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Six months is a long time to miss spouse

Feb-18-2006 » Filed Under: Homefront

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By Michelle Cuthrell

This week marks the halfway point in the Stryker brigade's deployment to Iraq. The strong soldiers we never thought we could let go of in the first place have now been gone for six months.

Though it's a relatively short period of time in the grand scheme of things, six months can feel like a really long time when you're missing your spouse and managing everything for two (or in my case, two and one in the oven) in the freezing cold winters of Fairbanks.

When I think back on all the times in my life where six months was a marker for me, all of them were very slow, very drawn-out ordeals--or at least they felt like slow-moving months at the time.

Six months is the same amount of time it took to complete my last semester as an overly-eager high school student with major college fever.

It's the same amount of time it took me to finally establish a regular exercise routine, the amount of time it took me to land my first writing gig upon college graduation.

And six months is the same amount of time it took me to meet my husband, fall in love, and trick him into believing I was the girl of his dreams. Talk about a long, exhausting six months. It only took two and a half years after that to con him into saying "I do."

I think about all the things that have changed in the last six months since that same man deployed to Iraq. Before he left, I was unemployed, barely pregnant and had established no real roots in the community. Now, I work three jobs, carry around a child the size of a basketball and volunteer or involve myself in more than five clubs, studies or activities per week.


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