Eight Months later…. Marian sat down on the couch after putting her child bed. She finally has time to make sense of her hectic day. Over on the coffee table there is a picture of her husband and her sitting beside the stack of mail. Marian thinks back on photo and remembers getting the news that your country has been attacked by terrorist. That day and event was horrible and once it sinks in there is a deeper meaning. Your husband is registered as an active duty solider. For you this means that your husband could be sent to fight depending on what the government feel is necessary to protect its citizens. You pray to God that this is not the case. Eventually, everything returns to normal. You find out that you are pregnant, the greatest day of your life and cannot wait to tell your husband. That night at home you are about to tell him and then you see the news of President Bush’s announcement that Congress has just approved his motion for declaration of war on terrorism. Your husband, who is sitting beside you, turns to you and said I got the cal and my platoon is preparing for the invasion I am being deployed”. Everything comes crashing down you finally find the courage to tell him the news that you found out earlier. He is happy but feels guilty at the same time for leaving you alone. You do your best to assure him that everything will be okay and the only thing that he needs to worry about his returning home safe.
Marion thinks of the time that has passed since that night. Her husband was deployed on one of the first invasions of Iraq in March of 2003. The baby was born month after his deployment. It was the hardest to deal with the loneliness in the beginning. By this point it was a part of her everyday life. Marian knows that life was harder without her husband but she was an army wife, it was reality. Thankfully, her community and friends had embraced her with loving arms and were helping her in a struggling time. Some of her friends were going through the exact thing she was so they had started a support group and met regular. She just hates that her husband was missing all of the excitement and preparations that comes with a new born child because he is worrying about keeping his family and country safe. He did however write frequently and call whenever he could to ask how she and the baby were getting by and to remind her that he staying safe so he could come home. This warmed Marion’s heart and now Marion was looking forward to telling their child about the kind of bravery and integrity that their father posses to go and defend his country.
Before going to bed every night Marion prayed for the said for the safety of her husband, his return to home safely as well as the other men he was serving with, and to help her have the strength to get thru the next day.
Lauren Epperson
It would take only hours for people to talk about ‘bringing the country together’. For words like ‘unity’ and ‘patriotism’ to become everyone’s everyday language. Those words had been my words for years. When I told my parents I wanted to join the army, when I had to accept that I’d never be able to provide Marian with the kind of life she was used to. Unity and patriotism were the words that I used to make things alright again.
Marian takes my hand. “All those people,” she says.
The thoughts I’m having are not allowed, not for anybody but certainly not for a soldier. I don’t care about those people. I live a million miles away from them in a military base with a family that is just starting to take shape. So no, in that moment, for one moment I choose to be selfish. I don’t care about the people falling or crying. I care about myself and my wife and the child that I am about to be pulled away from. I care about missing lamaze classes and random cravings and all the other things good, faithful husbands go through before they hold their babies in their arms. I care about the most amazing thing I could ever possibly make being brought into this world without me. I especially care that I made a promise I no longer want to keep.
“Do you know what this means?” I ask. I didn’t mean to but it slipped out.
Marian shakes her head. Her mind and her eyes are focussed solely on the television.
That’s my wife. Single minded to a fault. Determined to the point that it is almost detrimental. The coffee table in front of us is littered with baby books. Evidence of her latest obsession. The Modern Girls Guide to Motherhood. The Mother of All Pregnancy Books. Even A Womb With A View. I worry that now this tragedy will eclipse the birth of our child. Not so much in her mind (for even as she watches the screen Marian’s fingers rest inside the folds of Baby Wise, marking her place). But perhaps in the world at large. In the extended family who will try to smile at this new familial addition without thinking of all the people who’s lives were cut short a mere two months before the birth. How can any child compete with this kind of overwhelming sadness? How can a child grow up in that kind of miasma without a father to lead the way?
“You’ll have to go,” Marian says. “You’ll be deployed.” Her fingers have drifted to a book called Dad’s Pregnant Too! Perhaps intentionally. The cheery exclamation point is giving me a migraine.
“Yes,” I say. Simple. Sorry. Sad. S-words are drifting through my mind to keep terms like ‘absent father’ at bay.
I don’t immediately know what she’s thinking when she goes to get the camera. But then it all makes sense and I even manage a small, nervous smile for the photo.
Aza Green
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