I woke up, wrapped the sheet around me and stepped on the cold, marbled floor where the moonlight was actually casting shadows through the blinds. My shoulders silently shook with a sad laughter as I thought back to the verse I wrote weeks ago:
Away Without Leave and the Laundry Left Behind
Moon splashes
the side of your bed
You are gone
I did laundry at 3 am again
then I wrote you a letter
I thought I heard you speaking, calling me back to bed
I felt the heaviness of your arm fall
across my stomach
my husband, my soldier
Your ghost is
The one I lie awake with every night
Sleep doesn’t come without you
Sleep has disappeared from my mind and body and I finally know what it is like to be an insomniac. He has been fighting in Iraq for five months now with his unit of Marines from Savannah, Georgia, on his first deployment, and I hate waking up in the middle of the night not knowing if he’s getting his four hours of sleep or if he is out firing his gun. The dark silent nights are filled with an emptiness that I not only feel in the bed besides me but in my heart. We find every chance we can to make love through our words, but it is a literal heaviness that cannot be filled by the mountains of letters I receive and write back. Nor can the thousands of X’s and O’s truly feel like a passionate kiss and a safe embrace.
The dogs refuse to crawl up beside me and sleep because I feel different than their usual sleeping buddy; everything is strange with him away. The touch I long for is absent. Like his boots from the doorway and his blue-striped toothbrush from the sink. I have trouble finding his scent on the pillow and my hand grasps air when I forget and wear my comfy socks after mopping the kitchen and slip like I klutzily do every time. I am afraid I am running out of words for my letters but without them, he has nothing. So I persist through the hours of restless nights falling asleep to the news and finding words in my dreams.
Everyday I keep tab on the news. I know I should not but I cannot help but feel that my worry will deplete each day there is no bad news of him. For some reason the glow of a T.V screen at 1 am is soothing. After a night of work at the café, I come home to an empty house and turn on CNN. Most nights are spent falling asleep on the couch to the flicker and glow of a newsreel. Car explosions and suicide bombers, convoys hitting landmines. So much death runs before my eyes that I have become immune; I only need it to feel like he is safe. That he is not the one hit by an insurgent sniper. Late Sunday nights I watch CNN for an hour after work and then the new episode of Army Wives replays on Lifetime. Without the drama and post life of these women, I would not make it through the next week. I see my own warrior reflected in the persona of one young, newly married soldier. For one hour his smile and southern, gentleman character often leaves me feeling like I have been held by the one ten thousand miles away.
Some nights I am fortunate enough to stare at the illumination of the computer screen while we chat over the webcam for hours, speaking about our future when he gets back, and the ring he teases me with. It takes minutes to pull a smile from him; I have to draw him out of the tough soldier disposition and wait for technology to catch up to the distance of the wires.
Tonight there was no webcam. There were no smiles and no ‘I love yous.’ Tonight there was a news story about a Blackhawk that went down from Al Taquaddum, his airbase. This one Marine is a Landing Support Specialist and helicopters are his life over there. One month before he is to come home and an accident on his base could bury him in a sandbox instead of the green lands he is defending. All I can think about is how they shut down the lines of communication until the families are notified. I am not a family member yet. I am just a Yankee girl engaged to a Marine fighting a war away. I talked to him yesterday on the phone, it cannot happen that quickly. I do not want the last words I ever said to him to be goodbye.
* * *
Time shifts to two and a half months following on Hunter Airfield Base Savannah, Georgia. The bus with his platoon rolls to a stop in front of the unit building and the doors open. I watch Marine after Marine step down into the arms of the girl they are coming home too. I cannot contain myself as the last one steps down, his eyes searching and his smile directed my way. I realize for the first time in a year I will touch him. I run to him, barely clearing the rope separating the men from their family and our embrace will be captured and framed on my shelf for the rest of our life. That moment possesses a plethora of emotions and two smiles that say a thousand and one words. Though no words except three and a small prayer are shared.
I flash back to the last episode of Army Wives where the young soldier is embracing his wife. She reminded me of my vulnerable self: new to the whole military experience, scared, and soon to be alone. They are standing in front of a bus, on a paved airfield, encircled as one with flags waving in the distance, but they are not sharing the joy I experience now. She is saying goodbye for a year without touch and the safety of her husband. I cannot imagine another goodbye as the word has been banished from my being.
* * *
Six months later and we are discussing our future garden out back in our future home. He wants a silent and beautiful place; a green land cared for by his thumb and my smiles. He plans to plant Lilies, my favorite, and Tulips, his. I mention a Magnolia Tree for the scent always reminds me of him for some reason. Of us. I feel the shade from one will be a nice place to curl up and reread our letters. This talk of flowers brings a blissful smile to my face yet suddenly he asks out loud if I will be able to care for the garden by myself. He thinks it will be healing; I have no doubt to his meaning. He called me days ago and mentioned the rumor flying around base of another deployment. I cannot handle these rumors, despite the prospect of Magnolias. He speaks again so as to soothe my worry and talks of wedding planning and my graduating. ‘
This is ‘what I should focus on,’ he says.
This is what I imagine will happen:
‘You tell me they are just rumors but I worry. A rumor on your terms is different than what I hear in my coffee shop girl talk. I think Jane is cheating on her husband but you possibly going to war makes me want to hold on to you for dear life. I cannot sip a mocha over that and not pay attention. I could never find myself in another man’s arms.’
What happens to him affects me. I know his rumors.
He wants to plant a garden and make me better. I do not want a lonely Magnolia without a Marine.
‘There is no goodbye in our future. Don’t worry love, I probably won’t go,’ he tells me. ‘We will plant the garden together and sit under the tree while our children grow.’
Yet, when that whisper crosses the line, the phone call in which he said ‘no, not this time,’ I hear in his voice the command of his men. They cannot go without him and I will breathe in one last time and wait for the smell of flowers in our garden as he calls his soldiers back and gives them his heart.
The Magnolia tree will bloom and I will collect the petals as they fall counting down every day he is gone, for when the tree dies come winter, I know he will disappear without one goodbye so as to make it easier.
The letters will come and I will wait until the Magnolia trees bloom again.
