Birthdays and Soldiering

I got an email from my first love this morning. He has been deployed in Afganastan for an entire year now. Usually his emails are full of shennagin tales, trips outside the wire, and the bliss that is PT. But today's message contained more longing for home and hearth than usual. He was telling this short story about wild dogs and how they wouldn't really listen to his reasonable suggestions-- but all I could picture was my friend looking sad in his desert gear with his big ole gun in his arms.

Contrast this experience with this weekend's princess burphday party that we threw for T (she turns 30 tomorrow!). We were making pipe cleaner crowns, and eating junk food, and listening to music in the kitchen-- as though life was just peachy for everyone out there. I beleive this sentiment I am feeling this morning can be neatly rounded up in this quote that I have been including in my emails for months now:

> "If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to change the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."
~~ E.B. White <

When R announced (the second time) that he really was joining up I was more than a little upset. Not only did it require me to put a real (and beloved) face on a war that I would not get my head around, but it also asked me to support my freind who was making a choice I NEVER would have expected in a million years! It was a rocky time for me. But as the years of this have marched forward I have grown more...supple. Is this not the job of a true friend: to require continued mental and love flexibility of us? I can admit freely that it is unlikely I would require it of myself, being naturally incined to stubobrness as I am. Perhaps this is a shard of the meaning we all seek?