The following entry was written by Tonya of The Unrepentant Gallivanter

It is a wonder that my partner and I are even together, let alone expecting a baby in one month. He is in the Canadian Army and we met when he was on exchange for 3 years down at Fort Bragg, NC. We got married on June 10th, 2000 and right away Jack had to go on an unaccompanied one year posting to New Brunswick. So, for the first year of our marriage I worked in DC and he worked at Gagetown. I made many 18 hour drives up to see him on 3 day weekends and holidays and it was “only for a year” so it wasn’t too bad.

In May of 2001 he got posted back to Ottawa so I moved up to Canada, too. We stayed in his friend’s basement until the renters got out of our house the end of June. We started moving in to the house in July and everything was going great! We even found out that we were pregnant. During this time he had to go on several trips and courses, so we still weren’t together that much of the time. Towards the end of August, 3 days before my 3-month waiting period for my health insurance coverage to kick in, while he was away on course, I had a miscarriage. I was alone in a new town, driving myself to the hospital in the middle of the night. (Turns out I somehow found the one farthest from our house.)

Then 9/11 happened, just shortly after we lost the baby. I happen to be in the US Army Reserves and people kept asking if I was going to get called up. I assured them the chances were slim – until I got the phone call. They told me I was getting orders and when I asked, “How long? For 2 weeks or a month?” the guy laughed and said, “No, one year, probably two.” So once again before we even got to really be together, before we could heal, I was sent down to Fort Bragg for what turned out to be two years of active duty. By the end of our first 3 years of marriage we had spent about 6 months together with about 3 ½ months being the longest stretch at any one time.

When my active duty time ended they just turned all of us loose on society. In the regular Army when you get out they have all kinds of transition services and assimilation seminars you can attend. At that time, there was nothing of the sort offered to us. I even asked and the lady at the outprocessing center kind of just laughed. Well, after 2 years at Bragg I wasn’t ready to be assimilated back into society. I needed some transition time. All I knew was I couldn’t go home yet. So instead of having a rational conversation and coming to some reasonable agreement I accepted a job in Iraq for a year and called to tell Jack. Well, that was the last straw for him and we got a hasty divorce from each other. It was nuts. I went from being on active duty to being divorced and on my way to Iraq in 10 days.

The whole time I was over there we stayed in touch – and he even sent me some Jack Daniels, people! Who wouldn’t love a man who sends you illegal JD? We both dated other people, but were still very much a part of each other’s lives. (Plus, those other people turned out to be even more nutso than us.) When I came back from Iraq I came “home” to Jack, but I swear I was suffering from PTSD or something because I kept making really bad decisions and running off to Turkey for ½ the year. Finally, when I realized that I could lose him forever I came to my senses and somehow this man still loved me, through it all. And I found out I was pregnant again!

So our lives were basically right back to where they were 4 years before – pre-9/11. We figure it was some long, drawn out circle we had to travel on to get to where we are now. We figure we can make it through anything now if we’ve made it through all that and are still together. Plus, we know what we have to lose now. For some reason we are better people when we are together and even when we are not together our hearts stay with each other anyway. And, those other people made us realize that love doesn’t grow on trees, but crazy does.