ABOARD THE USS JOHN C. STENNIS, off the coast of Mexico — Aidan Daniels' journey toward his father began a little more than a week ago in the airport in Seattle, where he boarded a commercial flight headed over the Pacific. Six hours later, he landed in Honolulu and looked up into the eyes of his father, Lt. Cmdr. William Daniels, a Navy cryptologist. He had not seen him in seven months.

Aidan is 8 years old. He was soon to start one of the most unusual family reunions related to U.S. military service: a high-seas passage aboard a warship on its last leg home.

The Bremerton-based nuclear aircraft carrier John C. Stennis had returned to U.S. waters after more than six months at sea, during which its aircraft flew the final Navy flight in the long war in Iraq, more than 1,000 combat sorties over Afghanistan and high-seas counterpiracy patrols in the North Arabian Sea.

The shared cruise pointed to how pride in service and deep stress can become entwined in military life. The sailors on the Stennis see themselves as one of the United States' premier military units. But they realize that their ship is something else. It is also a globe-roaming office that separates families for months on end, carrying young women and men to war while saddling parents, partners and children with loneliness and strain.

Now they were almost back. As Aidan fell into his father's embrace, nearly 1,100 relatives of other sailors were streaming through Honolulu. Soon they all boarded the Stennis at a pier in Pearl Harbor for the weeklong crossing of the Pacific to San Diego, through rough seas and stiff winds.

Known as a Tiger Cruise, such journeys are a quiet staple of the Navy, a variation on the meet-your-returning-sailor-in-port homecomings.

On the Stennis, with relatives packed from bow to stern, the ship sailed from the warmth and aqua-green blue of Oahu into rough weather. As the days passed, the guests were offered continual tours of the ship's spaces and lessons on how sailors work, from the rules for prisoners in the brig to the activities in the space beneath the waves where bombs are stored and assembled.

The ship provided daytime sports and evening blues concerts in the hangar bay, an air show on the second day out of Hawaii and, one night, a dinner of steak and lobster as the carrier rose and fell on the sea.

As the ship closed the distance to the mainland, flying fish broke the surface and glided downwind, escaping the path of the bow.

Those who have sailed on such cruises say they are adventures and become shared moments in families' lives, often remembered for decades. Those who organize them say something more important happens. Families that have been separated become reacquainted and begin to sort through the rough rhythms of returning home.

Saturday evening, on the bridge of the Stennis, the ship's commanding officer, Capt. Ronald Reis, talked children through what he does from his captain's chair. He explained the instrumentation. He allowed two boys to steer the vessel through 10-degree turns. He explained the radar images on a screen in front of his chair.

He discussed how the ship and its aircraft can fight. And he discussed the dangers on the deck below, where crew were moving aircraft, readying for flights the next day. He pointed to a digital anemometer. The bridge was swept by winds blowing at 46 knots. The seas were gray and lumpy, and they surged with bright white spay.

"We are worried about the sailors down there," he said.

As the boys left, he spoke of a larger set of thoughts behind these at-sea reunions. "Let the healing begin," he said.