It was the video that did me in

My husband recently got a new digital camera and used it to e-mail me two videos of him this week. He closed both videos with the promise that he would be home in about two weeks.

That was when I started to cry. When the realization that he will be home in two weeks hit me. And also when I realized there was no way I was ever going to get this house as clean as it needs to be within two weeks.

I watched the videos alone initially and then called the kids in to watch them. My stepdaughter sat beside me in front of the computer on my blue exercise ball, gently bouncing on it as she listened to her father’s greetings, her eyes never leaving the screen. She drank in every detail of her father, noting the Steelers flag on the wall behind him to the color of the chair he was sitting in.

Speaking of that exercise ball, when I bought it last year it was guaranteed to give me a flatter stomach and killer abs in just months. Well, it’s been sitting in my room for almost 11 months now and my abs have not changed at all. Maybe I’m supposed to actually do something with it other than use it as an extra computer chair.

During the video of his daddy, my son kept leaping from my lap to his big sister’s lap, listening intently to his daddy’s every word. I didn’t realize just how close my 3-year old had been listening until I played the video, at his insistence, for the fourth time. My son could echo every single word his father spoke in the video and acted like he and his father were having a personal conversation while talking about the same thing at the exact same time.

Come to think of it, that’s how my son has a lot of his conversations with me too. But that’s because I tend to reiterate the same gentle, friendly warnings (OK, threats against life and limb) on an hourly basis. I had no idea how predictable I was until I caught my son doing something naughty the other day and he looked at me, sighed and yelled firmly, “Go to my room, and no trick-or-treat candy!” and proceeded to start wailing as he sent himself to his room.

I never had to say a word.

At this rate, I’m hoping my son will have the power to ground himself when he doesn’t finish his homework once he’s in high school.

Back to the video.

It was the baby that surprised me the most.

The last time she saw her father was for the fastest two weeks in history in early summer when he was home on leave from Iraq. While, admittedly, he worshipped the ground she toddled on and rarely let her chubby feet touch the earth while he was in the room, I didn’t think she would have a firm memory of him.

I could not have been more wrong,

As soon as my husband’s face lit up my computer screen, my daughter screeched, “Daddieeeeeeee!” and tried to crawl into the computer. When that didn’t work, she satisfied herself by climbing into her big sister’s lap and waving at her father the first time the video played. When I played it the second time she started blowing kisses at him nonstop. Because she has a tendency to spit when she blows kisses, my teenage stepdaughter looked somewhat soggy at the end of the video. Finally, for every future rendition of the video, she contented herself by stating “Dadadadadadadadadadada” over and over. Apparently, that’s one word.

More apparently, my youngest daughter had absolutely no trouble remembering the founding member and president for life of her fan club.

I just sat there and watched all three of our children stare at the video of their father, knowing it had been recorded just hours earlier. Knowing that the man on the other end of that screen, the man I chose to spend the rest of my life with, the man whom I love with all my heart, the man who is the other half of my soul, will be home within two weeks.

I know there have been so many changes in our lives in the past 15 months, but one thing has remained constant: The love that we embrace each other and our family with has never faltered, never changed; rather, it has grown stronger. Our relationship with each other has been firm and steadfast, and we have kept our sense of humor intact (although I still think I’m funnier) and we make it a point to end every message and phone call with “I love you.”

That makes me realize that, in the larger scheme of things, perhaps the changes are not so very big after all.

Tiffany Horvath is the mother of two and step-mother of one. Her husband, Drew, is deployed to Iraq.