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Happy homecoming for R&R
Military spouse
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Three hours early. I received the call from my ecstatic husband at 9:30 a.m. announcing an early start to his R&R.
“I caught an early flight,” he said happily. “Get pretty and be at the airport at 11.”
I, being the skilled procrastinator that I am, had used my new scheduling system to schedule in three hours of rigorous cleaning and primping before my husband’s arrival. So when those three hours were abruptly turned into one hour, I was even more anxious about his homecoming.
Two hours and two wrong turns later, I was 30 minutes late getting to the airport and feeling as unprepared as ever. The car hadn’t been properly vacuumed, the bedroom closet was a disaster and the decorative outer shower curtain sat on the floor,
where it had landed three days prior. Maybe unprepared is an understatement.
But as I caught sight of him, there at the pay phone calling to find out why I wasn’t there yet, I realized nothing could have prepared me for that moment. No amount of cleaning and home repair, no amount of dreaming and planning, could have possibly prepared me for that blessed feeling of home.
Because I saw him for the first time in months, my mind was far from the empty refrigerator and the dusty television screen. I’d spent all day fretting over perfecting the stuff that fills my house, but those things don’t make it home — he does. And that overwhelming feeling was what I was most unprepared for.
I thought it was my husband coming home to me, when really it was my husband bringing home to me, and as unprepared as I was, I couldn’t have been happier.

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