I've been trying to get my mind back in order these past two days, still a little delirious from our two weeks together and the heavy days I've had since he left. It was so good to see him, to touch him. I hated saying goodbye to him again.

It turns out we were both apprehensive about seeing each other. I started to get nervous about it down in Houston, worrying that we would not know each other anymore, or worse that we would be irritated with one another after such a long absence. His flight was changed at the last minute so he ended up leaving Dallas later than he'd hoped. I was to pick him up near 11 p.m. instead of 8, and since it was a Friday night, there was crawling traffic around the airport made worse by late-night construction work. He'd told me I could get a pass and meet him at the gate, so I left the house early to get to the airport on time to get the pass. With the traffic, though, I missed that chance. I called him when his flight was supposed to land and left a harried message while my car idled near the exit for 294, still a mile or so away from the airport, then rolled down the windows and sighed. What the hell can you do.

I drifted to him waiting at the car pick-up area at Terminal 1, a dead-end traffic-wise. He put his bags in the back seat, sat down in the front. I burst into tears. We hugged and kissed and the light from the bug-juiced overheads streamed inside, surrounded him, made me cry more. He was in the car with me. Right there! It took a couple of minutes before I could drive us home, a couple of pets on his shoulders, his arms, his legs. A brush of my lips against his cheek. It was too much, finally seeing him, touching him. It had been more than seven months, and really two more before that when we'd said our first goodbye. I'd driven him to a buddy's house in the south suburbs, a mid-century ranch with a large American flag pinned to the garage door, a handful of smaller flags stuck in the frozen lawn around the walkway, and helped him load up the van for the drive to Indiana to catch a bus for Ft. Hood. It was a blinding-bright day, deeply cold. The sun's shadows were long and black, each bare hickory and oak cast across the salt-rimmed frontage roads as Brancusi sculptures. I hated that drive home.

When I drove away from S in Ft. Hood two months later it didn't feel as final as it had that day in Chicago. I wasn't driving home alone to an empty house but rather back to Austin to check in my car and fly away. (Perhaps it was that sense of false goodbye I wanted to preserve these past months, traveling as I have.) I have only a few solid memories of Kileen, Texas, those days were so blurred with worry and so intense. There were the crashed cars at the fort's entrances with LCD signs giving how many days since the last person was killed in a crash ("13 Days," "16 Days," then back to "0 Days"); the tanks and anti-aircraft guns sprinkled in front of dusty brown administration buildings and barracks, the 1st Calvary's and 4th Infantry's very own sculpture gardens; Hell on Wheels Avenue, Tank Destroyer Boulevard; the cardboard tents set up on tables in the PX advertising life insurance -- at a special Military price, of course! -- and the hollow-eyed men quietly eating pulled pork sandwiches and pepperoni pizza together, or alone; the tent-covered book sale outside the PX, where soldiers could buy, at a discount of course, romance novels, self-help books, and countless versions of the illustrated Bible; the internet cafe run by a middle-aged Vietnamese woman in a strip mall near tattoo parlors and pawn shops, and her stories of buying homes, renovating them, and selling them again; the screaming "We Support Our Troops!" banners hanging in the windows of competing car dealerships that sold brand new cars at high interest rates to young boys before they flew off to Kuwait and then to war; the check-in den at the mouth of the fort, not so different than a check-in den at a prison or jail, with every "visitor" required to show ID and car registration after taking a number and sitting and waiting, waiting to prove who they were to the tired bureaucrats behind the counter (I went in once and there was no one in line so I went straight to the counter. The man told me to take a number -- "we have a procedure" -- and to wait my turn, which was, surprise, next.); the "welcome home" messages outside the cav's staging area made out of green and red and blue and white plastic cups stuffed in chain-link fence pockets; the boy-young soldier with a prosthetic where his right forearm and hand used to be, shopping in the Target off the frontage road; and the mass of blackbirds howling at dusk in the squat tree across the road from my pasty room at the Super 8.

We drove home from the airport and it was a warm Chicago summer night, and when we got home he told me stories he'd stored for the past seven months, then I told him how I needed him to write me more while he's gone. We got it out, then made love and made love again, and filled ourselves with each other so much so that when I discovered yesterday that I'm not pregnant, again, I was more puzzled than sad. How could I not be when it was so intense, so true? (I already know the answer to that.) By our third day together we both said "It's as if I/you never left," and went on to just be together, again and again, day after day, as if there was no war and no hurricane and no political turmoil. We talked about our dog Casey and how silly and adorable he was. We went to silly movies and S baked three apple pies (he is the best baker I've ever known -- better crusts than my mom's or my grandmother's, which, honestly, were the best crusts ever baked, ever, before S started baking them). We both gained a few happy pounds, made every bite count as we filled up with that luscious goodness.

Saturday night we stayed up late getting his stuff packed. We stuffed four pairs of boxing gloves, thai leg kick pads, focus mitts, hand wraps, and a pair of five-ounce Harbingers into his green duffle, then topped it off with his shower sandals and a couple of mud brown towels. The rest of his gear he crammed into his sandy backpack, including one newly cleaned and pressed uniform, a little scruffy at the seams from river-stone washings and life in the harsh mountains. The next morning we rose early, stopped at the coffe shop to get a couple of lattes, drove to the airport and parked the car on White Sox, 3rd level, 3rd aisle, and I wondered out loud why the parking czars would have levels and aisles both numbered, not one with letters instead. He got to check in at the special "group" check-in, which on first glance seemed to be a shorter line but was in fact as long as the others. I was issued a special pass to go with him to the gate, then we went through security, and since S is a soldier he is also a potential terrorist, so they searched him and his gear, rubbed his hands to test for bomb-making residue, then confiscated his beard-trimming scissors. The TSA man felt bad, really, then threw the scissors in the trash. S told me that he was searched extensively on the way to Chicago too, and he said he resented being treated like a terrorist when he's fighting in this supposed "war on terror." "They treat us like kids," he said, "and fucking criminals."

We roamed the United terminal, reminiscing about all of the flights we missed in the late 90s when that airline was so greedy they booked flights they had no intention of flying, and when the customer service lines stretched the length of the terminal in either direction (and if you've been to O'Hare, you know just how lengthy that is) filled with irate customers trying to get home. We stood around and held hands and made small talk. It's impossible to have a real conversation when you know it is going to be interrupted sometime soon with that call, "All rows are now boarding." I walked away when he handed his ticket to the check-in woman. I knew he wouldn't look back -- it's not his way -- and I didn't want to see him walk away from me down the aluminum tube to his plane. I follwed the signs out of the airport and found my car and drove home, where I stayed holed up until last night. I cooked an omelette, watched foolish shows on television and pretended to read "Massacre of the Dreamers," a collection of essays by Ana Castillo. In reality, though, I flipped through the pages, my eyes glossed over, and glanced up at the TV which may as well have been showing snowy static. That night just disappeared.

I have finally emerged, quicker this second time. The first time I stayed in my house for three days straight, only tumbling out to walk our sickly dog. I cleared our cabinets of canned goods that week and watched Sex and the City, the entire series, straight through. I feel like I've come a long way since then, seeing that my time-of-distraction was only a little more than 24 hours after this latest goodbye.

I know we're at the shorter end of this mess now. We don't think he'll be gone longer than five more months, so the worst is behind us. But I still miss him. I still worry. I can't wait to see him again and know, finally, that there will not be a third goodbye. Some, like my friends Daniel and Zach, have no idea when their last goodbyes will be. The army will not let them go. They've served tour after tour, their contracts long ago expired, and their families ache for them just as I ache for S. It's a travesty.


Here are S and Casey standing below a Live Oak at Audubon Park, New Orleans last December. The picture at the top of the post is from Ireland soon after we married six years ago.