Two Weeks With Tommi

Ten anticipated days with Tommi turned into two weeks, and I practiced normal with quiet celebrations, squeezing all the life I could into pictures, stories, traces, and lingering smells – a cache of hope stockpiled in memories with which to arm myself against the coming months of absence. Nothing of Monday’s departure was right: it wasn’t right to go back to the desert, the war, the confusion but it wasn’t right to stay either. Pain ripped through to the bone when she tore herself one last time from the sandwich of hugs and holding that didn’t want to let go. She crossed the lines of airport security, touched hands through the glass that separated us, and turned to walk away. She didn’t look back. She didn’t look back. And she was gone.

Karen Liubakka owns a magical shop in Grand Rapids, Minnesota called “Stained Glass With Class,” where every manner of delicacy plays with light and sound and shape and movement. Tommi went there with her brothers and sister to shop for treasure on the Sunday before leaving. She buys the wares of local artists when she can and came home from the glass shop with a generous portion of “finds” from the collection on display there. Though Tommi is reserved in conversation, resistant to the drama of discussions that can surround issues of war and her military service in Iraq; nonetheless, curiousity and polite exchanges at the checkout counter turned in the direction of Tommi's work as a soldier and her impending return to Baghdad. The shopkeeper excused herself and disappeared for only a moment before returning with a “gift for your mother … something to help her through the time.”

Ms. Liubakka had given Tommi a five-pointed star of blue and clear stained glass; the center section of the star provided a place for a photo to be mounted. Karen explained that the star was fashioned after a design common to those used to remember service men and women gone to war during World War II, that a photo of the soldier was placed in the center of the star and the star hung in the most prominent window of the family home. She packaged a star and wrapped it as a gift to me through Tommi. It’s hanging in the front window now.

Tommi was scheduled to leave Kuwait on transport to Baghdad sometime in the early hours of this morning. Schedules are unreliable at best, but it is reasonable to think she’ll have boots on ground within the next 24 hours. There are too many two-letter conditions: “ifs” like dark clouds of possibility, but if … if … if … all goes as thought as planned as hoped as scheduled, Tommi will be back on U.S. soil by the first of next year. We’ll do birthdays together in February – I have to believe that, and until then I’ll draw a deep breath and hold it … again.

I am remembering you, Daughter. Come home soon. And Pat, I’m holding you to your word.