Day 191: Valentine's Day

Just a stupid, greeting card holiday, right? I don't need a day to tell my husband I love him or that he loves me. When we were dating, he was big gesture guy, sending me two dozen roses to school so I would have to show off my flowers to everyone. We've done romantic dinners and enjoyed them, but that doesn't really matter either. Today, my first email was a gift card for a spa day to use when he is home in a few weeks. I mailed him DVDs of all the videos of our daughter since he left. Considering the effort that went into figuring out how to make all my old tech work with the new, I spent a couple of weeks making those DVDs. It wasn't expensive, but hopefully he can come home feeling caught up on Lil Bit's growth and progress. We each make a gesture, but the same gesture we would make any day.

If today is important at all, it is because it is just another excuse to put someone else first. The new Hallmark commercials are really touching. I like the slogan that Valentine's Day is a day to say, "I love us." It is a very touching line. Someone on their ad team probably got promoted over that, but it did make me think.

Valentine's Day should be for celebrating US, not just the other person, but who that other person makes us be. I know my love for Chad, my respect for him, who he is brings out the best of who I can be. I think he feels the same for me. I may not be perfect, but he makes me want to try.

While we don't get to celebrate very many Valentine's Days together and I already know he will miss next year too, one of the things we can celebrate is how good we are at handling all the stuff the Army and life throws at us. So if you were lucky enough to share today with your someone special, I hope you wake up tomorrow and the next day and the next and give them 100% of everything you can everyday.

Still not feeling very good, so I will keep this short, but Valentine's Day was lonely for a lot of soldier's wives, a joyous celebration for the few whose husband's came home and a tearful good-bye for the wives who watched their soldiers deploy today. A friend of mine said she saw the tell-tale white buses driving toward the airport full of soldiers. I can't imagine why any general or whoever is in charge would make a soldier's departure day Valentine's Day. It seems like someone would think about how hard that would be and move it back a day. I don't know how things get decided, but our deployments are so routine now, someone had to have considered that flight plan and thought on some level, "who cares how hard that will be for the soldiers or their wives?" and then they wonder why soldier's commit suicide and why divorce rates keep rising. Stupid little things like taking them away for Valentine's Day, a stupid, greeting card holiday until you're alone again to "celebrate" it.

So tonight, I kissed my teeny Valentine good-night and will pray as I drift off that my other Valentine will come home safely to me always. I hope you take an extra second today to not take yours for granted. So much of life we take for granted not knowing what it is like to miss it. Army wives don't have that luxury, but on the bright side, we know what a precious gift our love is.

Day 199: A Hallmark Day

This afternoon, I watched a Hallmark movie. They all make me cry, but this one was about a woman whose husband was a Navy pilot during WWII and was listed as MIA, but she never stopped waiting for him to come home. She was pregnant when he left, and he never met his son. Talk about a tear jerker! I cried through the whole thing. I guess after feeling the way I did last night, missing Chad so much, hating this half life without him, I should have known better than to watch it. Lil Bit crawled up into my lap for nap time and I had to wipe the tears from her cheeks that had run down mine.

The movie was part of the Hallmark Channel Anniversary celebration so every commercial break was an emotional reminder of how Hallmark cards and recordable books can be so very special in our lives. I normally wouldn't get so touched, but this year without Chad I was worried about our little girl not knowing her father.

Right before he left, I bought one of Hallmark's recordable books, All the Ways I Love You. On the back of the book is a note asking if the book has meant something to you, to write to Hallmark and let them know. I've considered writing them about how important the book has been to our family. Something along the lines of the following:

When my husband and I married, we knew we would never have any biological children together. We thought about adopting, but weren't sure we would ever be able to afford it. After years of living as frugally as possible, all the stars aligned and we brought home our precious baby girl.

My husband is a soldier and misses a lot of his family's lives. We were so thrilled when our daughter was born when he was home. He was able to spend the week she was in the NICU with us and most of the first three months of her life, including the most special day of finalizing her adoption.

He left for Iraq a week later. She was three months old. She was so small, still such a newborn. I worried about her first year being fatherless. I worried about how much he would miss and also how much she would lose not having her daddy, the snuggles, the first milestones, the bedtime stories.

So I bought one of Hallmark's recordable books, and my husband carefully recorded each page and locked the recording the day before he deployed. We started reading it daily that night. I cried when I heard his voice crack on the last line. She was captivated from the first time she heard it. Every time we read it, she stops squirming and settles in, staring intently at each page, listening closely.

As she got old enough I could hold the phone to her ear, my heart melted when her face lit up at his voice like I had never seen her smile on the phone with anyone else. She recognized his voice, she knew her father. Yesterday, she even said "Da da" on the phone to him.

We have a few weeks left to go before he gets to come home for R&R and a few months before he comes home for good. I worry about his safety everyday, and I worry about his daughter getting to know her father, but at least I know when he comes home, she will know the sound of his voice.

A lot of soldiers come home to children that are so little they've forgotten their dads or moms. The children are nervous or afraid of the stranger in their homes. All mommy or daddy wants to do is hug them hard and make every second count to make up for the many that were missed. I can't imagine the heartbreak of a parent whose child is afraid of them or too shy to go to them, but I am hopeful that my husband will not ever have to know that sadness because my daughter sees his pictures around the house and hears him read her a bedtime story every night.

As an Army wife, we do all we can to maintain the house and the family while our soldiers are gone. I have a Teddy Bear in Army uniform, pictures of him in her crib at daycare and all around our house, and his voice in a special book that reminds her not only of how her daddy sounds, but how much he loves her everyday in every way. And that has made all the difference to my precious little girl and her far away daddy, who nightly says, "I love you round and round the world. I love you through and through. And when it seems impossible to love you more . . . I do."