All my life I have lived under the guise of working hard today to save for someday. Instead, I am praying my beloved husband makes it through the next 12 months of National Guard duty in Ballad, Iraq. Just weeks ago, he put in for retirement having served 23+ years in the Guard; we anxiously anticipated him attending all our boys sports games without drill weekend conflicts. He’d packed his Guard gear to turn in at his next (and hopefully last) drill weekend. It was then he was notified he would likely be going to Iraq for a year and retirement had to wait.
Instead of planning our August Arkansas vacation, we were thrust into deployment preparations. Much is left unsaid at such times as it’s better if you don’t discuss the things your soldier will miss. Suddenly the high cost of gas and how to pay for three sets of braces didn’t matter at all. Overnight the future had morphed into a nebulous fog obscuring everything around us.
Each minute, hour, and day of his last week before departure we spent at home together doing regular family things. My husband and I both took vacation to be home with the kids and complete maintenance chores to last us through the next year. We floated through those days effortlessly like subjects in a Norman Rockwell painting. We hope to have many more somedays like these when daddy comes home for good.
