Night

It is 2:24 am and as long as my day was, I am unable to sleep. I guess there are a lot of people who can't sleep tonight and are thinking of someone over there too, but sometimes it feels like you're the only one.When I see him again, I hope we can sleep for 3 days straight just so I can savor what deep sleep next to someone you love is like.

Happy Anniversary

It's not really our anniversary, but we are 4 months down (yay!) with "just"11 to go. So far, we're doing pretty good. We're not the couple that spends time fighting on the phone ( it is not uncommon to overhear soldiers having long distance phone squabbles or email fights with their wife). I think one of the reasons that K. and I do not struggle with this is because we communicate well with one another and we take the time to edify, encourage, and re-assure one another. One way he does this is by sending cards to me. The only "problem" is that there is such a limited selection of cards he has access to that I tend to get birthday and anniversary cards all the time, even when it isn't my birthday and we haven't even reached our first anniversary yet. I'm saving the cards. I'm sure I'll look back fondly at all of the "birthdays" and "anniversaries" that we spent apart this deployment.
Happy Anniversary to you too, honey.

Juxtaposition

This is the same woman on two very different days of her life.

"Terri Gurrola clings to her daughter Gabrielle, 3, at the Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, having just returned from a seven-month tour in Iraq. The news this week was dominated by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus' report on the state of the war in Iraq and his recommendation of a gradual drawdown of troops." (Louie Favorite / The Journal & Constitution)

"1st Lt. Terri Gurrola, medic in Company C, 203rd Forward Support Battalion, casts the leg of Hussein, a 15-year-old Iraqi boy, April 9, at Forward Operating Base Hammer, Iraq. Hussein lost his leg in an improvised explosive device incident four years ago. Photo by 203rd Brigade Support Battalion." Medics Bring Hope to Iraqi Boy, MNF-I Official Website

It's Nothing Personal

I think one of the hardest things I am working through right now is the change in communication pattern. It's quite unexpectedly something I have found myself fighting not to take so personally. I'm embarrased to even admit it as something about it seems so selfish and immature.

I think people tend to underestimate the what limited communication would feel like if they were in a similar situation. I mean you figure when a man deploys to a combat zone, that something inside of you clicks on and you stop needing to talk to him so much. You figure that you will just rationally understand that he's busy and you won't notice if he emails or not. That you'll be so consumed with worry that you won't stop to even expect a call. For cripes sake woman, the man is in a combat zone! There's a war going on!

I want to be positive in this blog, but I also want to be honest. And the truth is that some days, I'm actually human. Some days, I'm but a woman who misses being able to confide everything, even the mundane. Some days I want long juicy letters and emails even when I know they are not practically possible most of the time and yes, I feel this sometimes even when I know he's busy or tired! What a brat!

I'm mature enough to recognize that these are moments I'm just going to have to grow through. And I also realize that it works both ways--he misses this too except he has to do it while he's stuck over there! The truth is, I am not curling up into a little ball about this, in the end, it is just one of the inconveniences of war that some people are some how able to handle. There are much greater, more serious prices to pay pay in war (billions of dollars, thousands of lives...).

So why do I write? I guess because I know this is not the kind of thing military wives will complain about except to eachother. It's important enough for me to tell you that that when you're listening to the news and hear about the stress the repeated deployments have on families, I feel like I want people to think about these kind of moments--and multiply at least 1 instance a day x 180,000 soldiers x 90,000 estimated wives x kids x immediate family x 15 months. A brigade isn't a news blip or a dot on a map--it represents a lot of people and a lot of little moments.

The Notebook

I received a little green notebook a month ago with great welcome. Inside this little treasure, my husband wrote a special dedication, indicating that we'd be exchanging this journal between us over the course of the deployment. There's something so intriguing and mysterious about the possibility of blank pages.

With pen to paper, our life-together-but-apart, will be etched into history. I'm never one at a loss for words and yet I've mostly just carried this little book inside my purse, reading and re-reading what he wrote and wondering what I can say that's interesting or important enough to be inked into history. The blank pages in this notebook represent the most important of all things right now- hope.

Inside this little book are our hopes and dreams and the kind of deep thoughts that are shared only between a man and his wife. Inside is a story of waiting, a long love letter, secrets, a chapter to a life story. What words will life will bring us in the next year to fill the pages?

An Open Love Letter

Sweet dear husband, can you feel my absolute love calling out to you in the universe tonight? Can you feel the pounding ache in my heart for you? Not aching for my own longing, but aching from the thought that you may be aching today and not feel me next to you? Can you feel my hand wrapped into an unbreakable tangle with yours?

Can you feel this "something's missing" feeling? The one that tells you that life goes on and yet at the same time it does not because there is an extra place setting at every meal? My heart breaks in the ironic agony that you eat alone at the same time I wish I was bringing you a plate and something to drink.

Don't you ever for one minute think that anyone or anything can ever replace what you are and bring to me. I love being with you, laughing with you, playing with you. I don't forget that feeling and I don't forget you. The longing does not cease. The practicality of my mind and the faith in my heart and the strength in my spine together cannot supplant a single smile from your lips.

The taste of your kisses is burned into my tongue and your touches etched in stone on to my skin. Your welcome love exploded my heart and bathes my world, making it far more lovely than before. Your words, your sounds, your heartbeats, your deepest gaze, your highest passions, I hold so carefully in my trembling, excited hands as I pray that you will know how much I love you tonight.

I miss you and love you, husband.

Love Under Ground

I'm having a tough day today. My night is his day and his day is my night. We live in two seperate worlds and his life, quite literally, happens a day ahead of mine. Owing to the 7, 738 miles between us, life doesn't even occur on the same day for us.

I think one of the hardest evolutions taking place in my heart is the acceptance that life goes on. It's tempting to wait by the phone or computer for a spark of a connection. Somehow, life goes on - bills get paid, trips get taken, you miss his call, you say the wrong thing, you miss days of writing letters, work has to be done, wars have to get fought.

It's so difficult not to worry about the cumulative, long-term effect of the gaps in connection but somewhere inside I guess I know that my understanding of what defines "connection" between a man and his wife is going to be stretched. What I'm really trying to absorb right now is the knowledge that love and life always make a way even when you can't see or feel it.

There are flower bulbs that lie dormant in the dark, sunless ground for seasons at a time. From the outside, it would appear that nothing is growing there at all. Yet when the right time comes, out of that dark, wet soil emerges life. In the secret and hidden world not seen by man, something beautiful was being forged all along, just the way that God designed it. Unseen to our eyes, He sustains and grows, He fortifies those fragile things until they are in season. I take faith in this today and hope that I will remember it.

Perhaps this is what he does with military marriages during wars. He puts a special love under ground so that while there are limited flowers, their roots will course deeply into the earth. Roots entwine in place of hands that can't, anchored there by something nobody sees. They will be sheltered as they grow into their next season, where what beauty they behold will once again be apparent to the rest of the world.

Root with me underground, my Love and entwine your roots with mine. Let's grow another year deeper where nobody can see us.

Radio Silence

It's probably not the best time to blog after reading the news, but I can't help it today - something is bothering me. A group of Army wives I know from an online discussion board recently discussed communication frequency with their deployed spouses. I can't help but wonder if when the average person expresses appreciation for the troops, if they stop to think about some of the small details like this.

Obviously, a war doesn't bode well for courtship and romancing your wife and I don't complain about this or expect it-it's just the way it is. I don't get to talk to my husband everyday and I don't get super long emails and love letters everyday to sustain me. However, there are women I think of today who hear from their husbands once a month. Their husbands are living in conditions and places that do not permit regular phone calls/email.

Can you take a second and imagine hearing the deafening sound of that empty crackle on the other side of a radio, moment after moment for 30 days? Writing letter after letter with infrequent response, sending packages, waiting by the edge of your seat in trepidation only for this to crecendo in that grand moment when the phone rings and you talk, and the process begins anew and the worry starts all over?

Think about it. What would you talk about after 30 days of silence between you and your spouse? How do you cram in all the updates, needs, and chit chat that would have occurred? How do you affirm your love for one another and encourage?

Does anybody out there besides me feel grieved by the repeated stretching this does to both parties in a marriage? I think today of an Army wife who responded to the survey. She's in Alaska entertaining herself for 30 days in a row, gets a call, and then repeats the cycle for one more of the 15 times in a row she will do that and not say anything about it ever. I've never heard her complain about her world of one-sided seeming love. Another is pregnant with her first child. I hurt inside today for her as I imagine the unspoken moments of her lonely experience. She never says anything about it to the rest of us, but I have a son and I can only imagine the weight of her heart inside her chest.

The silver lining I find today is not so much in the realization that I am extremely lucky to have more frequent communication with my spouse. My message today is that I feel grateful a grateful witness to a secret sisterhood so strong - women who are a living examples to me of how selfless love, devotion, and faith are present in a marriage's most precarious time.

I really can't know if all the people who have a "support the troops" car magnet ever consider the communication patterns of military families during wartime deployments, but what I do know is that as much as we are being tested, we are made of a special kind of steel, formulated to quietly bear the weight that less than 1% of the population in this country will ever have to bear on their shoulders.

Wait a Minute Mr. Postman

When you're 13.75 months and 7,738 miles away from the one you love, life's small tasks can assume a much larger importance, like getting to the post office on time.

When I first met my mother-in-law, she recounted the time she spent waiting on the father of my beloved while he complete his 3rd tour in Vietnam. It was a different time then, so over the course of his tour, she was able to talk to him on the phone but one or two times to update him on wedding plans and that was it for the entire year (what a cruel deployment world it must have been with no email!). But every single day, she wrote him a letter and he wrote one to her.

Those letters are long lost, but their story left an impression on me. I knew when I was told this story that the legacy of those love letters would carry on in my letters to my husband when he deployed. Would I find something interesting enough to write about every day for 15 months? So far, yes.

Writing the tiny number in the corner of each letter or card I have sent has become a matter of great importance. Now, I just got an address from him, so I'm only on Letter #13 and Package #5, but each time the number goes up, I visualize the moment I'll be writing a number like "Letter #259." At that point, so much more of this deployment will be behind us, though it's somewhat sobering to realize I will get up to like, Letter #455. Who knows where he will store these letters in his tiny living space!

Today was a long, busy day at work. To my dismay, I realized that in the hustle, I'd forgotten to put his daily letter in the mail. I drove up to a post office I know that has a late last pick up, and tossed the letter in, feeling a great sense of relief. No sooner did I toss it in than I realized that I'd forgotten to put a stamp on it. I drove off in a self-created panic, thinking, "What now? I can't get the mail out of the box. Now I have to wait for it to come back to me. Will the mail sorter give me a break when they see where it's going and slip it through or will they roughly apply a rubber stamp to it that says: RETURN TO SENDER FOR POSTAGE"

I simply couldn't bear the thought of this being The Letter That Might Have Gotten on to the Airplane and In His Hands if Only His Wife Remembered to Use a Stamp! What if waiting would have meant getting into the next batch of mail? I felt a little girl's dismay wash over my heart and I almost began to cry until I pulled it together, flipped a U-turn, and decided I would drive back and stalk the mailboxes until they got emptied. I went back, fearing the postman would say that it was a federal crime for me to try and intercept this peice of mail and thinking of what I would say.

I waited there, pacing as I watched the last folks scrambling to get their bills off from the post office with the latest pickup time in San Diego County (8 pm).


And finally, there he was, bathed in heavenly light- the man who held the precarious symbolic treasure of my marriage and my husband's morale in his very hands! I bet if I explain where the letter is going, what color it is, and what perfume is on it, he will let me put a stamp on it!

There's a happy ending, of course. He listened to my panicked story and asked me which box it was in and we found it right away. He let me stamp it so it will be properly postmarked 7/10/07 (and we all know how men at war have nothing else to do besides notice the time between postmarks). When my husband gets it, he won't really have a way of knowing how much love went into this one particular letter, but I guess it really doesn't matter. I will know and it matters to me.

Thank you, Mr. Postman.

A Flicker of Hope is Sometimes Enough

The media doesn't always report all the other things our troops are doing in Iraq. Just the other day, 24 severely malnourished and mistreated boys were rescued from an Iraqi orphanage. I can't completely explain the burden I feel for the men who are seeing these things and somehow having to mentally reconcile with it, nor describe the depth of wondering I do about how these little kids will manage to escape this experience.

Since I was a child, I have had an affliction to over-expose myself to the war-time grief of humanity. I stopped questioning why I felt I needed to force this witness upon others when I realized that the ache inside was really a gentle voice purposed to help others understand.

If I really allowed myself to do it, I could weep for 24 hours extrapolating the rest of the story from these pictures and perhaps even question the existence of God. But do you know what I see? Love, compassion, and strength where it is not supposed to exist, and somehow I feel a flicker of hope. In perhaps the most evil, brutally violent place in the world to be right now, 24 seeds of the next generation who were supposed to die got another chance.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) "U.S. soldiers helped rescue 24 abused and severely malnourished boys this month from a Baghdad orphanage, where they were found in conditions of appalling squalor. The 24 boys, aged 3 to 15 years old, were found naked in a darkened room without any windows. Many of the children were tied to their beds and were too weak to stand once released," In one, a U.S. soldier attended a boy whose body was covered in sores. Another child was tied to a cot and a third picture showed a group of boys lying face down on the floor, in pools of what appeared to be their own excrement. "In a nearby locked room, the soldiers discovered a room full of food and clothing that could have been used to aid the children."