Husband's presence greatly missed

This week, I took my six-year-  old daughter Anna to a competitive gymnastics’ camp, 500 miles away from our home. She’s too young to stay overnight so we, myself and her four sisters, had to go with her.

My husband and I had originally planned that I would take Anna to the camp with the baby while he took a few days of leave to stay with the other three girls, but because of his unexpected deployment I had to figure out a way to make this trip on my own.

I’ve written before about my frustration with my husband’s intense deployment schedule, which hasn’t slowed down in the least, and as the time for this camp approached and my daughter’s excitement grew, I decided that I wouldn’t let the military change our plans, so we went anyway.

Traveling with five little ones isn’t relaxing, but we made the best of it.

My 6-year-old enjoyed her camp and got to meet some professional gymnasts and Olympic athletes. She was thrilled.

Her sisters and I spent time in the pool at our hotel, visited children’s museums, the zoo, the aquarium and a few other fun spots. These little outings were often accompanied by meltdowns and some fighting, but overall we made it back unscathed and happy. 

The hardest part about the trip was the actual eight-hour drive to and from the camp.

I didn’t want to get tired or sleepy, and kept drinking caffeinated beverages which required bathroom stops and having to unbuckle and get everyone back in the car with lots of complaints and the kids’ most favorite sentence, “Are we there yet?”

The kids fought incessantly while cooped up in our van. They argued about anything that came to their minds, including while watching Max and Ruby on our small car TV only one of them could pretend to be Max while the others all had to be Ruby.

Our actual stay was without many problems. We were able to book a room at a base hotel, which was fairly close to my daughter’s camp. It was nice to be around military people, use the commissary and the base pool with lots of kids around.

The thought of wanting my husband around more than one or two months out of every year came to my mind as I carried our luggage up three flights of stairs in our hotel, which didn’t have an elevator. I thought about my better half again when I couldn’t open the crib because it was stuck and required far more strength that I could muster — the nice gentleman working at the hotel reception opened it for me.

On this trip my youngest daughter also took her first steps and as I tried to capture her wobbly walk on my video camera and in pictures, I thought about how much I really wished I could have shared this moment with him.

I have two more trips this summer: One to Chicago and another one to Dallas.

 I’m sure we’ll make it all right, but I’ll still miss my husband every mile of our journey.

Anita Tedaldi is a freelance writer, mother of five and wife of an Air Force pilot. Contact her at: anita@anitaovolina.com