Pulling at the heart

Sometimes I guess you just don't realize how much things affect kids, especially when they are really young.  My son is 14 months old and in his little life, daddy has had to be gone multiple times due to being a soldier. 

The first time I realized he really noticed was when he was about six months old.  Daddy was gone for about a month to assist with a training rotation.  As I picked my son up out of his crib one day, he noticed a picture of daddy on the wall and started pointing at it and saying 'dada', 'dada'. 

He's been gone for shorter periods of time since then, but earlier this week because of an issue with another soldier my husband was put on a mission last minute.  He came home and told us he was leaving the next day for about three weeks.  As my husband was working on packing, it was like our son was trying to 'help' by unpacking what was already packed. 

The heartbreaking part for me came the next morning.  Since my husband had to leave so early, our son was still sleeping.  He went in and told him he would see him soon and he loved him.  A few hours later as I knew their take off time was approaching, I started listening for aircraft since I knew they would have to fly our direction to head to their destination.  When I started to hear them, I grabbed our son and ran to the back door to keep an eye out.  As the aircraft started to come into view, we stepped on the to the back deck so I could point them out.  It only took my son a second to get his eye on the aircraft and start pointing and yelling daddy.  I told him to tell daddy bye bye and as I was watching him wave and say bye bye daddy, the big reality of everything sunk in - based on other training he has scheduled and a pending deployment we would be saying bye bye daddy so many more times in the next year or so.  Each time, he is going to become more and more aware of what that means - although based on what he did after the aircraft were out of sight and we went back inside - he has an understanding now.  I sat him down and for more than 15 minutes he sat right there at the back door pointing towards the direction that daddy had gone saying bye bye daddy.