WILTON – Sgt. Karen Corbin smiled as she watched her three sons’ brotherly antics as she sat in her living room.
“This is awesome,” Corbin said of her children.
Just hearing their voices talking back and forth about what is going on, she said last week, is “awesome.”
Corbin is trying to get her bearings, taking one day at a time, as she adjusts to being home from the Iraq war.
Her sons have grown taller in her eyes, Corbin said, though the eldest, Chris Veilleux, 16, doesn’t agree. He’s still 5-foot, 10 inches, he said. His brothers, Cory Veilleux, 15, and Carl Bigelow, 11, readily admit to being taller.
Cory Veilleux, a Jay High School student along with his brother, said he was “loving” having his mother home.
His brothers echoed his sentiment.
They worried about her, especially, when they heard about the attack on the Camp Marez mess tent in Mosul in December, Chris Veilleux said.
Corbin, a member of the 133rd National Guard unit, went to her quarters that day instead of the dining hall for dinner. The former mason-carpenter transferred from Company C to the Headquarter Support Co. as a cook while overseas. Her duties included coordinating delivery of water and food supplies to soldiers.
Corbin said she cried when her teenage sons met her in Augusta upon arrival home earlier this month. Each one had a red rose and a balloon. Cory carried a red, white and blue one and Chris a Garfield balloon. The latter’s girlfriend Brenda Allen, also greeted her with a flower.
Corbin cried. Cory said he almost did.
The older boys live with their father in Jay and the youngest one with their mother in Wilton.
When Corbin met her youngest at the airport from his return flight from Virginia where he had stayed with Corbin’s family, she was the one carrying a balloon for him and a female Teddy Bear soldier with Corbin’s name on the pocket.
There were tears then, too.
It’s been tough, Corbin said.
Not only on her and her children but on her mother and sister who took care of her youngest while she was away. Carl had to leave Wilton part way through the fourth grade and start school in Virginia.
His mother promises once she takes care of a few things, she’s going to Virginia to stay with him and then they’ll return to Maine.
Once back in Wilton, Carl will re-enroll in SAD 9, and she’ll finish up her college degree in business at the University of Maine at Augusta. That’s what she was working on before she was deployed.
In the meantime, she is happy to put away her “cammies” and to wear civilian clothes again.
She is also thankful to have lived through it all, she said.
“You go over there and you hope you’re coming back, but you never know,” she said.
This summer she plans to travel with her sons, maybe going to some skate parks, golfing places and amusement parks.
“We’ll take our time and enjoy it,” she said.
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