Homefront: Saying Goodbye

July 15, 2007

By Tiffany Horvath

Never have two weeks gone by so fast in my life.

It's hard to believe that by this time tomorrow, he'll be gone. My husband will be on his way back to Iraq, to war, and away from us.

We have tried to do so much as family while he was here, as if we were desperately trying to make memories that would sustain us for the next six months until we see him again.

We've gone to elaborate family dinners and have small celebrations with the neighbors. We've had church days and potlucks with friends and spent hour after hour at the local pool. We've had several date nights, and he's had father- daughter days with his almost teenage eldest daughter, where they've gone to movies and lunches and dinners.

He cannot seem to believe that she will be 13 years old when he sees her again, as if somehow when she goes from being 12 to 13 she will cease to be a little girl and enter some magical realm of young womanhood hitherto unknown to him.

Our three-year old has spent every waking moment either with his daddy or asking for his daddy. I never realized how much he realized his daddy was absent until my husband came home. Every time we go out or do something with friends, our son loudly announces to everyone that his daddy is with him.

I don't know what this little boy is going to do when he wakes up tomorrow morning and discovers his daddy has gone again.

I've tried to prepare him by talking about how his daddy has to leave and go back to work, but at three years of age, he doesn't have much of a grasp of time. Six more months is forever as far as he is concerned and yet he is oblivious to it. He is content in every moment he spends with his father and I dread the look on his face the morning after his daddy leaves when he asks where he is.

Then there's the baby girl.

Even my husband says she the most obviously changed in his eyes. She was just a squirming, wiggly and occasionally smelly thing when he left. Now she's every inch a princess who knows exactly what she wants and who she wants to give it to her. It took him almost the entire first week to coax her to come to him, but now she runs to her Daddy rather than to me for everything.

Mainly because she has realized Daddy will give her what Mommy will not, like extra popsicles, extra attention and loud, wet raspberries in her tummy. Speaking of which, my husband proudly taught aforementioned baby to also give raspberries in return, and my daughter has since lift up the shirts of two strangers at the grocery store in order to blow on their bellies and laugh hysterically. One lady thought it was hilarious; the man wasn't quite as amused.

And now, after all his dedication and love and affection he has showered on her, my husband is going to leave. In addition to the serious de-spoiling programming I am going to have to implement, I know that it is entirely possible she will not recall any of this when she sees him again in over six months and that he is going to have to start over as a complete stranger to her.

Finally, I have to admit that I cannot stand to think about him leaving. It's horribly selfish and one-sided, but I have loved having my husband with me, beside me, these past two weeks. Not just for the help around the house, although that's been nice, but to talk to and have someone actually listen in return. I've been able to make jokes on a regular basis and have some laugh at them who actually understands them. I've been able to listen to him snoring at night and know that all is right in small corner of the world.

I am going to miss that desperately.

Now it's back to watching the news in sick fascination every day and wondering. It's back to being a single parent with children who can't understand why their daddy had to leave again.

And it's back to a house that is achingly silent and lonely every night after the kids are in bed with not even an echo of another adult to break the monotony.

And, finally, it's back to hoping and praying and begging that my husband makes it back from this war soon and that we can be together again as a family for a longer stretch of time than two short weeks.

Several of my friends who's husbands had their two weeks leave earlier in the year told me that it's much harder to see them leave this time around. They said it was easier when they said good-bye in the fall than after two weeks leave.

I couldn't understand what they meant when I heard that the first time.

I understand now.

This time, I know exactly how much time drags on. I know what he is headed back into and where he is going.

This time, I know what we both have to look forward to in the next long months, and I dread it before it ever even begins.

In a few hours, I will say good bye to my husband and kiss him one last time.

I won't do it again until he, and over 3500 other soldiers from Fort Richardson, come home many, many months from now.

Tiffany Horvath is the mother of two and the stepmother of one. Her husband, Drew, is deployed to Iraq. She writes every Sunday abut life at home for the wife of a deployed soldier.