Day Sixty Seven: Until I Get Home

Last week, I was sent a link to the facebook page for US Army Combat Medic Zac Charles, who is a singer/songwriter currently stationed in Afghanistan.  I fell in love with his song "Until I Get Home".  Check out my latest slideshow, set to Zac's beautiful song, by clicking on the link below.  Then go "like" Zac's facebook page, "Support US Army Medic Zac Charles".

Day Sixty Six: 300

Today marks the 66th day of my husband's deployment.  Which means we now have less than 300 days left to go. That's pretty significant, I think.  I could be overly optimistic and say that their deployment won't last the full 365 days...I've heard rumors.  Or, I could acknowledge the possibility that they might wind up staying longer than a year...I've heard horror stories.  But I choose to go by what it says on my husband's orders, 365 days.  That way I don't get my hopes up too much or get too depressed.

In less than 300 days, this nightmare will be over.  My husband will be back in the states, where he doesn't have people trying to kill him on a daily basis.  He'll be safe and have days off and get to eat real food again.  I'll be able to call him and text him, and hop on a plane and fly a few hours to see him. I'll be able to breathe again and sleep again and function like a normal human being again.  I'll be able to laugh without tears looming right under the surface, and he'll be able to sleep in a real bed again.

Things will still be hard.  He'll still be stuck in Texas and I'll be here in Michigan.  We'll still miss each other all the time.  We won't get to see each other every day or sleep in the same bed every night.  He'll have his life there, and I'll have mine here at home.  We'll both be counting down the days until we're together again.  But still...Texas is better than Iraq.  Almost everywhere is better than Iraq.

I know we still have a long way to go, and that surviving the rest of this deployment won't be easy for us.  I read this somewhere once, and it's definitely true.  "Missing someone gets easier every day, because even though it's one day further from the last time you saw each other, it's one day closer to the next time you will."  So despite the fact that my husband's deployment is far from over, I will face each day knowing that in less than 300 days, it will be.  And that's a good thing.

Day Sixty Five: Pink

Today, I won what in some marriages might have been a major battle.  I told my husband I wanted to turn one of the rooms in our house pink...and he said okay.  I did wait until he was just about to go to bed to ask him, so he may have only been half listening, or maybe too tired to care enough to protest.  And it is just a small room.  The half bath on our first floor is the smallest room in our home, actually.  Still, I expected him to put up at least a little bit of a fight.

I had my argument all prepared.  We have an entire storage container full of light pink and army green decorations left over from the wedding, with nowhere to put them.  The rest of our house is decorated in grays and blacks and dark blues.  Pink wouldn't really make a good accent color anywhere else.  And I need a little pink in my life.  I deserve a little pink in my life.

It's funny, because I always hated pink when I was younger, even as a teenager.  In fact, I bet you'd be hard pressed to find any pictures of me dressed in pink once I was old enough to start picking out my own clothes.  It wasn't until I became the mom of two very boyish boys that I started to appreciate the value of pink.  Marrying a football loving, Nascar watching Soldier who also has two boys just made my love of all things pink and girly that much stronger.

Still, being outnumbered five to one in the epic battle of boys vs. girls, I limit the pink to my own personal belongings...my purse, my phone cover, my clothes, even sometimes the streaks in my hair.  This was the first time I'd thought about subjecting my houseful of boys to pink home decor, and I expected to be met with resistance.  Instead what I got was, "I'm sure that'll be cute, babe."  So I decided to press my luck.  "And I was thinking about maybe pink curtains in the living room?"  This time I got the "no" I was expecting.  "Can I redo our room again?  Maybe black and pink?"  Considering that it's been less than six months since the last time I completely redecorated our bedroom, I wasn't even slightly surprised when he said "Umm...that's a negative."  I gave up.  "Okay, then.  Pink bathroom it is."

I don't want to change the house too much while my husband's gone.  I want him to come back to the same home he left.  I want things to be where he left them.  I want him to feel like this is still his home, no matter how long he's gone.  That's why, in the corner of our otherwise immaculate dining room, there's a pile of boxes full of unopened dishes from my bridal shower, collecting dust.

They're waiting for my husband to come home and take care of them, like he said he would.  When I was rattling off the list of gifts we got during a phone conversation the day after the shower, I made a comment about how we'd gotten almost all the dishes we'd registered for and I had no idea what to do with them.  It was just a few weeks before the wedding, and I was overwhelmed and stressed and had way too much on my plate.  "Don't worry about it, babe, I'll take care of it when I come home," he told me.  Of course, when he got home, just a week before we got married, we were way too busy to worry about things like reorganizing the kitchen.  There were errands to run and plans to make and people to visit.  There was the rehearsal dinner, the wedding, the reception, the honeymoon, and then he was gone again.  And the boxes remained untouched.

More than once in the four months since my husband left home, I've thought about unpacking the boxes myself, washing the dishes, and reorganizing the cupboards.  It wouldn't take long.  But I've gotten used to having them there in the corner, collecting dust.  I like thinking "My husband's going to take care of those when he comes home" every time I walk past them.  I like thinking about the way he'll smile and shake his head in disbelief when he sees them still sitting right where he left them, because he didn't think I'd actually leave them there that long.

It's important to me for him to know that these things are waiting for him.  That home is waiting for him.  That I am waiting for him.  Some things are bound to change while he's gone.  The kids will grow, my hair will change (no less than a dozen times), our lives will change as this deployment makes it's mark on all of us.  But some things will remain the same.  Like my love for him.  And the pile of boxes in the corner of our dining room.  And our soon-to-be pink bathroom.

Day Sixty Four: Home

When news broke today about an AWOL U.S. Soldier being arrested in a 'terror plot' targeting Fort Hood, the first words out of my mouth were "Thank God."  And not "Thank God my husband's not there right now," either.  My husband deals with the threat of terrorism on a much bigger scale than some idiot Private with a grudge on a daily basis.  Yes, I probably would have freaked out about this whole thing a little more if he were there right now, but I'd rather have him in Texas than Iraq anyday, even today.

My first thought was "Thank God they caught him."  Thank God they stopped him before he hurt or killed anyone.  I have friends there.  I have "family" there.  In a weird way, Fort Hood has become kind of like my second home.  It was a strange realization for me, how attached I've become to this place that I hate most of the time.  I hate that my husband's stuck there, so far away from his real family and his real home.  But at the same time....

Since my husband deployed, I've made a lot of new friends at Fort Hood, most of whom I've never met face to face, but am so excited to see the next time I travel to Texas.  They're the wives of my husband's "battle buddies", the families of the other soldiers in the 1-5 Cav.  While our husbands live together and fight together in Iraq, we are holding down the fort here at home.  (No pun intended.)  We keep each other sane, calm each others' fears, vent to  each other, confide in each other, look out for each other...even though we're thousands of miles apart. 

It's a strange thing, having your lifeline be a network of people you would have never met under any other circumstance.  There's an undeniable bond forming between us as we struggle through this deployment.  We're fighting a war together, much like our husbands are doing overseas.  While they're fighting in the war on terror, we're battling fear and loneliness and sadness and the entire range of emotions an Army wife goes through during her husband's deployment.  And we're doing it together.  The thought that someone wanted to hurt my friends, my family, my "battle buddies"...it freaks me out and pisses me off all at the same time.

I'm not a huge fan of Fort Hood, to be quite honest.  By the time my trip is over, I'm always more than ready to go home every time, I just wish I could take my husband with me.  But in spite of myself, I got used to the sound of the horns going off in the morning, and so whether I'm here in Michigan talking to my husband on the phone, or lying in bed next to him in Texas, I always declare a quiet, sleepy "Charge!" when they're finished.  I hate having to dig my military ID out of my purse when we go through the security gates, but I still giggle every time the guard says "Weeeelcome to The Great Place!"  I can't stand the dry heat during the day, sometimes it literally takes my breath away (and not in a good way), but nothing beats the Texas sky at night, especially when there's a full moon.

As much as I never wanted to be a Soldier's wife, or spend a whole lot of time anywhere that's considered "down south" (especially on a military base), or get overly attached to too many of the people who are a part of my husband's "Army life", I realized today that it's too late.  These people are our family.  This place, at least for now, is our second home.  And when someone threatens that...well, in the words of my favorite reality TV mob princess: "When it comes to my family, I will go to f*cking war.  And you better have a lot of motherf*cking soldiers."  'Cuz I know I do...

Day Sixty Three: Little Moments

Tonight was the first night of little league playoffs for my oldest son's baseball team.  We finally got a break from the scorching heat, and the game started late due to storms earlier in the evening, so it was a nice night under the stadium lights, cuddled up on the bleachers with my eight year old watching the game.  And then it started raining.  Hard.  We had an umbrella, but it wasn't much defense against the giant raindrops that were coming at us from all angles. 

The umpire called the game when the lightning started, but by then the field was a giant mud puddle, the players were slipping and sliding all over the place, the bleachers were slippery, and the crowd was soaked.  As we ran to the car, water dripping from our hair, our clothes, my cute summer sandals sliding off my feet, all I could do was laugh.  It was one of those little moments that's just so ridiculously awful, you have to enjoy it.  It was one of those times that makes me miss my husband more than ever.

I hate that he's missing the big moments, the holidays, the milestones, and just time with his family in general, but it's the little moments when I feel his absence the strongest.  Like this morning, when the boys and I spent an hour looking for my keys, only to find them in the trash can (I have no idea how they got there), and I could almost see my husband standing in the doorway, shaking his head with his arms folded across his big strong chest, trying to pretend he's not as amused as I am.  I would walk up with a huge, satisfied grin on my face, dangling my keys in front of me, and say "I found them."  He would laugh and wrap his arms around me and tell me he loves me, despite the fact that I'm a hot mess.

I miss having him here to order pizza, promising me that was what he wanted anyway, when I burn dinner.  I miss the way he laughs at me when I have a road rage attack and start cursing like a Soldier.  I miss walking into a room and seeing him and the boys doing even the simplest thing together, like watching tv or working on homework.  It's not often that I have my entire world in the same room at the same time, and when it happens, it takes my breath away.  (Right now, I'd settle for having them all in the same country.)

There are so many little moments during the day just aren't the same without my husband here.  I still tell him about all of them, no matter how stupid or embarrassing the stories are, but it doesn't make his absence any easier to bare.  Luckily, for every little moment my husband misses, I have the memories of all the little moments we've had together, and the knowledge that we have a lifetime of funny, messy, unpredictable little moments ahead of us to lessen the hurt.

Day Sixty Two: Capes vs. Combat Boots

Some heroes wear capes.  Mine wears combat boots.

Day Sixty One: Holding My Breath

Road construction drives me crazy.  Tonight, in an attempt to avoid one of the biggest orange-barrelled catastrophes in the area, I took a detour while running errands after work.  As I sat through my third turn at the same red light along with dozens of other drivers who thought they'd found a quicker alternate route, I started counting the wrought iron bars on the fence surrounding Delta Center Cemetary.  I remember when I was little, I used to hold my breath every time we drove past a cemetary, trying to keep the ghosts from stealing my soul.  (I was a weird kid.)  But as those cemeteries started filling up with people I knew: teachers, neighbors, friends' parents, friends, it stopped being funny.

Delta Center Cemetary was the one place where I didn't know anyone who'd been buried there.  And then I remembered...there was someone there I knew.  Or knew of, at least.  He was the son of a customer at the bank I worked at when I was the young mother of a toddler, with a baby on the way.  I remember the stories she used to tell us every week when she came in to do her banking about her son's life in the Air Force, and how proud she was of him.  I remember talking to him on the phone when he was stationed at his military base, gathering information to help him get a loan for the motorcycle he thought he so desperately needed.  And I remember sitting in front of the television one night, watching the 11:00 news as I was rocking my newborn son, who refused to sleep, and seeing a story about a local hero who'd died in a helicopter crash during a rescue mission in Afghanistan.  I didn't recognize the picture, but I knew the name instantly.  My heart broke for his mother, who was always so full of love and pride when she talked to me about her son. 

A tear rolled down my cheek as I pulled my own son closer to me.  He looked at me with the most innocent blue eyes and I put my lips to his forehead, breathing in his wonderful baby scent as I said, "Don't you ever, ever join the military, bubba."  Holding my baby boy, who was so full of life and love and hope and innocence, this world of war and violence and danger and death that had claimed yet another victim seemed so far away.  Little did I know how close it would get someday.

I still remember the last time I saw her, about a year after her son's death.  She was depositing money into the memorial scholarship fund that had been set up in her son's name.  She was just as pretty as ever, although there was a deep sadness in her eyes that hadn't been there before.  She was still as talkative and personable as she'd always been.  But there was something different about her, too.  She seemed...stronger.

I tried to imagine what would become of me if anything ever happened to one of my boys, and just the thought of it brought tears to my eyes.  I couldn't live without either of them.  So how was she not only living, but thriving?  I remember thinking that it must take a special type of person to love someone in the military.  That military spouses, children, and parents had to be cut from a different cloth than the rest of us.  A stronger, more resilient cloth.  

When my husband and I first started dating last year, he told me about a good friend of his from high school who had died years ago in Afghanistan, a Senior Airman in the United States Air Force.  I knew instantly who he was talking about.  I wondered how, after seeing what that kind of loss does to a family, he could risk doing the same thing to his own family.  I was mad, quite honestly.  I didn't understand.  But I understand now.  Not only are the families of our service men and women different from the masses, those who serve are different as well.  They're courageous and selfless and part of a bigger picture that many of us are afraid to even look at, because we'd have to venture outside our comfort zones to see it.

Death is a part of life, that's true for everyone.  It's unfortunately much more common for those who live the military life.  That's something I still struggle with, and probably always will.  Those who make the ultimate sacrifice, and their families  who are left to pick up the pieces once they're gone, deserve to be honored, remembered, and supported by the rest of us.  It's a hard thing to do, though, when just the words "Another Soldier was killed in the war on terror today" send me into an emotional tailspin.  I can't think about it, can't hear about it, can't read about it....it makes me sick.  I put my blinders on anytime I hear "death" and "war" in the same sentence.  It's how I stay sane.

Tonight, as I drove past the cemetery where my husband's friend is buried, I held my breath.  Not to keep the ghosts out like I did when I was little, but to keep the tears in.  I said a silent prayer for Jason, and one for his mother.  I can only hope to someday be even half as strong as she is, and that when that day comes, my husband is right by my side to see it.

To make a donation to the Jason Plite Memorial Fund, visit: http://www.jasonplitememorial.com/

Day Sixty: Blue Jeans and T-Shirts

When my husband and I got engaged just a month after we started dating again, much to the shock and disapproval of our families and friends, we knew we wanted to get married in the same fashion- as soon as possible.  We talked about just the two of us going to the Justice of the Peace, and about me flying to Texas and having a quickie ceremony on post, but I couldn't do it.  It wasn't that I needed or wanted a big wedding, in fact I was firmly committed to the idea of not wearing a wedding dress, it was just that I wanted it to be special.  I wanted our children and our families and our closest friends to be there when we pledged our undying love to each other, because even though they weren't sure our relationship was going to last, we were.

I went back and forth for weeks about where we should get married, who should and shouldn't be there, how formal/informal it should be.  One night as I was throwing out options, weighing all the pros and cons, changing my mind over and over, my groom-to-be sighed and said "Babe, I don't care if we get married in blue jeans and t-shirts.  I just want you to be my wife, that's all that matters to me."  My silence on the other end of the phone must have alarmed him.  "Uh oh.  What's going on in that pretty little head of yours?" he asked.  What he couldn't see was the huge grin on my face, the one that stretched from ear to ear.  I was smiling because one, what he'd just said was incredibly sweet; two, I knew he was right; and three, I'd just figured out our entire wedding plan in two seconds flat.

Often times, when people see pictures from our wedding, the comment that follows is "You guys got married in jeans and t-shirts?"  I think it's sad when that's the first thing someone notices.  Because what I see when I look at pictures from that day is how happy and in love we are, how happy everyone is.  I wouldn't have had my wedding any other way.  It's not that I have anything against formal weddings.  Every girl should have the opportunity to wear a beautiful wedding gown and have the church and the flowers and the tuxedos and be treated like a princess on her special day...if that's what she wants.  I myself did that once when I was very, very young.  Too young.  I spent months planning and stressing right down to the last detail, making sure I had an absolutely picture perfect wedding.  And I did.  The part I didn't give much thought to was the actual marriage, which didn't last. 

This was different.  All I wanted was to be married to this man, my Prince Charming, my best friend, my soulmate.  The wedding itself was an afterthought.  We didn't even settle on an exact wedding location until two days before we got married.  We had the hall (a beautiful hall, one that's often used for "real weddings") booked for the reception, the army green tablecloths ordered, the pink daisies waiting to be picked up, the hot dogs and chicken wings and baked macaroni and cheese filling everyone's refrigerators.  The invitations had gone out weeks ago for the reception, asking everyone to join us after a private ceremony, one only our immediate families and a handful of friends were attending. Our vows were written and the Reverend (a friend my husband and I have known for decades) set the time, 4:00, and told us to pick a place. 

So just two days before we were due to wed, once I finally decided to trust the meteorologist that the weather on March 19th would be "beautiful", we drove around downtown until we decided on a spot to say our "I Do's".  We settled on the gazebo in Island Park, a tiny peninsula that stretches a mile or so across the Grand River, with the infamous Grand Ledge "Ledges" lining the shores.  I joked on the way home about what a Bridezilla I was, waiting until the week of the wedding to decide where to actually have the wedding.

When the day came, I went and got my hair and make-up done.  I got a manicure and a pedicure and was actually feeling quite bride-like until I put on my "wedding jeans" and t-shirt.  I carried a bouquet, pink gerber daisies and field greens wrapped with raffia, and my bridesmaids, donned in their pink bridesmaid t's and pink tennies, all had pink daisies in their hands and custom made dog tags around their necks.  We were laughing as we walked "down the aisle", which was actually an old bridge that we had to cross to get to the gazebo where my husband-to-be was waiting for me.  The closer we got, the more nervous I became.  That surprised me.  This wasn't even a "real wedding".  Why did I have butterflies?

"You ready, Mom?" my oldest son asked me, his arm linked through mine.  My youngest, too small to walk arm-in-arm with me, had a tight grip on my other hand, and I could tell by the snickers coming from the six or so people seated on the benches in the gazebo that he was making faces at the crowd.  Was I ready?  This had all gone so fast.  The falling in love, the engagement, the wedding planning....it all took place over the course of a few months.  Was it too fast?  Was I doing the right thing?  And was I really having cold feet during my wedding?  When does that ever even happen, outside of movies and TV?

And then I saw him, standing across the gazebo, shivering from the "cold" (it wasn't really cold, he'd just gotten too used to the Texas heat). He was looking at me like I was the most beautiful bride in the world, despite my lack of all things bridal, like a dress, a veil, fabulous shoes...and I knew.  I knew what I'd known all along, which was that we were getting married for all the right reasons, and that despite the fact that not everyone else was 100% sure about what we were doing, it didn't matter.  They came to support us regardless of their reservations, and that was what counted.  The ceremony was short, intimate, and perfect.  The reception was a blast.  The honeymoon, although way too short, was amazing.  And the marriage....the marriage is my dream come true.  I couldn't ask for a better husband, or a better man to spend the rest of my life with.

My husband and I got married in blue jeans and t-shirts.  We played 90's hip-hop during dinner, had cupcakes instead of wedding cake, and did jello shots instead of a champagne toast.  The kids took full advantage of the game table and had a massive Twister tournament.  The candy buffet was hugely popular.  There was no tradition, no formality, no drama, and no stress.  We celebrated our marriage with the people we love, and in most of the pictures, we're either cracking up or kissing.  The day was everything I dreamed it would be and more.  So when people ask me if it bothers me that I didn't have a "fairytale wedding", I'm not lying when I tell them "not at all".  Because I'm living my happily ever after, and that's all that really matters.

Day Fifty Nine: I Miss...

~"I miss the sound of your voice...and I miss the rush of your skin...and I miss the still of the silence...as you breathe out and I breathe in..."~

(Matt Nathanson, Come On Get Higher)

Day Fifty Eight: Warning Label

My moods have been so erratic since my husband left for Iraq, I feel like I should come with a warning label these days.  I found an "Army Wife Warning Label" t-shirt on-line.  I would never wear something with that much writing on it, because, quite honestly, I would be weirded out to have someone staring at my chest for that long, but the message was pretty spot on.  So, if I were to come with a warning label, this is what it would say:

WARNING: Due to the deployment of her husband, these contents are under severe stress and may explode at any moment. Items in this condition generally suffer from sexual deprivation and loneliness. It is best to back off and avoid any unnecessary annoyances. More specifically, don't piss her off. Persons who are insensitive or ignorant and those who insult the military or her husband directly are in danger of serious bodily harm or even death.  Handle with extreme care.

Day Fifty Seven: Green

For as long as I can remember, navy blue has been my favorite color.  Both my junior and senior prom dresses were navy blue.  My bridesmaid dresses were navy blue.  My bedspread is navy blue.  My dishes are navy blue.  Sometimes, even the highlights in my hair are blue.  But lately, I have a new favorite color.  Green.  And not a rich emerald green or a funky lime green either, just green.

Green is the color that of the little dot that appears next to my husband's facebook profile when he signs on.  It's the color of the tiny icon that appears at the bottom of my screen when he logs into Skype.  It means he's back from a mission, or done working for the day, or that he's waking up to another Iraqi morning, having made it through the night without incident.  It means he's about to message me, or call me, or even better, if he has time, that I'll get to see his face through video-chat.

Green might not be the prettiest color, but it's definitely the most appropriate.  It's like my own personal green light.  It means everything's okay.  It means I can breathe again.  It means I can go ahead and keep planning our family's amazing future, the one that feels like it's on hold until my husband returns, because as long as I can see that little green dot, I know he's safe.

There aren't even words to describe how happy it makes me to see that little flash of green appear on my computer screen.  I start grinning from ear to ear and the sense of relief that overcomes me often leaves me close to tears, especially if it's been a long time since I last talked to him, or if his mission ran longer than anticipated.

It might seem like a small thing, and in the literal sense, it's a very small thing.  A tiny green speck on a 15 inch computer screen.  Almost nothing.  But to me, right now, it's everything.  And it's the reason that for at least the next 308 days, green is my favorite color.

Day Fifty Six: Monsters

I struggled through another sleepless night last night, and I must say, I'm getting pretty darn sick of it.  It's been almost two months since my husband left for Iraq, you'd think my nerves would have calmed a little by now.  In some ways, they have.  I'm much more functional during the day than I was in the beginning.  Well, most days anyway.  I still forget things, but I don't forget everything.  I still lose my train of thought in the middle of a conversation, but I can usually find it again.  I still cry, but I smile just as much, if not more.  Managing my everyday life, the one I've been running on my own for as long as I can remember, no longer seems like an insurmountable task.  I'm doing it.  I'm treading water.

But that's during the day, when I have work and the kids and my friends to keep me busy.  When I know that my husband has made it through another day in Iraq unscathed, and that he's safe in his room, either on the computer or sleeping.  The nights, however, are an entirely different story.  While I'm in bed, he's working.  He's out on missions that I don't necessarily believe are always as boring and uneventful as he claims they are.  The nights are quiet, and lonely, and dark.

I've never been afraid of the dark, or of monsters, or of things that go bump in the night.  But these days, even the slightest noise is enough to wake me from my restless slumber.  I wake up every hour or so in a panic, afraid that I've missed an important call from my husband, or worse, an important call about my husband.  I toss and turn in a bed that's way too big for me, finding it impossible to get comfortable without my husband here to wrap his strong, comforting arms around me and tell me everything's going to be okay.

It's kind of ridiculous really.  In an attempt to reason with myself, I broke down the numbers.  My husband and I have spent a total of twenty two nights in our bed together.  Twenty two.  And only two as husband and wife, since he left to go back to Texas just a couple days after we returned from our honeymoon. A lot of the time we spent together before his deployment, we were in Texas, where we stayed in different hotels and with friends, due to the fact that I absolutely detest the barracks he was living in.  (Sorry, but they're disgusting.)

The knowledge that we'd spent so little time together at home didn't make me feel better, it only made me feel worse.  It's been four months since my husband's been in our home, in our bed, and I don't know when he's coming back.  I don't know when I'll wake up with him next to me again, with our boys asleep just down the hall.  I don't know when I'll be able to walk into the bathroom to the smell of cologne and shaving cream, playfully calling his name as I slam down the toilet seat he left up...for the fifth time that day.  I don't know when we'll take another family trip to the grocery store, going up and down every aisle together, taking an extended detour through the toy department, the entire excursion taking three times longer than it would have if I'd just gone by myself and left him and the kids at home.

And I don't know when I'll be able to sleep through the night again.  Hopefully soon.  I feel like I'm living my life in a thick fog I haven't known since I was the exhausted, sleep deprived mother of a newborn baby.  Except now when I wake up in the middle of the night, multiple times a night, every night, I'm not waking up to a crying baby.  I'm waking up to silence.  I'm not waking up because there's someone who needs me, I'm waking up because the person I need isn't here.  And I really, really need him to be here.  I need to know that he's safe, that he's happy, that he's where he belongs and where he wants to be.  I need him to hold me as I fall asleep, to run his fingers through my hair as he talks about his past and our future, intertwining them as though we've always been together.  And I need him to protect me...from the dark, from the things that go bump in the night, and from the monsters.

Day Fifty Five: Confession

~Author Unknown

Day Fifty Four: Sick

I'm sick.  Not the can't sleep, can't eat, sick to my stomach, worried, crying all the time, devastated kind of sick that I've been since my Soldier left for Iraq, but actually sick...strep throat, sinus infection, get me a pillow, blanket and some Nyquil sick.  All I want right now is my husband.  And the fact that he's not here to take care of me just makes me feel that much worse.

It's strange to me how much I've come to rely on this man who's half a world away, especially considering the fact that we've spent a total of eighteen days together as a married couple.  I take care of myself.  I've always taken care of myself.  And on that rare occasion when I couldn't, I had my mom.  Even after I became a mom myself and got married the first time, I still always counted on my own mom when I was sick, when I was hurt, or when I was going through something I couldn't handle on my own.

It would make sense for me to want my mom right now.  She's only twenty minutes away.  She would bring me soup and cough drops and Kleenex and popsicles.  She would take care of me.  Still, all I want is my husband.  I want him here to cuddle on the couch with me while we watch movies all day.  I want him here to rub my back after my zillionth coughing fit.  More than anything, I just want him here, because having him here makes everything better.

I know my husband would be here with me if he could.  And that he would take the best care of me.  But right now he has a job to do.  I'm painfully aware of that.  And on a good day, I understand it.  When I'm not sick and miserable and sleep deprived and feverish, I respect the fact that he has a duty to his country and to the Iraqi people,  and that his battle buddies are the ones he has to look out for and take care of right now.  But today is not a good day.  And while I am as proud of my Soldier as ever, I'm also frustrated.  There are thousands of troops in Iraq right now.  Thousands of men and women there to keep the peace, run missions, and do whatever else it is they're doing.  But I only have one husband.  One amazingly sweet, thoughtful, helpful, wonderful husband. And right now, I need him more than they do.  The fact Iraq has him and I don't, quite honestly, pisses me off.

Day Fifty Three: A Night Out

A little over a month ago, I attempted my first 'Girls Night Out' since my husband's deployment began.  It didn't go well.  It ended with me having a panic attack in the middle of a crowded downtown bar, then begging one of my friends to drive me home early.  Last night, I tried again.

I did my hair and put on make up for the first time in weeks and actually planned out what I was going to wear, instead of just throwing on the first thing I could find.  I painted my toenails (hot pink) and put on my best fake smile as I headed out the door.  I felt a little better about this venture, because I've become somewhat more accustomed to being the wife of a deployed Soldier.  I still worry (all the time), I still miss him (a lot), and I still cry on a pretty regular basis.  But at least now we have a routine.  Thanks to modern technology, I talk to my husband every day, so I know his schedule, and I knew he was safely asleep in his room as I was headed out for a night with my girls and LL Cool J.  I also knew that he went to sleep with a smile on his face because his latest care package from home arrived yesterday, and that always puts him in a good mood.

Knowing that my Soldier was safe and happy made it easier to venture out in public, to mingle with "normal folk" and pretend, even if just for a few hours, that I was one of them.  As is often the case when you've lived in the same town your entire life, I ran into more than a few people I knew at the concert, some of whom seemed surprised to see me out.  I had a couple drinks, caught up with old friends, and before long, the smile on my face wasn't fake anymore.  I didn't feel an underlying sense of panic or the need to check my phone every five seconds like I had the last time I went out.  I was having a good time, almost feeling like the old me a little bit. 

"You look good!  Super cute!" one of my old co-workers exclaimed after giving me a big hug, as if she were surprised.  I smiled and thanked her, wondering whether I should feel complimented or insulted.  I laughed as another one of my friends joked about how she was dreading going home after the concert because her husband was "going to want to have sex" when she got home.  Little did she know how much she would miss having that option if it were taken away from her for an entire year.  "Geez, Jenn," another of my friends chimed in.  "Must suck to be you.  At least when you were single, you'd go out knowing there was the possibility that you'd get laid.  Now you walk out the door knowing that you're going home alone at the end of the night."  I laughed, admiring the way my wedding ring sparkled in the sun as I took another sip of my Mike's Hard Lemonade.  I laughed because I knew something she didn't.

I knew that while some of my friends were going bar hopping after the concert, and some of the people in the crowd were going home with other people they'd met in the crowd, and others, the die-hard LL Cool J fans, the ones in the tight skirts and the short shorts throwing their bras and panties up on stage, actually thought they might have a chance of going home with the superstar himself, I had something even better to look forward to when I got home.

When the show was over, I headed home, my throat on fire and my ears ringing.  I put on my pj's and climbed into bed, too  tired to even wash my face or brush my teeth.  I fired up the laptop and was just starting to doze off when my husband called me through Skype.  I sleepily told him about the concert, he talked about his plans for the day, and then we just talked, about anything and everything, until I literally couldn't keep my eyes open any longer.  I smiled as I laid there, my head on my pillow, wrapped up in blankets, falling asleep to the sound of my husband's voice, his face just inches from mine.  When he asked me why I was smiling, I said "Because I'm lucky."  And I am.  Despite the fact that my husband's in Iraq, I'm not alone.  Far from it.  I still get to come home to the most amazing man in the world every night.


Me and some friends at Common Ground



The man himself, LL Cool J! 





Day Fifty Two: The Silent Ranks

I wear no uniforms, no blues or army greens
But I am in the Army in the ranks rarely seen
I have no rank upon my shoulders - salutes I do not give
But the military world is the place where I live
I'm not in the chain of command, orders I do not get
But my husband is the one who does, this I can not forget
I'm not the one who fires the weapon, who puts my life on the line
But my job is just as tough, I'm the one that's left behind
My husband is a patriot, a brave and prideful man
And the call to serve his country not all can understand
Behind the lines I see the things needed to keep this country free
My husband makes the sacrifice, but so do our kids and me
I love the man I married, Soldiering is his life

So I stand among the silent ranks known as the Army Wife

-Author Unknown

The 'Silent Ranks', Team Carpenter

Day Fifty One: Wait For Me

Theory of a Deadman's "Wait For Me" was the 'Last Dance' song played at our wedding.  The band is playing at a music festival in town tonight, but I just can't bring myself to go see them without my husband.

Day Fifty: The Moon

Full moon tonight, which means I miss my husband even more than usual.  Back when he was in Texas, he always used to tell me to look up at the moon, that he was looking at it too, so we weren't really very far apart after all.  Night after night, I would sit on the back porch while we talked on the phone, sometimes wrapped in a blanket if it was cold enough, looking up at the night sky, imagining him, over a thousand miles away, standing out on the balcony of his barracks, smoking a cigarette, staring at the same big moon, the same bright stars.  

It didn't matter how many states stood between us, or how many millions of people were physically closer to me than he was, in those moments, there was nobody in the entire world besides just the two of us.  I pretended we were listening to the same crickets, breathing in the same cool night breeze, even though it was usually a good 20 degrees warmer in Texas than it was here in Michigan.  It made the distance bearable, even if just temporarily.

There was a full moon on our wedding night.  We didn't plan it that way, it was purely a coincidence.  But as we stood on the rooftop deck at the Inn where we stayed for our honeymoon, his strong arms wrapped around me to shield me from the cold March wind, looking at the full moon together for the first very first time as husband and wife, for the very first time ever, in fact....I knew it was meant to be.  That we were meant to be. 

Now that my husband is in Iraq, we can't look at the moon together anymore.  His moon rises when I'm still in the middle of my work day.  By the time it reaches me here at home, he's asleep, with the sun just starting to come up over the Iraqi desert.  Every night, I still take a moment or two to stop and marvel at the moon.  To take myself back to those nights when he was in Texas, looking up at it with me, wishing on the shooting stars that streaked across his sky almost nightly, even though I never saw any here in Michigan.  I think about our wedding night, the first night of the rest of our lives together, when the full moon, just like everything else about that day, was magical and picture perfect.  

But life is different now.  Even the small things, like being able to look at the moon at the same time, have been taken from us.  It makes the distance that much harder to bear.  It makes the miles feel that much longer, and the pain of his absence that much stronger.  It makes me feel like my husband is worlds away, which in a way, he is.  But it gives me hope, too.  Because I know that once enough full moons pass, he'll be here with me, where he belongs.  And that instead of having to wish on stars to keep him safe, I'll be thanking them for bringing him back home to me.

Day Forty Nine: Spiders

I hate spiders.  I hate looking at them, I hate finding them in my house, I hate having to kill them, and I hate that stupid urban myth about how we swallow four spiders a year in our sleep.  Can I kill a spider?  When I have to.  Single moms don't get the luxury of screaming for help every time they spot a spider in the house, hiding under blankets as if the spider is going to leap from the ceiling, multiply in size, and start eating their face off.  So for years, I killed the spiders.  I took out the trash in my pink fuzzy slippers.  I fended for myself when my car broke down.  I, armed with a baseball bat under the bed, protected myself from the demons I just knew were coming for me the night I watched Paranormal Activity by myself.  I did those things because I had to, because there was no one to here to do them for me.

But now I'm married to a wonderful man.  A spider killing, trash removing, car fixing, bad dream chasing man, who takes the best care of me and our boys.  When he's home, it's like this huge burden has been lifted, because I'm not alone anymore.  I don't have to take on the entire world by myself.  I don't have to choose between doing the dishes or putting away the laundry before I go to bed, because while I'm doing one, he's doing the other, without me even having to ask.  (Most of the time.)  He cooks when all I want for dinner is a bowl of cereal, and takes the boys out to play when I get that "if either one of you says another word, my head is going to explode" look on my face.  He truly is my other half.

Tonight, I had to kill a spider.  My weapon was a three inch thick stack of two-ply paper towel.  It had to be thick so I wouldn't feel the nauseating squish as I crushed the eight-legged intruder to death.  I dragged a chair up the stairs, maneuvered it down the narrow hallway, and prayed that my balance would not fail me like it so often does as I stood on the chair, balanced on my tiptoes, and killed the spider.  Afraid that it might come back to life in my hand, I jumped off the chair and ran down the stairs, through the dining room, and into the kitchen, where I threw the wadded up paper towel in the trash can, and then tossed in a half empty water bottle to weight it down, just for safe measure.

As I turned the kitchen light off, then turned it back on in case the zombie spider had any ideas about sneaking off into the darkness, I thought about how funny my husband would find this entire scene.  He would laugh, shake his head, and then wrap his arms around me and say "I love you, babe.  Don't worry, I won't let anything hurt you."  Of course, if he were here, I wouldn't have to kill the spiders.  Or take out the trash in the middle of the night.  Or sleep in our big, empty bed all alone.  "Stupid spiders," I muttered to myself as I took one last look at the arthropod's final resting place to make sure that it was, in fact, still resting.  "Stupid Army," I added, wiping away a tear.

Day Forty Eight: Missing Him

Today has been a long, stressful, emotionally exhausting day.  I don't have anything funny or witty or insightful or inspirational to say.  I'm going to sleep with just one thought in my head tonight as I try to ignore the empty space next to me in my big, lonely bed.  I miss my husband.

Day Forty Seven: Whoops

"Mommy, I'm out of underwear," my eight year old announced yesterday morning.  "No you're not," I told him, following him into his room as I tripped over piles of toys and books on the way to his closet.  I opened his top dresser drawer to find that it was, in fact, empty.  "Well, go look in the basket of clothes in my room," I suggested, shaking my head at the total disarray I found their bedroom in.  Toys, video games, dirty clothes, empty juiceboxes, a pizza box?  Had we even had pizza this week?  "There's none in here either, Mom," my twelve year old, who had apparently joined the search, called from my bedroom.

"Did you look in all the baskets?" I asked.  "The baskets are empty," he said in a very matter-of-fact tone.  "There's just a huge pile of laundry all over your floor."  I sighed.  I'd been trying to ignore the laundry monster inhabiting the master bedroom, hoping it would go away or that the laundry would do itself somehow.  "Okay, I'll go look in the dryer," I said.  I made my way down the stairs, stepping around baseball pants and action figures, looking past the stack of mail sitting on what was once our dining room table, but now looked more like a giant, wide open junk drawer.  I shuddered at the sink full of dirty dishes, knowing that before I could do those, I would have to empty the dishwasher that had had clean dishes sitting in it for at least a couple of days. 

As I made my way to the basement, I thought about all the other things that needed to be done, the things I'd been slacking on since my husband left for Iraq, since I started spending all my free time writing and trying to catch up on the sleep I'm no longer getting at night.  Most of them were things the untrained eye wouldn't notice.  The toilets needed to be scrubbed, the walls needed to be washed, the floors needed to be swept and mopped, the couch needed to be vaccumed.  There was no clean laundry in the washer or dryer, just a pile of dirty laundry on the utility table.  I threw a load in the washer and marched back up the stairs, determined.

I gave the boys a trash bag and told them to get their room clean.  I did the dishes, cleaned the kitchen, went through a week's worth of mail and cleaned the bathrooms.  I cleaned out the refrigerator and made an actual grocery list in hopes of eliminating our daily trip to the store.  I made the beds and then folded and put away laundry for hours.  I made a "to-do" list and answered emails, voicemails and text messages I'd been ignoring.

After the boys' showers, I helped them clip their nails and clean out their ears and supervised toothbrush time, making sure they both flossed.  Twice. I lit candles, turned off the TV and turned on the radio, letting the cool night air in through the open windows.  I felt pretty good.  I'd accomplished a lot today.  Things I'd been letting slide for the past month and a half.  There was still a lot to do, but at least I would go to bed knowing that I'd made a serious dent in my mile long list of chores.  I threw my hair in a ponytail, put on my pajamas, and was just about to climb in bed for some quality time with the laptop when I heard little feet coming down the hall.  "Mommy," my youngest called quitely as he peeked his head inside my bedroom door.  "Yes, baby?"  I asked.  "I'm still out of underwear," he whispered.  Whoops.

Day Forty Six: Welcome To The Army

Becoming an Army Wife has opened me up to an entirely new world.  It's a world where soldiers aren't all just one big, happy family, they're divided into brigades, batallions, companies, and squads, all of which have their own nicknames, logos and mottos.  It's a world where everyone speaks in acronyms, and you better pick the language up quickly because washing your husband's PT's when what he really needed were his ACU's can land him in trouble. It's a world where there are five different names for weapons and vehicles that quite honestly all look pretty much the same but are apparently vastly different.  It's a world where nothing is certain, everything is subject to change, and the fast-paced organized chaos of it all can sometimes leave your head spinning.

It's a confusing place, to say the least, and I don't know if I'll ever understand the whys and hows of it all.  Anytime something doesn't make sense to me, or just flat out doesn't make sense at all, or frustrates me because it seems completely unfair or impractical, my husband says the same thing: "Welcome to the Army."  So many times I've answered him with, "Great, we visited, we learned stuff, we got some cool souvenirs...can we leave now?"  Usually he laughs, but sometimes I hear the pain and longing in his voice when he sighs and says "I wish."

One thing I have learned about the Army is that there's no sense in ever getting comfortable, because as soon as you do, everything changes.  The same is true now that my husband is deployed.  I knew better than to get used to our routine of talking every day, of knowing where he was and what he was doing, of feeling a sense of security in the fact that things "aren't that bad" where he's at right now.  But I had to take comfort in that, I had no choice.  Our constant contact and the knowledge that he's somewhat safe are what's been getting me through this deployment, what's been keeping me sane.  I had to cling to those things.

Yesterday, I found out that the routine we've all become accustomed to as a family since my husband's been in Iraq is about to get flipped upside down.  He wasn't able to tell me much, of course, but what I do know is that some time in the near-ish future, the Iraqi internet service we rely on to communicate with each other is being disconnected because my husband's unit is leaving the somewhat safe area he's in right now to go somewhere else.  The false sense of security that I've spent the past month and a half creating is being ripped away from me and there's nothing I can do about it.  And that terrifies me.

Face to face (via video-chat, of course) was probably not the best way for my husband to share this news with me, as it took a while to process.  At first I was scared, then I was angry, then I was just completely devastated.  I'm still devastated, to be honest.  As hot tears rolled down my cheeks and I chewed on my lower lip in an effort to keep from crying, my husband tried to reassure me.  "You know I love you and I'll call you as much as I can.  And don't worry about me, I'll be fine."  I didn't speak for a long time, not sure I'd be able to get the words out due to the sobs that were building in my chest.  "It's not fair," I finally choked out.  "Welcome to the Army," he responded, wiping away what looked like a tear.

I don't know how I'm going to handle these new changes.  I still haven't even fully accepted that they're coming.  Now I won't be able to have my husband reassure me daily that he's fine.  I won't get to see his face or hear his voice every night before I go to sleep.  I may have to go days, even weeks, without hearing from him, instead of just hours.  And worst of all, during the times I don't hear from him, I won't be able to comfort myself with the thought that he's in a safe place where nothing's happening, because I may not even know where he is at all.

I cried for what felt like hours after we hung up.  My stomach is still twisted in knots and if I let myself think about it for too long, I start to panic.  The ache in my chest that has become a part of who I am is now a throbbing pain, as if my heart's been broken all over again.  But this morning I got up, got ready for the day, took my son to his little league game, talked and cheered with the other parents, played "I Spy" with my eight year old for a solid hour to keep him occupied during the game, went to the grocery store, did some laundry, cleaned, and talked to my husband on Skype before he went to bed.  I smiled and laughed and even cracked a few jokes.  I ignored my fear and hid my pain for the sake of my family, for the sake of my own sanity.  There's no sense in worrying or dwelling on the "what ifs", because there are a million of them, none of which I have any control over.  So even though my heart has once again been smashed into a thousand pieces, I put on my Army Strong smile and my big girl boots, and started the process of picking them up and putting them back together.  Welcome to the Army.

Day Forty Five: The Broken Road

Our Story in pictures, set to Rascal Flatts "God Bless The Broken Road"  (P.S. I think I'm getting better at this whole slideshow thing.)

Day Forty Four: Fighting

"You go fight for the world. I'll be home fighting for us."

Day Forty Three: How You Know

You know you're an Army Wife when:

*You don't mind a phone call waking you up at 4 a.m.

*You tell people that ask that he's 'only' been gone a month.

*The smallest communication from your husband makes your entire week!

*You cry over an e-mail that says nothing more than "hi" and "I miss you."

*You update your facebook status every time you hear from your soldier.

*Those recruitment commercials on TV make you cry because you're so proud.

*You get super excited just knowing that your husband tried to call but wasn't able to get through.

*A 30 second phone call after no calls from him for days or weeks leaves you walking on Cloud 9.

*You feel yourself falling more and more in love with your husband every day, even though he's thousands of miles away.

*Planning letters and care packages and putting them in the mail is more exciting than going out for a night on the town with the girls.

*While enjoying an evening alone together, your soldier shows you all the different ways he knows to kill or incapacitate a man, and then you casually continue cooking dinner as though it's perfectly normal.

*You find yourself learning phrases in foreign languages from letters, and aren't surprised when you realize you know how to say, "Throw down your weapons and lay down on the ground!" in Arabic.

*"No news is good news" becomes your motto.

*You hold off on seeing certain movies so you can see them with your soldier when he comes home.

*You can go from being happy, to sad, to lonely, to angry, to proud, and back to happy in a matter of less than an hour.

*With him gone, you don't care how your hair looks or care about wearing make-up, and your co-workers ask about him every day to see if you've heard from him.

*The sight of any other man in a uniform makes your eyes fill with tears.

*You try to explain to civilians what your husband does for a living, and they give you a blank look because they don't understand a third of what you just said.

*You are oceans apart but you don't even notice the time difference.  You talk until 9 a.m. his time, 2 a.m. your time, on a week night.

*You always sleep with the phone right next to you, just in case.

(I didn't come up with these myself, although I could have, because they're all so true!  I found this on-line, but there was no one listed to credit it to.)

Day Forty Two: Today

The circle of Army wives I know whose husbands are deployed with mine is very small.  There are only a handful of them I talk to on a regular basis, just one of whom I've actually met in person.  To say I'm "out of the loop" is an understatement.  I guess that just comes with the territory of living so far away.

The few wives I do talk to are all strong, amazing women, although we couldn't be more different.  We range in age from nineteen to our early thirties.  Some of us have children, some of us don't.  Those of us who work outside the home work in very different fields.  Some of us have been married for years, some only for a few months.  Some of us have lived the Army life for years and have been through deployments before.  Others, like me, are brand new to all of this. 

The one thing we have in common, the thing that connects us all and bonds us together in a way that nothing else ever could, is that our husbands are overseas together, fighting for their lives, watching each others' backs, doing whatever it takes to make sure they all come home safely to the families that love them.  And while they're off doing that, we're at home, waiting patiently (and sometimes not so patiently) for their return.  We're all spread across the country now, with some of the wives deciding to return to their home states during deployment, while others remained in Texas, but we're still each others' support system, regardless of the miles.  While our husbands take care of each other in a war zone, we take care of each other on the homefront.

So we talk, usually daily, even if only briefly.  "Hey, how's it going today?"  "How are you today?"  "How ya holdin' up today?"  The question may vary slightly, but the one common denominator in every conversation starter is the word "today".  Because each of us knows, all too well, that managing deployment is done a day by day basis.  It's just too big a task to take on in time incriments any bigger than that.  If you asked me how my day was today, for example, I would tell you that I went from being happy to scared to proud to pissed to madly in love to just mad...all before lunch time.  So that's how we face our time without our husbands, one day at a time.   Because we've never been more aware that what we have is all we're ever guaranteed.  And that's today.

Day Forty One: The Push and Pull

Deep within the inner workings of each of our hearts is a defense mechanism.   When we're very young and shielded from the outside world by our parents, it's small and under-developed, almost non-existent.  As we grow older, life starts to sneak in through the protective bubble we've grown accustomed to being encased in, first in the form of hurt feelings at the hands of a friend, or being let down by an adult we counted on, later by our first broken heart,  or a betrayal by someone we trusted. 

Though the circumstances may be different, the results are always the same.  The more we're hurt, the bigger that defense mechanism grows.  By the time we're adults, sometimes it's grown so large that there's no room left for other things, like allowing our hearts to be open to the possibility of new love, or falling in love with the same person all over again, every time we see a new side of them that we didn't know existed.

Even for those of us who are brave enough to allow someone inside the walls, past the defense mechanism, there are challenges.  It's hard to abandon what you've always known.  So when someone hurts you, no matter who it is, or what the reason, that defense mechanism kicks into high gear, telling you to push him away.  Protect your heart.  Put your walls back up.  Don't let him hurt you.  Pull back.

The road that led me to my husband was not a smooth one, for either of us.  It was paved with heartache and regret and more pain than any one person should ever have to bare alone.  So we both know all too well that once you start down a path where unkind words are said in the heat of the moment, or careless mistakes are made with total disregard for the other's feelings, it's hard, sometimes impossible to turn back.  Sometimes the pieces become so irretrievably broken that they can't be fixed.  This knowledge laid the foundation for our very loving, very open, very honest relationship.

My husband would never, ever hurt me intentionally.  That being said, he breaks my heart on a daily basis.  Every morning when I wake up and realize that he's not lying next to me, that he's half a world away, in a foreign country, fighting an arguably pointless war, the pain is so new, so raw, that it doesn't matter how long he's been gone, or how long I've had to get used to it.  Every time I see something on the news about civil unrest in Iraq, or hear about a close call near his base, the dull ache in my chest that has become a constant turns into a raging fire.  I can't breathe, can't think, can't hear.  I just hurt.  And my heart, which has never been this full of love and pain all at the same time, tries to protect itself.

My defense mechanism shifts into overdrive.  Push him away.  Pull back.  I try to find reasons to be upset with him, even though there are none.  I start pointless arguments.  I shut down emotionally, sometimes unable to find the words to tell him how I'm feeling.  I don't think he would understand anyway.  I feel betrayed.  I feel angry.  I feel hurt.  And sometimes it's hard to remember that none of it is his fault, that he probably feels the same way.

Deployment is a scary, confusing, sad thing for everyone involved.  It hurts.  And it's impossible sometimes for our hearts to distinguish the good hurt from the bad hurt, to recognize that this is the type of hurt that's worth enduring, worth fighting for.  But I remind myself every day.  And whenever my heart starts to harden, starts to whisper to me to push him away, I pull him closer instead.

Day Forty: Hero

Today, as we celebrate our nation's independence, we must give thanks to all those who fought and to those who continue to fight for that independence, for our freedom, and for our childrens' futures. Much love to all of the 1-5 Cav Bushmasters and their families, and to all of our troops all around the world. Thank you for everything you do, both overseas and here at home. Happy 4th of July!!!

Day Thirty Nine: The Little Things

"Hey, babe, it's me." My husband says those same four words at the beginning of every voicemail he leaves me. How do I know this? Because I saved almost every voicemail he left on my phone in the month before he left for Iraq, and a few days ago, I listened to them all. I was in an especially foul mood, and just really needed to hear his voice. I'm blessed to be able to talk to my husband on a daily basis, usually multiple times a day, but I always have to wait for him to call me. And there are times that I can't wait. Sometimes I need to hear the gentle way he says my name, or the way he says "I love you" like it's the first time, every time. Sometimes that's the only thing that can put a smile on my face, or calm my nerves when they're especially frayed. So for those times, I have my saved messages.

I'm sure I looked like a total lunatic leaning up against my car in the parking lot at work, my phone pressed against one ear, my free hand pressed against the other to block out the noise from traffic, tears streaming down my face as I listened to message after message. "Hey, babe, it's me. Just wanted to see if you made it to work on time. Have a good day. I love you." "Hey, babe, it's me. I was just wondering how Austin's game went. Call me later. I love you." "Hey, babe, it's me. We just landed in Maine. I just wanted to tell you I love you in case my cell phone doesn't work once we get overseas. I'll call you as soon as I can. I love you, Jenney." At one point during my impromptu "I miss my husband" pity party, one of my coworkers passed me on her way to her car as she was headed out to lunch. She caught my eye for a brief second, contemplated stopping to see if I was okay, and then thought better of it. Most of the people I see on a regular basis know better than to pay attention to the weird things I do these days, and there are a lot of them. I'll be the first to admit that some of the things I do because I miss my husband are a little strange, but I don't care. If, even for a brief second, I'm able to feel closer to him, that's all that matters.

Like the days that I go to work wearing my husband's cologne, just because I want to feel like I've recently been in his arms. Sure, I might be known around the office as Sporty Spice now, but it doesn't bother me. He sent his cologne, along with several shirts he'd recently worn and not washed yet, home with me when I left Texas. I love the way my husband smells. One of my favorite things to do is bury my face in his neck and breathe in his scent, a combination of shaving cream, cologne and sexiness. I knew it was going to be one of the things I missed the most once he was gone. So I rolled his worn t-shirts up as tightly as I could to lock in as much of his scent as possible before I packed them in my suitcase. I've slept with one tucked under my pillow every night since I got back. It makes the nights alone in our big empty bed just a bit more bearable.

After about a week, my husband's scent started to fade from his old t-shirts, so I sprayed them with his cologne to refresh them. I also sprayed my pillow and sheets, just for good measure. Then, one day, as I was getting out of the shower, I eyed his cologne sitting next to the perfume our boys got me for Christmas and decided to spray it in the air a couple of times, so the bathroom would smell like it does when he's getting ready in the morning. It wasn't long before I started spraying myself with it, just one quick squirt every now and then, so that I could take a little piece of my husband with me to work. Sure, I get teased about it sometimes. But I don't really care.

My husband's toothbrush is still resting in the toothbrush holder in our upstairs bathroom. I realize he's going to need a new one when he comes home next year, but I can't bare to throw it out. I like seeing it every morning, perched next to my hot pink toothbrush, just waiting for him. I pretend sometimes that he's still in our bed, sleepily watching Sportscenter, waiting for me to get done in the bathroom so he can get ready for the day. "Babe, you're gonna be late," he would call out as I was halfway through curling my hair. His voice wouldn't hold a lot of convicition though, because he knows that trying to get me to show up anywhere on time is a nearly impossible task.

The last time I was in Texas, my husband bought me a teddy bear dressed in ACU's, with a voice recorder firmly imbedded in it's stuffing. When I press a button on the bear's hand, he says "I love you, Jenney. I miss you, and I can't wait to be home with you" in my husband's voice. The bear sleeps in my bed with me every night. My kids think it's hilarious that their mom has a stuffed animal in her room, and there have been a few times where I pressed the button accidentally in my sleep, waking up in panicked confusion to the sound of my husband's voice, but it's still one of my favorite belongings. The bear, as you might have guessed, has also been heavily doused with my husband's cologne.

When I received the first letter my husband sent me from Iraq, I stood at the mailbox for the longest time, just breathing in the scent of....paper. It smelled just like any other piece of mail, and my neighbors probably thought I was crazy, but I thought that if I held it tight enough, if I breathed it in long enough, I would be able to smell him, to sense him, to feel him. He said he does the same thing every time he receives a package from me, so that makes me feel slightly less insane.

There are other things I do to feel close to my husband, like ordering Dr. Pepper when I'd rather have lemonade, or eating gummi bears when what I really want is m&m's, simply because those are his favorites. Some of the things I do when I miss my husband are a little silly, unorthodox, or maybe even borderline obsessive. But when you're facing something as big as being separated from the man you love for an entire year while he's off fighting a war in a foreign country, sometimes it's the little things, the things that other people might see as crazy, that help keep you sane.

Day Thirty Eight: Lucky

My very first attempt at a photo montage....hopin' they get better with practice.  Here's a look into not just One Army Wife's Tale, but five: The Carpenters, The Dias', The Peppeys, The Martinezes, and The Flynns.  All of our husbands are deployed together in Iraq, and even though we miss them terribly, we still know how incredibly "lucky" we are.
(Song: Lucky by Jason Mraz feat. Colbie Callait)



A big thank you to Ashlee Dias, Ally Peppey, Jennifer Medrano and Amy Flynn for the beautiful photos!

Day Thirty Seven: A Limitless Future



My favorite little girl, Avah Elaine, shows her support for her favorite soldier.

 They will never know the brave men and women who sacrificed so much, who risked their lives, who gave their lives to keep them safe, to make this world a better place, to give them a future.  It's our job to teach them.  We must make sure our children know that freedom is not free, and that they need to go out and do great things in this world, so that the sacrifices made for them were not made in vain.  To the heroes that have given this little girl and others like her a limitless future....THANK YOU.