The Package
By Janey Womeldorf
His fellow soldiers pointed, mocked and roared with laughter at the contents of his package, but he didn’t care. What he found inside brought him more joy than all the other mail put together.
When you marry someone in the military, deployments are part of the deal. You pretend to be okay with it, to “support the mission,” but it’s just a defense mechanism. Seasoned military spouses told me I would get used to the long separations, but I never understood that. How can you ever get used to not hearing his voice for weeks at a time, or to endless nights when you think you’ll suffocate under the pain of loneliness? The answer is: you don’t. Instead, you do two things: you put on a brave face, and you live for the mail.
It was the Monday after Thanksgiving, and I knew as soon as he walked in the door. I saw it in his eyes. “I have to go to the desert,” he said reluctantly. It didn’t matter which one; all that mattered were the next words out of his mouth. “And I leave tomorrow.”
Our only communication was a 15-minute phone call once a week and a mail plane once every two weeks. E-mail was not an option. The irony of such a time-restricted phone call is that when you finally get to speak to the one person you love most in the world, you find yourself wondering what to say. Do you use your precious minutes to tell him the toilet overflowed and the car broke down? Too depressing. Or do you keep it upbeat and tell him about your night out with the girls? Somehow, fun and frivolity seem inappropriate in a conversation with someone in a foreign land defending your freedom. You yearn to pour your heart out but fear that the floodgates will open, and you will disintegrate into a babbling mess. So, you remain stoic and strong, the phone call becomes more functional than intimate, and you learn that the real magic lies in the mail. It becomes the single, true way to bridge the miles, deliver your love and lessen the pain – once every two weeks.
At the base, nothing fired up morale more than the first distant hum of the incoming mail plane. Soldiers dashed to mail call, silently preparing themselves for the agonizing ritual of praying their name would be called. Mail was their lifeline and spirits either soared or died on plane day. Only one time did I miss the cut off to send mail to my husband. As always, he rushed to mail call and waited for his name, but it never came. He was gutted. It broke my heart, and I cried myself dry.
As weeks turned into months, we realized that what you miss most are the quirky, marital rituals that unite you: the daily, morning struggle to break from each other’s arms; the spontaneous lunchtime phone call just to say “hi” and the lazy Sunday mornings spent eating cookies, reading the paper and cutting out coupons. Thousands of miles from the conveniences of America, it was not the restaurants, TV, or even the 24-hour lifestyle that he missed, it was the hug every night as he walked through the door, and it was, quite simply, the routine.
With Valentine’s Day approaching, I racked my brains for what to include in his bi-weekly package. I briefly entertained the idea of sending him some sexy underwear until I realized that after several years of marriage, I no longer possessed any. Underwear corresponds with age – it gets larger as you get older – and I doubted my sensible whites would produce the desired effect. As soon as I spotted the heart-shaped cookie cutter, it hit me. If routine was what he missed, then routine was what he would receive. I would send him a Sunday morning.
It was plane day and huge grins singled out the lucky ones. He carefully carried his package back to his bunk like precious cargo, pulled out his pocket knife and methodically cut the tape, savoring the moment. Inside, along with letters, a selection of articles, cards from thoughtful friends, and some replacement socks, a red ribbon identified the true gift within. One tug at the bow unveiled a card and a bundle labeled simply, “A Sunday Morning.” There were cookies, his coffee mug, the orange-handled scissors from the desk drawer and the entire Sunday paper still in its thin plastic sleeve. It came complete with the comics, the TV guide, store ads and the grocery coupons. I struggled with including the coupons – some of the savings were incredible – but I suspected the joy they would bring would be more valuable.
He knew that the sight of a grown, macho, uniformed soldier sitting cross-legged on his bunk cutting out coupons would elevate him to laughing-stock status, but he did not care. For a few short hours, it transported him. He was no longer in a tarpaulin tent in the middle of the hot, dusty desert; he was back at home in his favorite chair, drinking coffee and eating cookies, surrounded by sections of the paper, sale ads and coupons. Transportation had demolished the heart-shaped cookies into an unrecognizable pile of broken bits, but it didn’t matter – the love and the taste was all there. The only thing missing from his Sunday morning gift was me, but we both knew that I was there in other ways.
Within a few weeks of his return, it felt like he’d never been away. Routine quickly returns, and that’s okay. He wanted to bring me back a souvenir from the desert but there were no shops. Instead, he handed me a small, tattered envelope with my name written inside a heart. As I opened it, my face lit up.
“One dollar off three cans of cream of mushroom soup,” I cried.
It was the second-best souvenir I could ever have received.
He was the first.