"Without love, what are we worth?  Eighty-nine cents!  Eighty-nine cents worth of chemicals walking around lonely."  ~M*A*S*H, Hawkeye
 We are at the beginning of a separation, a temporary duty where Vic is away. This isn't deployment but it brings on some really strong memories of the ones we have weathered. I have always said that deployment is a lot like childbirth. It is bad but for some strange reason you forget exactly how bad it is until you are precisely at the first stages of it and then all the previous memories come back.
 Deployment is like a bandaid. When you rip it off, you are reminded of all of the pain of the wound. For our kids, the simple discussion of Vic leaving for this trip brought back some raw emotions about the past deployments. Just when I thought the wounds of the past were healing up, this trip caused them all to come out. Our oldest, the one who knew the Army life before terrorism came into the picture, has suffered the greatest. He was eight years old when Vic deployed for the first time and he noticed the extreme difference of his father being away. Our other two were only four and three and couldn't comprehend it as much as he could. I realized that I hadn't done a good job explaining this trip to the children when the oldest child came up to me and blurted out that he was worried that Dad would die. These types of confessions come at the worst times. Carpooling to school or folding laundry, the times when routine soothes the worry. That is the funny thing about kids, they are so good at verbalizing the things we don't want to talk about. We sat down and had a long discussion about exactly where Dad is and what he is doing there and how it is different than the times before. I am not sure they believe me anymore. When you are explaining a place and it is in the Middle East , it might as well be in the middle of the war to these kids. They don't see where my finger is pointing, they see the names of the countries all around.
  Deployment is like the physical part of a break up. Our marriage is fine, fabulous actually, but having Vic leave for a short or long amount of time feels like I threw him out of the house. His stuff is out of the bathroom. His shoes are not at the door. After five days his last pieces of dirty clothes have been washed and put away. From now on, I will only be washing the clothes of the kids and myself. It is a very lonely realization when I find no more grown man clothes in my dryer. The bed is too big, the nights are too quiet the portions of food for meals are off kilter.
 Deployment is like being the third wheel. Everywhere you go there are pairs. These are the same pairs you don't notice until your partner is gone, then you see them highlighted in your life. Couples, couples with their kids, couples holding hands and hugging and sitting together at movies and church. Couples everywhere. I have a party to go to this weekend that will be full of couples. I'll go and say hello and pretend to enjoy myself, all the while thinking of how much more fun it would be with Vic. Then I'll come home and write him an email and feel really sorry for myself.
 Deployment is like a roller coaster. The experience is extremely intense. For the Soldier or Service member it is long days and long weeks and long months of hard work in extreme environments. I saw Vic leave for deployment and come back as an adrenaline junkie. The continual activity made it harder for him when he returned to slow down. For the family, the continual juggling of things by one parent and the kids is a constant experience. Instead of putting everything on hold, we tried to stay on the go with new things while Vic was gone. When he returned, the challenge was to marry both "rides" , with activity and fun and connecting as a family so that we could slow down both rides together.
 The good news is that it is doable. There are days when deployment seems manageable. Never easy but definitely manageable. There are days when deployment seems like a death sentence. I don't know if the days of remembering ever really go away but I do know that it is all survivable.