My husband is off again the week after next.

He's going to the NCO Academy.  It's the kind of school where they groom him to become a senior NCO.  He'll spend 6 weeks down south, so he'll be gone over Thanksgiving and home in time for Christmas.  He's driving down, however, so he might be able to come home for the holiday weekend, which would be fabulous.

I don't want to let him go again.  I don't want to conduct a relationship via the phone (we have a national plan and free cell-to-cell calls, so that won't be an issue) and via IM (we both have laptops, so we can IM when we want to).  I don't want to have to wave goodbye to him and walk inside to an empty house.

I don't want to, but I will.  I have to.  He's been ordered to go, so he's going.  Because he's going, I'm staying and stepping up to the plate again, bat in hand, ready to do what I honestly do the best:  be a military spouse.  Support my man.  Be there for him and the kids.  Keep the home fires burning....and in doing those things, I'm enabling him to concentrate on the job at hand.

Our marriage seems to be punctuated by deployments and separations.  We talk not in terms of years, but of missions and campaigns, in deployments and TDY's.  We cram our living into the spaces between those deployments and missions, we burn brightly for a few months then simply keep the embers glowing when he's away.  But hey, the fire's still there, and that's all that really matters.

Hehe....I think I'm giving myself a new title: Keeper Of The Flame.  The home fires, and the marital fires.  As long as I can keep both those going, we'll be alright.

Distance is relative.  Love isn't.  The flames of love can span any distance......if you let them.