My day wasn’t that bad after all

I thought I was having a bad day earlier this week.

I had a doctor’s appointment for a light medical procedure scheduled for 8:20 a.m. at Elmendorf Air Force Base. I’d been trying to have this done for a few months now and was thrilled to finally have it scheduled.

The hospital has a wonderful program called Teddy Watch, where the ASYMCA offers on-site free child care to parents if they have medical appointments. You have to call ahead to save a spot and the program is mainly staffed by volunteers.

I’d registered the kids for the program and showed up 20 minutes before my appointment with two still-groggy kids. I had to wake them at 6 a.m. to get to Elmendorf from Palmer in rush hour traffic.

The trouble was, there was no one at Teddy Watch that morning. It turned out the caregiver had a family emergency the previous night and there was no one available.

I didn’t know this at the time, so I waited.

And waited.

Finally, late for my appointment, I had to run with one kid on my hip and the other skipping merrily alongside me to the laboratory for a test.

The lab informed me it was out of the easy test I needed, so I had to give blood. After another 10-minute wait, I gave a blood sample with the baby on my lap and my 3-year-old intently watching the syringe fill with my bodily fluid. My daughter was fascinated by the procedure and tried to grab the needle — twice.

Thankfully, it remained elusive and she was not successful, much to my vein’s relief.

Now really, really, really late, I raced over to the clinic rehearsing my story in my mind and trying to figure out if the doctor was insane enough — er, nice enough — to perform the procedure with both kids in the room.

Once I signed in at the front desk and poured my tale of woe to the customer service lady behind the counter, she directed me to the staff sergeant in back to see if something could be done.

So I went and talked to a woman who grinned at my children and said this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. She called over a tech sergeant, and then she told me they both needed a break anyway and offered to watch my children while I saw the doctor.

I couldn’t believe how willing they were. My daughter immediately went to the tech sergeant, because she said the magic word.

“Lollipop.”

There is a wonderful security officer at the front desk of the hospital who, in addition to be willing to check car seats to see if they are installed properly and provide a friendly greeting with a willingness to help, also has a container of lollipops hidden in his desk.

He gives these candies, after checking with parents, to children as they leave the hospital.

John is the reason my son always wants to go to the doctor’s office.

After confirming with me that lollipops made an acceptable breakfast, these two wonderful soldiers took my kids for treats and then played with them in the waiting area and I got my appointment taken care of.

When I was through and went to collect my progeny, my son was covered in more than a dozen stickers. Turns out, the two sergeants showed him where they keep the stickers for children who behave and rather than give him just one, they let him have as many as could fit on his body.

My son had Winnie the Pooh on both arms, Shrek and Elmo on his stomach and SpongeBob on various other appendages. There were also some cartoon stickers I didn’t recognize. My son now thinks the hospital is better than Disneyland.

I was still stressing out over my morning when I went to my rehearsal that night for VPA’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles.”

In the middle of rehearsal, I noticed one of the leading actresses had tear-stained eyes. She performed her part beautifully, but I knew something was wrong. This woman’s son, a recent West Point graduate, had just left for a yearlong tour of Iraq the previous week. Yesterday, another cast member whispered to me, one of her son’s classmates was killed over there.

She had yet to talk to her son since hearing of the death and had been brewing over it all day.

We sat and talked during the last half of the rehearsal, and I’m not too ashamed to state that I missed a lot of what was going on on-stage. We both cried a bit and hugged and talked about what we were going through.

She told me, through her tears, that she didn’t know how I could be so strong all the time. I laughed sadly at that and told her no one sees me at night once the kids are in bed and I’m alone. I have to put on a brave front for the sake of my family, but everyone needs to let emotions out at some point, and I am no different.

The actors rehearsing on stage gave us a few minutes to pull ourselves together, and then apparently decided that their new goal was to make us laugh. Their forthcoming antics, comedic moments and hilarious one-liners had everyone in the room holding their sides and our tears of sadness quickly dissolved into tears of laughter.

It wasn’t quite the way “The Hound of the Baskervilles” was written, as I am fairly certain Watson doesn’t have a tap dance number and that Sherlock Holmes does not pick his nose constantly while solving cases in the original script.

I work with a fantastic group of people.

All I could think of, once I got home that night, is how my husband is almost home. It’s been well over a year now and he should be back in early December if all goes according to plan.

My husband will be home soon and my friend’s son has just left. I wish there was some advice I could give, some words of wisdom I could pass along that would help ease the passage of time. But the truth is, I can think of nothing. It’s a tough time and a rough year and your soldier is always foremost in your thoughts.

By surrounding yourself with friends and laughter and life, there will always be moments to be enjoyed and savored and shared with your loved one when he or she comes back home. It’s that thought and goal that must sustain you through the lonely nights and weekends and long days when the news is bad that you turn the TV off and throw the newspaper in the trash without ever opening it.

And, thinking of my friend, I realized my day was truly not so bad after all.

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.