Today my daughter spent an hour at my side, pushing, pulling, and punching springy, yeasty dough. Her mouth watered for the ending, the brown hot challah that would fill her small belly.

"When will it be ready?" she asked. I couldn’t help but smile at her excitement. And I can’t blame her. There is nothing quite like hot, homemade bread. "What if we sing while we knead?" I asked her, hoping to keep her usually fidgety body next to me just a few moments longer.

She ignored me, predictably as most five-year-olds can. But then, as our hands pushed and pulled the dough, she began to sing in her sweet, tiny voice. At first, all I recognized was a familiar tune, and then my heart warmed and expanded as I realized that she was humming a familiar Cherokee tune.

My mind drifted to my home in the mountains. The times my father and mother took us to the Cherokee reservation, determined that we knew our tie to that land. She shares my dark hair, dark eyes. She has the curly hair of her father, but her strong Native eyes mirror my own. I always felt selfish in thinking she needed to know that part of her. My part. But, as I listened to her humming, I began to realize that it is naturally in her to want to know.

I stood next to her, kneading and proud, and then as her humming grew louder and she became more confident, I heard it: her tongue snapping and curling around the consonants and sounds belonging to the Cherokee language.

With little to no way to literally prove my heritage, my family and I have had to settle for checking "white" when white never felt quite right. But what right did I have to a heritage that only partly belonged to me? Why do I have to choose when my eyes shine bright, my nose straight? My straight dark hair aching to know the winds of yesterday?

With my husband speaking Hebrew, it is easy to allow him to take control of our cultural awareness and identity. Linguistically covered for our family’s tongue. But as I look at her, her curly, bouncing hair and olive skin, I see his heritage intermingled with my own. I see those same, dark earnest eyes. And Hebrew isn’t enough.

I can’t cheat either of my children out of the chance to see their other heritage in a rich, beautiful past. So, as my son joins the kneading, the punching and pulling, he begins to sing the words that he, too, is learning.

We roll, braid, and ease our anxiously awaited bread into the oven. We sing together the welcoming night song, paying respect to those who danced, thrived, and walked a trail of hunger, pain, and tears, long before this night of peace in our home. Then we light the candles, count our blessings, and welcome the Sabbath.

Answer: He doesn’t want to get out. And I don’t want him to, either. It is because of his willingness to fight that our intermingled family can celebrate, sing, and exist in peace. Without him, the flames cannot burn freely.

Shabbat shalom, little ones. Gvgeyu.

The post This Shabbat We Wait for Dad to Come Home appeared first on Jewcy.

Finally, after nearly a year of waiting, my husband will soon be back in my arms. Sweat drips from my palms. My knees knock, and the constant stirring in my stomach makes me wonder if eating was such a good idea.

Will I still look the same to him? Will he notice my new wrinkles? Will he care about my bloodshot eyes? I’m terrified that I haven’t done a good enough job making sure the kids know him. Our daughter has been so angry, and our son has been fatherless. What if they turn away from him, breaking his already broken heart? What if we are no longer in love?

All these questions hover and collide in my mind. I pace through the house, urging them to leave my crowded brain. My excitement is impossible to contain. I call anyone who will listen. "He will be home in three hours." "Two hours." "One hour." Their shared excitement allows them to tolerate my impatience. It feels like ages since I have heard his voice bounce off these walls. These floors haven’t felt his weight, and my face hasn’t felt his hands. My heart pushes against my ribs, and time continues to drag.

As I drive, blindly, to pick him up, a horrific question begins to cloud my mind. It hovers, threatening to destroy my excitement, and I worry that I will not be able to keep it at bay.

Did he kill anyone?

What would it do to us if he did? What would it mean to me if I knew that the man sleeping next to me took another person’s life? Did he shoot someone? Slit someone’s throat? Bomb someone? How will it affect him once he leaves the bombs, gunshots, lost "brothers" behind?

Was he scared? Did he regret it? Did it affect him? What did it feel like? Did he watch them die?

War is death, and I am well aware that he has been at war. But that was the soldier in him. The person coming home is supposed to play with children like death never touched him, and he is supposed to hold my hand again as we causally stroll through the park. Can these two people co-exist within him? Would I be able to separate the two?

All of it weighs on me, and I begin to worry that I won’t be able to just kiss him, hold him, and welcome him back into our lives. The kids chatter behind me, and I drive, my knuckles white with fear, toward our reunion.

I have prepared myself for a distant husband. A remnant of a marriage. PTSD. I have dissected every possibility of how he may come home to me. But I haven’t prepared myself for that I-did-what-I-had-to-do answer: "Yes. I did kill someone."

I pull into a parking lot full or armored trucks. My fingers fumble with the keys until I finally remember how to turn off the ignition.  I feel my feet hit the ground, and I search for his familiar gait, boots, and profile. He runs from behind his truck, lifts me from the ground. I smell him, the sweat and tears. He sniffs me, the perfume and faint aroma of fear.

Those terrifying words push and prod my mind. I try to push them into the shadows of my mind. I look in his eyes, the ones that soaked me in on our wedding day, the ones that watered as he told us goodbye, the ones that have haunted my dreams for months. His hands move through my hair, over my face, and I feel the rough calluses against my wet cheeks. I pull him close to me, and whisper in his ear, "Welcome home, baby."

Answer: I don’t know.

The post “Did Your Husband Kill Anyone?” appeared first on Jewcy.

My presence in a room usually produces two emotions from strangers: sympathy or irritation. Quite often, people feel compassion for me and want to hug my pain away. It is nice. Gentle. Sweet. And it helps. But, those arms around me aren’t his. So, sadly, they often fail to produce any sense of peace within me. No other hand feels like his on my back. No other hug makes my stomach fill with quivering jell-o.

Many people say "thank you" as we walk through the airport to see him off. They stand aside, feeling the pain of our goodbyes, allowing our agony to shoot and stab as we pass. They are quiet, respectful. They see the worn, dark circles. Our red and swollen eyes. Their words do not fall on deaf ears. We hear them. And appreciate them. And it does help to see their appreciation. It almost feels okay to allow them into our reunions. Our separations. Our children crying and throwing their arms around his neck. Our pain is on constant display. And those eyes, those weeping eyes that surround us, offer comfort and warm distant embraces.

The other response is often to put me in my place. I am the wife of a volunteer soldier. There is no room to complain. No force pushed him to ink his name. No outside presence made me stand beside him, my hand on his shoulders, urging him to do what felt right. They are correct. We didn’t walk into this lifestyle blindly. And for that reason, the military family often suffers in silence.

"Will your husband be deploying again?" A cashier asks while ringing up my groceries. "Yes," I say, waiting for either sympathy or irritation to appear. "Well, that’s military life for ya!" she quips, smirking. I smile. Nod. And urge myself to walk away.

Yes. It is military life. And there is no polite way to let her know that I am completely and firmly rooted in the military life. I am saturated with what his beret, boots, and uniform mean. I am the one to sew any holes. The one to wash the sand from his pants. The one to try to pull the smell of gun oil and powder from his shirt. That dreaded folded flag would be placed in my arms at his funeral. And I am the one that kisses him goodbye with no way of ever knowing if my lips can retain that feeling, should it be our last one. I need no reminders of military life.

Beyond the comments and beyond my fears and frustration, there are children trying to decipher the tears. The stares. The harsh words thrown around. There are small hands touching him for what could be the last time. There are tiny fingers moving over his uniform, his shaved head, and his trembling hand. Sweet tiny arms wrap around his letters at night, and precious lips kiss photographs of him on the wall. There are tiny shoulders that convulse and cry uncontrollably when he is gone. My son stands at the window, willing him to walk into the door.  "Why does Daddy always leave?" my five-year-old daughter asks. "I am the man of the house now," my three-year-old son says. Do they need to be reminded?

Sure, I knew what it meant. He did too. But the kids, the ones truly suffering, they have no way to understand. Of course, we did bring our children into this world. We, the military parents, are the ones creating more small hands to tear away from sand-stained necks. But, when I am faced with the possibility of a life without him, there is no way I would avoid having his babies.

So, if you happen to see me in the airport, crying and hugging my husband as he leaves or returns, please try to ignore me. It is just emotion that can’t be contained no matter how much I "know." But, if you happen to notice those tiny hands next to ours, the ones that only want to feel their daddy again, please, give them an extra smile. And an extra moment of allowance in their pain. They have truly earned it.

Answer: Yes. I knew. But it doesn’t make goodbye any easier.

The post For Military Wives, “Goodbye” Never Gets Easier appeared first on Jewcy.

He is next to me, breathing calmly, quietly. Soft lullaby music escapes beneath my kids’ doors and follows a wispy path to my ears. He has been home for weeks. I still wake at night, scared and shocked to find a body next to me. I stare in the dark, black night, trying to remember. It takes several minutes before his breathing sounds familiar to me. I stretch my leg, tentatively, until I find his leg beneath the covers. He did come home to me. It wasn’t a dream.

I ease closer to him, trying to coerce my body to remember his silhouette, his scent. Sleep finally wins.

I snap awake to the sound of him screaming. He sits up in the bed, arguing beneath his eyelids. He flails, turns to me, screams, breathes, cries, and falls back to his pillow.

I edge closer to him and peer over his shoulder. He is sweaty, and he grunts and grimaces. He continues over an hour before he falls back into a deep sleep. Then, he rolls over and throws his arm over my hip. I stare at the wall, awake and terrified, until the sun pours through the window. Another day has come.

Weeks later, we drive through town, listening to children’s music, chatting back and forth, and trying to soak up the joy of being together again. A car backfires. He pushes my head down into my knees. "Hold on!" he yells, screeching out of the mall parking lot. When we are finally "safe" he looks into my terrified face. "It’s okay," he says. "Don’t worry. It was just a car backfiring." I am worried.

Months later, we wander through a crowd at a carnival on base. Music blares through the speakers, bright neon lights reflect off the grass, and our kids, riding on our shoulders, laugh and point at the balloons and exploding fireworks. We are finally a family again.

Then, he begins to unravel. He jerks his hand from mine, his face goes white, and he begins to dodge people as they approach him. "This doesn’t feel safe," he says. "There are way too many people here." He looks behind him, nervous and agitated. "Can we just leave?" he asks. We do. We bargain with our screaming kids as we leave the carnival, promising them a wonderful tomorrow of ice cream and swimming.

Even two years after his return, he is edgy. He doesn’t wake up as often. Doesn’t avoid every crowd. But he is always vigilant. Always watchful and easily agitated. How could he not be? Suicide rates are rising. Deployments are continuing. Wars are still raging. At what point can he drop his guard and leave it all behind?

Answer: He wouldn’t be human if he didn’t.

Melissa Seligman, author of The Day After He Left for Iraq, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she’ll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

The post Does Your Husband Have PTSD? appeared first on Jewcy.

My life hasn’t always been like this. But whose has? I’m constantly waiting. Waiting for my husband to leave. To come home. To reconnect. Or to tell him goodbye again. It seems that from the very beginning, longing has defined our marriage.

I longed to move, drive, see the west, and capture the world. He was my counterpart, my kindred hippy spirit. We married, moved out west, and began that romantic love affair that had tickled my brain for years. Until.

“I want to go active duty,” he told me one day in front of the hazy skyline of the Rockies. He had been in uniform before. Only he had a pierced tongue, in-between-duty goatees, and enough of a wild side to consider him anything but straight and narrow. “Um. Okay,” I said. What was there to stop us? It would ensure a good paycheck. Lots of travel. Job security.

I knew he would most likely go to Afghanistan. 9/11 was fresh. My patriotism was high, and he has always been called to serve. So, we packed up, left the Rockies in the rearview mirror, and headed east. To a great unknown. It was exciting. And scary. And wonderful.

Until he left for nearly seven months of school. That day, I sat on a couch and watched that infamous statue being tugged and torn in Baghdad. Two wars. Shock and awe left me shocked and raw.

As my belly began to grow with a baby (surprise!), we got sent up north. All the way up north, and I began to hear constant rumors that he would leave as soon as we got there. And that he would continue to leave year after year after year.

It wasn’t long. With a still-swollen belly and a screaming baby in my arms, exactly five years ago, my still-newlywed husband stood at our kitchen door on a frigid New York night, kissed her pink forehead, and begged me to understand. I thought I understood. At least, I tried.

But when that door closed in my face, reality sucker punched me in the gut. There is no graceful, easy, painless, romantic way to send your husband off to war. The emptiness left behind the fading sound of his boots is deafening.

He did come home. Reintroduced himself to his wife and child. And we merged back into the false sense of togetherness. With two raging wars, how comfortable could we possibly get? We tried. We took what time we had, and we trudged into the world of blissful family. Until.

With my belly swollen, again, I stood in a parking lot, holding our second newborn and searching for a way to say goodbye. Again. This time, Iraq beckoned. I had no way of knowing what would become of us. Of him. Of our marriage. I only knew one simplified version of our life, our struggle: I loved him.

After he left, the body count grew. The explosions intensified, and I struggled to remember that vital truth while I read of his attacks and missions. With two babies, a husband at war, and a life on hold, I wondered what future would come to pass.

Our struggle, my need to survive and retain some semblance of sanity, his mission to maintain a vital role in our family, and the pain of my daughter and our fatherless son all came together in my journal, my book, The Day After He Left for Iraq.

People ask me quite often, “How do you do it?” My answer is simple: I’m not sure I am doing it.

Melissa Seligman, author of The Day After He Left for Iraq, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she’ll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

The post The Day After He Left for Iraq appeared first on Jewcy.