It’s early. It is so damn early. It is hot, and the air is heavy, and I am sweating, and I hate mornings that begin this early. The kids are groggy and limp in our arms. Why we are dragging them out of bed at this time of day, I can’t say. I suppose we both worry that it is the last time they will see him, that he will hold them. It is a morbid thought, but it still endures unchecked in our existence. All the nostalgic pictures from the Second World War of beautiful women waving hand-stitched linen handkerchiefs in the air as they blow kisses to their sailors, are stupid. It doesn’t happen like that anymore. I’m not sure it ever did. I read romantic, idealized accounts of what people think it is like to send their men away to war, and they all make me laugh. It doesn’t matter if they were written four decades ago or four weeks ago, they aren’t real. The reality is that saying goodbye this morning is like it always is. I’m fighting vomiting, while smiling for the kids’ sakes. I don’t have my hair fashioned beautifully or my shirt ironed. The kids are in sweaty pajamas that don’t match, no shoes, and snot on their faces. In fact, it is so early that the kids are sleeping through this goodbye, and when they wake in the morning they may be unaware that anything has changed, except that Daddy won’t be there.
“Did you remember to change our address with the Unit?”
He answers slowly, “Yeah. I did. Did you contact the credit card company? I gave you a copy of my orders last Thursday.”
“I did. I charged your satellite phone and activated it yesterday, so you can use it at anytime”. I am tired of this conversation and it feels like we are just going through the motions in an attempt to get it all over, so he can leave and we can leave him and get on with life.
“Well, I guess that’s it. Did you throw those new socks into my duffel?”
“No. You didn’t tell me to. I didn’t know that you bought any new socks.” I hate it when he assumes I can read his mind.
“That’s alright. I’ll get by until your first package gets there. Will you send them out tomorrow? You know it will take a month for it to reach Kandahar. God only knows how long until it reaches Nuristan.”
“Of course I will”. My tone softens. I am aware of how vulnerable he is. He needs me to remember to do the simplest things for him while he is gone. Water the grass, feed the kids, pay the bills, stay faithful; these are the tasks I am left with in his absence. I suddenly want to touch him and I reach out for his arm, but he has already hoisted his enormous, seventy-pound ruck onto his back, and he is trying to steady himself. I waited too long to be soft. I should have touched him before. I am frantic to change the way this is going but it won’t happen. He quickly nips my cheek with his dry lips.
“Babe, I love you.” His eyes are moist and his voice is strong. His eyes linger on my frizzy hair, and then move to my baggy sweats. Does he resent that I didn’t get up earlier and attempt to look stoic and refined? I am suddenly overwhelmed with the need to undo this morning, to play it back after editing it.
“I know. I’ve always known.”
His smile lights up the dark morning and I anticipate a funny story. He likes to do this, lighten the mood right before the weight of the world takes a dump on us.
“Remember that first deployment?”
Of course I do, and I nod.
“Remember how we wrote to each other every day, but sometimes the letters would come all at once. I was afraid that I might not get anymore for a long time. So, I piled them all up in order of the postage date. I would open one a day until another letter arrived.”
I knew this story well. We told it to each other all of the time. That was where the romance was, in the letters, not in the goodbye. It is simple to act starry-eyed for several hours while saying adieu. It is much harder to stretch that passion out over months and years through nothing but paper and ink. War had changed since then. Emails and Skype changed the way that families communicate and in some ways it was better. I missed the letters though, written by his hand with his face poised above the paper. I treasured smelling the stench of the desert when I broke the seal on the envelope. Holding that letter in my hands, on my lap, in my pocket, was healing. He had touched this. He had taken the time to think about me, and then put his thoughts down for me to keep.
“Write to me this time. I love your letters.” I was touching his arm now. The bags hit the ground and his arms, his strong arms, are around my waist and his breath is on my neck and I feel, for that moment, like the rest of the world has disappeared and only my soldier and I remain.
It’s 4 am and I am trying to finagle keys out of my pocket while holding a five month old and his stuffed bunny. The damn sensor lights that my husband put up several days before are not working, and I am standing in the dark fighting back tears.
“Why does everything go wrong the second he gets on a plane?” I am bitching at no one, but that doesn’t stop me.
“Every. Damn. Thing.”
Finally, I manage to get the keys into the lock but not before almost dropping the baby, and his screaming is waking the neighbors. I am sure of it.
“Shit!” I whisper.
I had deliberately not told my neighbors when he was leaving so that the day after he left, they wouldn’t be at my door to be supportive. There would be a time for that, but it wasn’t today. Now, with the screeching of an infant, they would know. Military families recognize that wail in the wee hours of a day.
“Momma, I’m tired. Can I stay home from school today?” My strength as a parent is gone for the time and I find myself saying that it sounds okay to stay home. I imagine that none of us will leave the house for a week or so. Every time he leaves, I say to myself that the next time I will be a better mother. I convince myself that I will spend more time coloring pictures and making waffles, but I never do. It fills up every space I have to just get up most days. Some days I scream irrationally at them, and some days I am amazing. I can’t imagine what living with me is like for them. I pity them for not being able to get away from me.
Today, we will sleep late. We will rise and assemble onto the couch where we will drag every one of our comforters into the living room and curl up to watch sixteen hours of Cartoon Network. I’ll order a pizza with extra cheese, and for one day, I won’t worry about tomato sauce on the rug or crusts in the couch cushions.
The baby is still weeping. I have dropped the bunny somewhere outside in the darkness. The thought of going back out into the unknown is too much to consider. So, I am not thinking about it.
“Every. Damn. Thing”, I am muttering as I crawl around on the porch in the blackness feeling around for the stuffed toy.
If he had been home when this happened, it would not have meant anything other than we dropped something outside, but now he is gone. I fear that it is starting already. Every time he leaves, someone dies. Every time he goes, a car breaks down, a squirrel moves into the attic with his friends, or I need a surgery.
“Please. Not today.” Pleading with the universe has never helped before, but I am always hopeful, in the beginning, that if I just ask nicely enough, I will be spared the deployment disasters. It's an illogical thing to ask the cosmos for help. In the end, whether we survive this deployment or not will be entirely of our own doing.
“Momma, I found the bunny. You put it into the diaper bag.” My daughter, with her sweet face senses my anxiety. “It’s okay Momma. I put the baby down in the crib with a bottle and his bunny. He is already asleep.”
“Thank you honey.” I sit up on the front step and lay my head in my hands.
“Momma, you can sleep in my bed if sleeping in your bed without Daddy is too sad tonight.” How does she know this? How can a ten-year old girl, with no understanding of marriage and commitment, know such an intimate and unuttered secret?
“Oh, baby. I’m okay. I’m just tired, that’s all. Here, help me up.”
I grab her little arms and pull her down into my lap and smoother her with kisses. I know that I won’t do this enough in the next year and I need to feel, at this moment, like I haven’t given up already.
“You know what?” I ask her as we both stand to go inside. “I think that if you crawl in bed with me tonight, I won’t be lonely at all.”
It’s a lie. The kids will do their best to create pictures and cook me meals to draw the loneliness away. I will pretend that has worked and they will pretend that they believe me. I will do the same for them by taking them to the beach and reading them nightly stories. We know that the hole left by the absence of his combat boots is too big to fill with trinkets and words, but we will try anyway.
“I love you. I always have”. I whisper to her as I lift her up into the bed.
She sinks into the fluffy, down comforter and is asleep before her head even hits the pillow. What a comfort, to be able to slumber peacefully oblivious to the torments of the world. I will not sleep again for months, not restfully. I will startled in the night when the house is too quiet, and sleep on the couch during the day when the noise is too much. We will survive this year. We always have. This morning is no different from all the others just like it.
