As hard as it was to explain a deployment, it is hard to convince a three year old that every time Daddy leaves the house it isn't to go to the Army.  Such was the case all last week, when Steve was out of town.  For one night, she will buy the story that Daddy had to go for work or whatever and that he will be back soon.  But by day two, she had thoroughly resigned herself to the fact that he had gone back to the Army (after all, we took him to the airport, and that is where you go to go to the Army, right?). 

All week, the questions:  Will Daddy be home tonight?  Will he be home when I get home from school?  Can he come home RIGHT NOW?  And when the answers were negative, she insisted that he had not gone to work, but to the Army.  On one occassion, when she actually seemed to ponder the fact that he MIGHT be in Florida, her next question was, “Oh, is the Army in Florida?”

It didn't help that the dogs were convinced he had gone away for a long time too.  My lab-mix is a protector; he patrols the house every half hour ALL night when Steve is gone, beginning and ending each sweep of the house with a wet nose in my face.  As the weeks of the deployment went on, he finally decided that the house was secure enough at night and let us all get some sleep.  And last week, he worked himself into a real tizzy because he was once again the big protector of the house, for goodness knew how long... again.

Luckily, the week passed quickly.  But I think that there will always be some lasting reminders of the last year.  And that's ok.