It’s Wednesday morning, same as it was seven mornings ago, but this time with one third of the family missing. My son is crying because I accidentally woke him too soon, I am flanked by breakfast and my keyboard, and the early morning sun is filtering in through the massive windows in our home office. Michael W. Smith’s refrains waft across the living room and the sink is full because I had company over the last night and sat in bed reading afterwards instead of cleaning the kitchen.

Today is day four–four days since we packed his sea bags into the car and waved as the oversized white bus disappeared around the corner. Four days since we last sat in the center of the sofa discussing the goodbye to come in hushed whispers as my son played with new mega legos and I pestered him about keeping his dirt and oil covered boots off the cushions.

I want to tell my husband it’s been hard, but in all truth it hasn’t been, not really. I purposefully un-prepared myself for him to leave as the day approached and I’ve avoided facing it ever since. Or perhaps we’ve said goodbye many times we’ve hit the fabled do the goodbyes ever get easier? point where we can answer yes.

This is our sixth major goodbye after a lifetime in the international community where we rarely had the same friends for more than two years and all our family lived at least 10,000 miles away. Maybe we finally got good at goodbyes.

Then again, maybe it’s because I’ve spent the last four days pretending life is normal. I’ll keep the baby alive, run my business, walk down to the bay, have mommy friends over for play dates, and when the evening comes and the garage door stays shut and there’s only one plate on the table and there are no sandy boot tracks through the house I’ll escape into a book or another walk or a trip to Kohl’s to find some clothes better suited for the weather that is warming up very quickly.

It’s easy to pretend like life is normal when all the signs are here. There’s still coffee in the coffee pot–the bitter, dark roast stuff only he likes. Dirt shaken off his gear covers the floor of his office. His favorite dessert is wrapped in tin foil in the fridge. Last week I would have jumped at the free time to clean every nook and cranny of our home and put everything in it’s place and have all my ducks in a row but since he’s been gone, a clean house seems insignificant. Perhaps because I cleaned it the day that he left and there’s been nobody around to make a mess since.

Still, life is undeniably not normal; parenting alone is not normal. When you’re in the military, of course, it becomes normal but that doesn’t change the fact that God created families to have both a mommy and a daddy around for emotional and spiritual and very practical reasons, and when one of the family members is gone a lot changes. This morning my 12 month old son disappeared up the stairs and started crying when he reached the top. He knows how to go up and down on his own and I assumed he was scared or stuck so I went to rescue him and I found him at the top stair whimpering, craning his little neck around and asking, “Da-da? Da-da?”

And then I have to pretend.

“Da-da will be home soon, bud. Da-da’s coming home.”

It’s only a month and a half. If I think backwards the amount of time he will be gone, I can see it’s going to fly by. In fact, I have packed these last four days so full of activity I’ve hardly even had time to notice that I’m here alone, just me and my baby boy. This next few weeks is just a slice in the pie compared to what it will be like when he deploys.

Once life slows down and I run out of mommy play dates and church events and Kohl’s cash, maybe then reality will sink in. I am here alone, and while he isn’t gone for long this time, he will be gone most of the next two years. Frankly, it’s hard to imagine.

But maybe, finally, we’ve figured out this goodbye thing. Six down, many more to go.