Excuses

I was told to call a certain person if I hadn't heard from my husband in several days. And there was a stretch there for a while but I just couldn't pick up the phone. I mean, what would I say? Worse yet, what would they say?

I remember during the last deployment my brother and his wife came to visit. They drove a Taurus or something similar. He had Virginia plates. When they parked in front of my house, both of my neighbors, who were not only friends but were wives of deployed husbands, freaked out. They thought the worst had come. They thought this was it for me and my family, "They" had come. It is the wive's biggest fear: an official car filled with people coming to knock on your door to give you the news that your husband wasn't coming home.

We don't watch the news, we don't read the paper, we listen to the artillery going off in the distance and pretend they are fire works. We try not to think about the wives we have had to visit whose husbands weren't coming back. We keep a list of foods we will make when "They" call on us to offer a hand or two to a family who is grieving.

My kids wait every day to hear from Daddy and I have to make up excuses like: Daddy is so busy helping people, he couldn't call today, maybe tomorrow. I don't think they buy it. The hardest part for me is when the four year old draws pictures of his family and Daddy is no longer in them.

Daddy is just a voice on the other end of a phone that has stopped ringing. But I know he will call when he can and that is what I tell my kids and that is what I believe. Soon enough my heart won't skip a beat when the doorbell rings unexpectantly. (I bet the UPS guys don't think about that when they are knocking on people's doors around here) Soon enough Daddy will be the biggest stick figure on the family portrait. Soon enough the phone will ring.