The day he came home from Iraq

I have never been so nervous. I have taken pregnancy tests and driving tests and spoken in public and moved across the country on a Greyhound bus and I have never been as nervous as I am right now standing on the top of a row of bleachers in a gym full of women and children waiting for a stream of identical uniformed men to walk through a faded brown metal door.

Surely my fuschia hair sets me apart from the blondes and brunettes. Surely he will see my sign, which only contains a runic symbol 12 inches tall. Surely he will see me in my Princess Hooah t-shirt.

How will I find him?

The men are marching in. They are filling the gym with the smell of dirt and heat. They are identical. They blend together in camouflage and tan skin.

I am surrounded by gasping, laughing, crying women. I am completely alone.

I am not alone. I see him. In the first row he is staring at me. I lower my sign. I laugh and cry and point, jumping up and down.

I belong here. He belongs here. We smile. We barely break gaze as the ceremony proceeds. We are surrounded by a formation of men and bleachers of women all bowing their heads to pray. We are alone, staring into each other's eyes.

The formation is released and the gym becomes a sea of tears. I step down and wait for him to come to me.

It has been 343 days. He smells better than I expected and he tastes exactly the same.

Wives

When we talk about being married to our husbands, other women admire us... or rather, they say they do.

"You're so strong," they almost whine, picturing their lives and their petty selfishness.

"You're so selfless. I don't know how you do it. I could never," they continue, trying to imagine what our lives must be like.

Our lives are like everyone else's. We sleep. We eat. We laugh. We cry. We work. We love.

Oh, how we love!

"We could, any one of us leave," I say, trying to make a point, "We are not trapped."

"But then who would take care of him?" One of the other wives, who is in a tough place, asks.

No one. No one would take care of him. This might be why many of us stay when we are not sure if we should. There are some who leave. Things have gotten to be too much or there is abuse, alcohol abuse, child abuse, verbal abuse, and women who desperately love their veteran decide they love themselves or their children more and they leave.

And they feel they have failed.

We want so desperately to heal what is unhealable.

We could leave, but we stay. We do not stay because we are noble or heroic or selfless. We are as selfish and petty as the women who cannot fathom our lives.

We stay because if we don't, no one will take care of the love of our life. We respect and love these men and we believe someone should sacrifice to take care of them. How can you ask someone else to do what you are unwilling to do?

disgusting apathy

I am saddened to tears over the news coming out of Boston. There were two bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

I told my husband what happened and he said, "How is that any different than a kid stepping on a landmine in Cambodia?"

Well, it isn't, I guess. How does that make it any less sad?

"There are three dead," I read.

"Well, that's not that bad then."

At this point I told him to stop talking to me. I know he has seen horrible things. I know he is immune to this kind of horror, but I cannot listen to his apathy in the face of horror.