Veni, vidi, vici
I held down the fort when my son and husband were both gone, and I had to make a lot of adjustments for myself and my two youngest children. My oldest son was in Baghdad and was part of a Stryker Brigade that was sent over to be a strategic part of the Surge. As strange as it sounds my heart sank when I knew the time was approaching for him to leave Baghdad to head up to Diyala. I had been watching the operations in and around Baqubah with bated breath and a self-torturous interest. I knew our contact would all but stop for quite sometime, and it did.
The Army-gods are not always crazy, however. At the same time I lost contact with Mike, I had regained some contact with my husband. He had just finished one phase of training that left us physically separated and unable to even talk by phone for almost three months. A quick weekend reunion ended the drought and phone calls became a little more frequent.
Some seasons in our lives are characterized by moments of crisis and times of change. For me it happened when my awareness peaked and melted away my hardened propensity to step on the aromatic flowers right at my feet. How many times have I overlooked the beauty of the tiniest of things because of my own busyness, or because I was more fixed on my own ‘to-do’ list than on the appreciating that needed doing? Too many times for me to even count, I am sure. Due to my chronic humanity it’s still happening, but to a lesser degree today. I pray I never forget the days of deployments past, and that I use the lessons learned to deal with deployments we will face in the future.
What I learned may not seem profound to most people, but the understanding I gained was well earned. It is not uncommon for military spouses or parents of deployed service members to face their own battlefield. The battlefield we encounter is a war between fear and peace, time warps and patience, and hope and despair. It was on this battlefield for me that I learned how to appreciate a good deep breath. I really learned to truly love the small things.
I never realized before that phone calls can be paradise. As I mentioned above, there was a time when I had little to no contact with either of my soldiers. My husband was not allowed to use the phone for a very long time, so we learned to connect through the written word. It is a blessing today to have the letters that we sent back and forth then. The words in them express a deep love for one another, and a deep commitment to our Country and the Army - a commitment we both made even though only one us was sworn in. I am working hard to not forget the blessing of reading my husband’s words when the mailbox was my only link to the other half of my heart. One late summer morning Bryan was headed out to the field for a week. We talked the evening before and said our good-byes. There are no phones allowed out in the field, so he used his really early that morning, and left it behind. Before he left he sent a text message to my phone. He never used text messaging before, but that morning he did. “we are heading out. talk to you next week. love you.” Simple? Yes, but more meaningful than 100 movie dates.
Mail was the only medium to send encouragement, love, support and morale to my son for a few months. Our phone contact was very limited and computer time was unheard of for months. So, with the new challenge came more opportunities to recapture that love and appreciation for the small things. I remember waiting for a box that he sent out before he relocated to Diyala. It had two suits in it. Two suits that he and a friend had made by an Iraqi tailor one day after they first arrived in Iraq. I was asked to care for them while they were deployed.
The suits were made for his friend’s wedding that was planned for after redeployment. I cried when I thought of opening that box. It was no ordinary parcel to me. It was filled with such huge hopes for the future, and it was mixed with sand. The sand that felt like a fine powdery silt to me. It was on everything. That sand was not common sand. It was a piece of the turf where my son lived, worked, played and where two in his platoon had bled and died.
That box contained within its cardboard walls a message to me that said “Mom, care for my suit because I am coming home and I am going to carry on with my life when I am done fighting.” He doesn’t even know how much he said when he excitedly told me of the box that he was shipping home. I took good care of his suit and his other items. He stayed the course, fought hard, kept up the good work, and through gracious providence he came home safe and sound.
My four-year old daughter loves to postpone bedtime with any legitimate excuse she can find. For the longest time it was always “more kisses!” I had a hard time leaving her room because she always needed one more. I stopped, paused at her door, and remembered that one day she will not need the extra kisses. I learned to stop and indulge her girly giggles, and take the opportunity to lavish some more affection on her.
I gave her many kisses from me, many from her papa, and many from her brother. She told her papa one night on the phone while he was still away that she is a “baby soldier.” She would follow her papa anywhere, and so would I. That night my little Emma reminded me that we are both soldiers in our own right, and that while we remain at home we too fight the good fight to keep the home front a refuge for our soldiers when they return.
