When Afghanistan Comes to Mount Vernon

We got One of Those Calls this morning from my stepson, who is currently deployed in Afghanistan. He is due home soon, but there is still work to be done before he will be stateside for the remainder of his tour.

We do a fairly effective job (or at least, I *think* we do) living our daily lives without that pit-of-the-stomach knot affecting our functionality. It's always there, but some days it's tied tighter than others. Now, with his return home so close on our calendars, it seems my husband and I — and my stepson's mother and brother, who both live in Ohio — have very large clock springs in our bellies that have been wound so tightly they're fairly humming with tension.  

It isn't that we forget about him  — never, and not at all. It's just that there is no way (for us, at least) to contain all the emotion for a deployed family member and still get through a day, unless you do the requisite brain gymnastics to trick yourself into considering daily routines and events without the constant worry and fear at the forefront. Is he all right? I'm getting up for work and he's just called, we're making coffee and feeding the cats. He's considering plans for the next mission his unit will perform. We're ironing wrinkles out of shirts; he's preparing for guard duty. We're getting ready to commute home from work; he's about to go search for IEDs.

The dichotomy of life here versus the life our loved ones live while at war abroad is so dissonant, so difficult to reconcile. It isn't as if this is a new dilemma, of course, but to read about the experience of military families is unfathomable until you live it. The calls home my stepson makes connect us with him briefly, and bring all those fears and prayers and hopes, forced by necessity to the backs of our minds, rushing to the forefront. And when he hangs up and we try to pick up the routine of the day, we're always off-kilter. Our perspective is forever altered when it comes to how much of life in the United States is taken for granted by its citizens, and that makes the headlines we see each day take on a whole new slew of meaning for us. But mostly, we just pray with every fiber of our beings that he comes home safe.

Some days, when we get that little piece of Afghanistan on the other end of the phone, no amount of mental gymnastics can keep us from the fear and worry. Some days, Mount Vernon is too far removed from the place our hearts reside, and our travels here feel just a little bit unreal.