day 1: it's the airplane calling

A little after 6 this morning the phone rang. I knew it would be him.

He didn't have long, he said, just a few quick minutes before they took off.

He was on board a commercial turned military chartered plane. According to him, the whole thing was first class. I told him that was a good thing: he could recline and finally get some sleep since he wasn't allowed any overnight. Genius husband had already downed a Monster or two......needless to say, he was rearing and ready to go!

The girls and I left the house a tad bit earlier than normal, because I wanted to get breakfast from Panera. Sounds selfish, I know.....but since I had to fast after breakfast for some medical tests in the afternoon, I wanted a big breakfast to fill me up. When we walked in the restaurant (which is, quite possibly, one of my favorite places on this planet), there were two veterans sitting at a table closest to the door. Their embroidered caps gave them away. We smiled at each other and exchanged "Good Morning"s. I got my food and, you guessed, frozen mango drink, then headed back to the door. My girls were not too surprised that I stopped them short before reaching the door.....I had something to say. I told the vets thank you for what they did, and explained to them what this day held for our family. One of the men chuckled and said, "Well, ma'am, that officially makes you more deserving of that 'thank you' than me!"

At around 10:00, my cell rang; I had warned my students that if my husband called today, I would most definitely be answering it. It was Aaron.

"Do you know where I am?" he asked.

Uhhhh.....I didn't have a good guess.

"I'm somewhere over the Atlantic, and I'm in the cockpit!"

Oh, mercy. "Do not allow them to let you take control!" I joked. To my surprise, I heard a few men laughing. Leave it to my Monster-empowered husband to make his way to the cockpit, ask if he could stay a while to enjoy the view of the clouds and the ocean, and then ask the pilots if he could use their UHF radio to phone his wife (which included basically putting me on speakerphone for the entire cockpit). Only my husband!

Tonight we started our new tradition for this deployment. Last time, we made a paper chain and hung it from our kitchen ceiling, adding a chain each day to mark each passing day, and both K and I wrote something about our day on the chain. I couldn't do the same thing this time, because I knew I'd have 3 fighting over who got to write something each day. My solution? I bought a spiral bound sketch pad with lots of blank white pages. Each day, I'll date and number the page, and then each girl can draw/write/whatever for their Dad. Our first page tonight was a partial success....McK was attempting to draw a pic of Dad, except no matter how hard she tried, she did not do as well as she had wanted. She burnt through a whole eraser and shed a few tears.

But that is one thing, surprisingly, that I did not do last night during our last phone call.

Aaron called before bedtime to talk to the girls, and boy was that rough, for him and them. K passed the phone off to a sister, took one look at me, and burst into tears. After all 3 had their turns, Aaron needed a break.

He called me back later. Girls were finally in bed, and I was killing time trying to stay awake on the couch, watching Dirty Jobs, painting my nails.....and then falling asleep. The phone woke me, but I was glad it was him.

I told him from the start that I needed a normal conversation, not a "goodbye, I'm leaving the country to fight a war and I don't know when I'll be able to talk to you again" phone call. And that is what I got. Not that we totally avoided the subject of leaving, but we kept it upbeat and happy. When my hour mark was up, I was okay. No tears. I knew that I'd talk to him again very soon, and I knew that a God who placed the whole universe into order had me in the palm of His hand. If He can figure out how to command the sun to rise and set, how to make intricate and beautiful flowers, and how to calm a violent storm, He can surely take good care of me.