Communication

Sunday we had a baby shower for one of the wives, it was also the day we were all expecting to hear from our husbands after nearly 2 weeks of silence. The baby shower kicked off at 1pm, you could see each wife clinching to her cell phone waiting patiently for "the Call". None of us wanted to be the last, and wondered as the day went on after the first few calls were made..."is my husband going to call? OR What!" It was a long day but we all pulled together and ended up hanging out until 8pm. We ordered pizza around 5:30pm and sat around and shared our thoughts and concerns about the deployment.

As usual, the conversation turned to sex as we were watching a video documentary of Camp Shelby. It did not matter that we didn't neccessarily see our husbands, but just to see men in uniform was making us hot and miss our husbands. Then one of the wives was commenting on how she couldn't wait until March because this was the longest she had ever gone with out sex since she was 16. I had to think about it. Then another shouted at least you guys got to have sex during Christmas break!! I just had the baby.... "Oh no!", we all jeered. Then the pregnant one says, "Oh yeah, well at least you guys have something to look forward to!" (She will be delivering near the Pass time.) Suddenly I did not feel so bad about my current situation. We all sat around and joked a little while longer and shared our fears and excitement of seeing our husbands.

It's the weirdest feeling in the world, you want nothing more than to see your husband, but you are also so nervous of what he is going to think of you. For example, my husband has lost 35lbs since the deployment, and I fear that he has such high expectations of me that I won't add up. I know these are irrational fears, but at this stage in the deployment it seems that we are all irrational. So I don't feel so bad. The only thing I can do is to just buck up and get my butt to the gym. Afterall I only have less than 3 weeks until I see him!!! Yeah!

Time is going by so slowly. But I am so excited to be back in communication with my man again. He ended up being the 2nd to last to call on Sunday. His phone is not working again so he had to wait and borrow someone else's. He was tierd and cranky, to be expected after being up for 40hrs straight. They had not had a shower in 12 days, nor a hot meal or more than 4 hrs of sleep a night. I felt so sorry for him. But I am also so proud. The conversation didn't last too long, he had alot of work to do and needed to get some sleep. To my surprise he called back a half an hour later when I was in my car driving home. It kind of hit me at a bad time, because tears were already welling up in my eyes. When I heard his voice again I started sobbing. I tried to make it stop because I do not like to cry in front of him and especially not in this situation when there is nothing he can do to comfort me and it sort of makes him angry because he's frustrated. I tried to suck it up, I couldn't. I didn't even know what was wrong. Then I just let it all out. Everything that I had been wanting to talk to him about for the past 2 weeks just poured out. The last thing I wanted to do was to burden him with my problems a home. To my surprise, he handled it very well. He comforted me and assured me that everything would be just fine. I learned later that I was not the only one who cried that night. My DH told me that everyone he talked to said that their wife cried too. It's great to know that I am not alone. It's great to have friends who are all going through the same emotions. I don't know what I would do without having such a close support group to call and here the same concerns mirrored back to me.