R&R

My left leg wouldn't stop twitching, my hands had gone clammy, and I was having trouble swallowing. I tried to smooth an errant wrinkle out of my polka dot sundress, and forced myself to stop fidgeting. 

 

You could pick us out, the Army wives, from a mile away in that airport. 6am on a Thursday morning, we were dressed to kill and looked as though we could burst into tears or hysterical, nervous laughter at any given moment.

The automatic doors that led from the arrivals gate opened and closed a maddening number of times before I started seeing multi-cam bags and military haircuts. Each couple I saw reunited made my heart and eyes well up. The young mother with three small children who ran full speed into her husband's embrace, the seasoned wife who was on her 6th deployment still squealed and threw her purse to the ground when her husband scooped her up, and the couple who casually walked into each others' arms, yet stood there for what seemed like eternity, refusing to let go.

I began to get panicky, as overdramatic pessimists have a tendency to do, when I saw soldier after soldier come through the gate, and Zack was nowhere to be seen. Pretty soon the arrivals gate emptied out, and I was left standing alone in my high heeled wedges and wringing hands. But just at the perfect moment, the doors swung open and I saw my husband, my husband whom I had not seen in almost seven months. His smile and air about him were as giant as I remembered, and he threw his bags theatrically to the side. He pulled me into him, and lifted me up off the floor, twirling me around and around. And honestly, I'm not sure if my feet ever touched the ground again, in those 15 days of perfection.