signed them up for hula," she said, carrying Alexis up a flight of school steps. "She told me this, but when you're in the desert, you don't think about it."
And there are more important things to think about at home. In the school walkway, Vanessa and Shaianne greet her with 100-watt smiles.
"Mommy, mommy," Shaianne shouted as she ran to Reyes, careful not to drop a small potted plant.
"It's for Mother's Day," she said.
Then, in a whisper as soft as tissue, she said she has another gift for her mother, a book of coupons.
"It's stuff we're gonna do for her, like chores and stuff," she said.
Not just for Mother's Day.
For every day.
Reach Mike Gordon at 525-8012 or mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.
