Life Is Hard:

Two weeks from today, my oldest daughter and her husband will be flying home from Iraq. They'll spend two weeks here for "R&R" (rest and relaxation). I haven't seen my daughter in nine months -- that's hard to comprehend. She's my first born and we used to be as close as a mother and daughter can be. But on July 2, 2001, I said goodbye to all of that. I said goodbye and she boarded a plane for New York. I sat in my car in the airport parking lot and cried and sobbed and "howled" for almost three full hours (a fact that my two younger daughters can attest to -- they were sitting in the backseat.) They knew most parents cry when their children leave home for college, but they didn't understand why I was so inconsolable. They didn't understand that this was different. It was different because of the decision she had made -- the decision to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. I knew that when she left, our family would never be the same. I knew that it was the end of the way we had lived our lives for 18 years. I knew that my husband and I were no longer responsible for her and that she was no longer dependent upon us. She was the Army's and it would be up to them how she lived her life and what part of it would be etched out for us.