turn the day around.  He tells me that we are supposed to get $1,000 a month extra for every month past twelve months that he is in Iraq.

"That's $3,000 we hadn't planned on getting, honey!" he says like we should be happy.

He follows this up with their expected date of return, exactly fifteen months from the date he leaves.

I burst out laughing.  I mean, really laughing.  I can't remember the last time I laughed like this.

Caynan didn't know how to react, so he started chuckling uncertainly.  "I know, right?  How crazy is that?"

I am still laughing.  I have my sunglasses on, so he can't see that I am also crying.  The boys are shooting at each other with their water guns, blissfully ignorant of the very real wars that will soon change their lives in very real ways.

Caynan is confused and stops laughing, "Okay, it's not that funny."

"Yes, Caynan, it is.  It is hilarious."

They're Not Waving, They're Drowning

In June, the parade of terribles begins.  News from the front:  soldiers being electrocuted in the showers, self-inflicted gunshot wounds, 10-year-old suicide bombers, sexual assaults on female soldiers.

I am learning not to worry about that which I cannot control (i.e., the life or death of the father of my children), although much of your time will be spent listening and validating the feelings and experiences of others:  your soldier-spouse, your warrior-children.

As for your own feelings, questions, and pain:  who has time for those?  Civilian friends don't understand and your army spouse girlfriends run hot and cold; AWOL half the time, coping with their own dramas and lashing out at you as often as you, unfortunately, perhaps, lash out at them.

Some days I can't decide which is worse, the breaking spirit of your soldier or the breaking hearts of your children.  These are invisible injuries that no one has names for, no one tabulates, no one keeps track of . . . no one but the mother/spouse/father/sibling/family member who witnesses it and knows that some people will become stronger and some people will simply break.

For example, when a soldier deploys to combat, those of us at home eventually get "the call." 

The call comes when his (or her) veneer of strength has cracked.  When something really bad has happened; when he (or she) has witnessed (or done) something that he/she was not prepared for or expecting to be upset by; when the surreal becomes real and that reality comes crashing down upon them with crushing force.   

Nothing prepares you for this call and you will usually hang up hurting and feeling totally useless.

Over the next few months, you will get emails, calls, and/or letters, referring to incidents giving you glimpses into a world where "humanity" has been turned on its head consistently and violently.  Your soldier will ask a lot of rhetorical questions that will make your heart hurt.  All the while your children will be asking a lot of real questions that will make your heart break.  You live in fear that you will handle their struggles poorly and long-term emotional or psychological damage will occur and of course, it will be your fault. It is illogical, but it is your fear nonetheless.

Caynan's call came a few weeks after he left us and two days after he started flying real medevac missions in Iraq.  Unfortunately for him, even when combat missions settled down for our troops as we were handing security for large areas of the country over to the Iraqis, our medevac  helicopters still go in and pick up injured Iraqis as well as wounded Americans;  i.e.,  there is little reprieve from the carnage.   

The first soldier to die in Caynan's Blackhawk did so with his legs laying on his chest, having been completely blown off by an IED that severely damaged the Bradley he was driving.  Caynan, in broken sentences, tries his best to tell about the mission.  Silently I listened.  Silently I cried because it was real.

The next call came at 4 in the morning.  In bits and pieces I got the story but mainly Cayan repeated, "The screaming, my God, the screaming.  I've never heard anything like that before, Carissa.  I can't his screams out of my head."

I had nothing to say.  All I could do was remind him that he got them to the hospital alive.  But getting them to the hospital alive doesn't erase those screams and I know that.  And I worry about him.  I wonder how long those screams will haunt him. 

Another spouse told me that her husband called her once, just once, when he was in charge of viewing all the Apache videos when we lent air support to Sadr City, and all he could say to her, over and over, was "you're my normal.  You and the kids, you're my normal.  This, this is not normal." 

But it is my youngest son, Connor, who leaves me feeling helpless and hurting most of the time.  Three months into this tour a failed webcam attempt led to our first nightmare.  I was woken up by Connor crying out, repetitively, "Mommy, I want Daddy.  I want Daddy, Mommy.  I want Daddy, Mommy, I want Daddy."

I did the only thing that I could do:  I held him tight, rocked him back and forth, and told him (repeatedly) that I knew he missed his Daddy. 

Two broken records painfully breaking the silence of night until Connor fell asleep in my arms, his tears still wet on his face and--having soaked through my shirt--my shoulder.

Imagine my surprise when two months later Connor sees a picture that Caynan sent us (from Iraq) of himself in the cockpit of the Blackhawk and asks me, "Is that your friend Mommy?"

"No, baby, that's your Daddy in Iraq," I responded—probably an octave higher than I should have.  He didn't seriously not recognize his own father? When did this happen?   

I picked up the photo to talk to Connor about what Caynan is doing in Iraq (again) but Connor has walked away and started playing with Legos, clearly not interested.  I have to find out where to get one of those "daddy" dolls made.

After getting Connor to bed, and letting Caleb watch a movie in my bedroom because of course I have no idea how to force him to go to sleep, I go outside to sit on the front steps to smoke a cigarette and ponder what Connor will be like when he sees his dad again.   Add that to my list of mommy failures since I have had to start taking Caleb to therapy at Darnall Army Medical Center since apparently he wishes Connor was dead and has started drawing pictures of himself dying horrible deaths.

To my left I see the spouse whose drinks every night with her cigarettes and a beer.  I wave.  To my right lives the Mormon spouse who doesn't drink or smoke but is addicted to Percocet, so she never leaves her house.  No one to wave to there.

It's ironic, now that I think about it, because the neighbor that lived there before her was a Sgt. Major who flaunted his alcoholism rather than acknowledge that he may be suffering from PTSD.  Sgt. Maj. was old school army.  He's been in for 24 years.   

He knew that I was advocate for the diagnosis and treatment of PTSD.  On three occasions he told me that "PTSD is B.S." because he wasn't suffering from it after two tours in Iraq.  He thinks people blowing themselves up are funny.  He thinks bloodshed is a part of war and apart of life. 

Of course, he is also going through his second divorce and is a functional alcoholic.  He admits to being an alcoholic freely and in the two months he...