The Rescue

I was driving along a country road on a gray winter's day. The wind was biting, and I felt the old pick up start to drift towards the side of the road and into the cornfield harvested months before. I began pulling at the steering wheel harder and harder, throwing the weight of my body into the turns, but no matter what I did, the truck accelerated and veered closer to the vast fields, farmhouses, and tractors. I felt my mouth form into a scream, but it sound so muffled, and I knew no one could hear me.

And then, I felt warm arms wrap around me. Sky whispered, "Are you okay?" I said yes before realizing I was in a pitch black bedroom underneath soft sheets, and not reeling towards doom. I let out a breath and tried to focus on the shape of the ceiling fan as my heartbeat slowed. Sky was next to me. I was safe.

It's the kind of rescue I didn't think possible a year ago. In some ways it seems like more than a year, and in other ways, less, but last Christmas Sky and I were several states away from each other, and the Army wasn't to blame. We held tiny fragments of our year-old marriage in our hands. I don't think either of us really thought we would be able to put them back together into anything, let alone anything strong or of beauty. Yet, here we are a year later, making up for last Christmas by starting new traditions we couldn't share together before. It's our first Christmas sitting in the glow of a Christmas tree, and we smiled as we realized it.

Things are hard. It's what Courtney from Vintch called "the hamburger years", and sometimes, it's closer to rice and beans. Unceremoniously, we received some news from the Army this week that will likely dash all the hope we had of becoming financially stable. Instead, it seems all Sky's money earned will be going towards a debt he didn't know he had. And while the initial moments including calling my mother in tears, we are learning to accept it. After work that night, Sky and I sat in the quiet living room and talked about the possibilities, the strategies, and the ways we could make it work. We seem to have these talks so often, and it's wearying to both of us. I can't pretend it's easy.

Through it all, though- through so much more than I ever dreamed of when I said "I do"- we are here. Some days are happy, and some days we have to fight against the next thing in our paths in this unpredictable, hard knock life. There are plenty of mornings that my first waking thoughts are worries over the day before, but I have to keep reminding myself that we have food, we have shelter and warmth, and most of all, we have each other. Not in the cheesy way that wraps up a movie neatly, but in the way that we almost didn't have each other. But we do. And Millie has two parents, both of whom would do anything in the world for her. Sky still has his wife, and I still have my husband. We've fought for it, and we've earned it.

And when we have nothing else, we can grasp each other's hands and know that we are the richest.