Welcome home, daddy

I have been waiting to write this column since August.

Almost 16 months ago, I started writing about my family’s preparations for my husband’s deployment to Iraq and have followed up those first few columns with writings detailing my daily existence in the 14 months he has been gone.

Well, not just my life.

I’ve also mentioned the lives of all three of our children, our cats (OK, my husband still insists they are my cats alone), my church, my various volunteer organizations and the occasional stranger I’ve come into contact with.

Not too many people or places have been safe from me.

Sometimes my husband discovered more about my week by reading my column that he did by talking with me on the phone. It’s also entirely possible he called me to the carpet on a few things I may have exaggerated upon. Only a few things, mind you. I’ve said it a billion times: I never exaggerate.

But every column I have written has been leading up to this one: My husband comes home this week.

Within days of this being printed he will be home — back in my arms, with our 3-year-old’s arms wrapped around his neck in a death grip, his oldest daughter’s arms clutching his midsection and our baby, now at 19 months not so little anymore, joyfully bouncing and clutching anything she will be able to reach once we see him.

In retrospect, my husband should be thankful he is follicularly challenged (i.e. bald) as the baby would adore getting a fistful of hair to pull herself even closer to her “Dadadadadadada.”

As I write this, I cannot help but reflect back on the columns I did not get to write. Contrary to many expectations, I never once suffered from writer’s block; rather, had to narrow the field down each week into one simple subject from multiple topics that had occurred to me. My computer file is littered with column ideas and half-finished columns and tangents I started out on that now will never be finished.

I desperately wanted to write a column about the anonymous woman who left my family a gift basket at the Frontiersman office just to tell me how much her family supported me. The small blue Cookie Monster stuffed animal she had in that basket has traveled in my diaper bag ever since, has soothed numerous tears and, truth be told, caused a few fights when both small ones decided they wanted Cookie more than anything else in the world at the exact same time. The tan blanket in that basket adorns my couch, and I curled up with it on many nights last winter after all my children were in bed, and even used it to dry up tears during sappy movies and one very poignant toothpaste commercial. The gift certificate to a favorite restaurant of my husband’s lies waiting in my wallet for us to use — together.

The thought that someone cared enough for a stranger to do this makes me happy I am a Valley girl. From elementary school to high school, the place has always been home and always will be, no matter where the Army sends us.

I wrote columns that never ran about unplanned emergency room visits and sit-down parent teacher conferences at middle school, but the first sounded too much like complaining and the second involved way too much bragging. I just cannot help it if my children all happen to be geniuses in all they do. Except for my son and that emergency room. As he learned the hard way, there are some places plastic dinosaurs simply aren’t meant to go.

This column has been the most cathartic thing in my life when it came to dealing with my husband’s deployment. It was my way of dealing with things that happened from week to week and being able to laugh about them and hope somebody somewhere would also be able to commiserate and smile with me. It was my diary of sorts. Granted, a diary read by multiple people, but a diary nonetheless.

I’ve had strangers recognize my name at the grocery store and tell me of the prayer requests I’ve been in at churches I’ve never attended. A wonderful man who makes beautiful wooden toys every year for the library to give to children at Christmastime presented each of my children with gorgeous wooden airplanes in the parking lot of a local grocery store this summer and gave me the most heartfelt “thank you” I’d ever received for just being a soldier’s wife.

Although I never got the chance to write about everything I wanted to this past year, I shared these anecdotes with my husband through e-mail and sporadic phone conversations. He was so touched by the generosity of spirit of complete strangers in this community that he’s been encouraging many military friends close to retirement time to look at this area as a wonderful place to make a permanent home and raise a family.

But I digress. Frequently.

My family, God willing, will all be together at this time next week. There will be an adjustment period, I know, as my husband becomes accustomed to all the rituals and habits that have been created and changed while he’s been gone. The cats will have to learn to share their side of them bed with him, much to their furry chagrin. I will have a partner physically beside me again to laugh, love, occasionally argue with and to hold at night.

All of my columns for the past year have been leading up to this week — the week my husband comes home. My house is nowhere near being clean, and I doubt it will be by the time he gets home. His side of the garage has had so much stuff dumped on it that, while I am fairly certain his truck is still in there somewhere, he may have to dig for it. I seriously doubt I’m going to be able to find his F150 between now and the time he arrives home in that space, although I occasionally see hints of it beneath my son’s summer toys.

I have been procrastinating at getting these tasks completed, I know. And I know it’s because, somehow, it just doesn’t seem real that he is coming home for good. I think that by having the house cluttered and leaving my dust bunnies in their merry miseries I am keeping my hopes down just in case something happens to delay him. Once I begin the massive house cleaning and file sorting and garage sweeping, I know it’s going to be because he is literally almost home. And that leaves me so excited and nervous I am seriously considering just calling a housekeeping service and letting someone else tackle my home because I’ve already caught myself dusting the television set four times and the cats twice. Yeah, my cats are lemony fresh right now, but I haven’t done anything else to prepare the house for his homecoming.

I had a massive 6-foot banner printed at a local print shop for his welcome, and when the time came for me to tell the manager what I wanted printed on the sign, all of the sweet, sappy and occasional entertaining slogans that had been running through my mind for the past few months flew out the window.

The banner says simply, “Welcome Home, Daddy.”

And that’s all it needs to say.

We will take care of saying the rest.

In person.

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