It’s hard to believe the twins are about to graduate high school now. They’ve become the young adults Steve and I raised them to be. They’re ready to go off to college next fall.

Brian, as the eldest and only boy, is very well aware that from the moment he was born, his father wanted him to go to United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. Years after my own parents had both passed away, I can still remember what it felt like to bear the weight of family expectations in that way.

When Steve gets home from this deployment, Brian has news for him, but I’ll let him tell it. He’s certainly earned the chance to speak his piece. I hope Emma has some news for her dad, too, but at the moment, she really just seems to be drifting. My beautiful Emma has changed these past months, and I’m not quite sure I understand what’s going on with her. Does any adult understand what’s going on with an eighteen-year-old? She seems very adult lately, yet pensive and quiet. Perhaps she’s struggling with her decision about what to do after high school. Perhaps she needs her father most of all.

And Katie. What can I say about our little Katy-did, our youngest? She’s a daddy’s girl through and through, which is sort of tough when her father is away so much. She is immensely happy here, on this blue-and-green island where we’ve found our first real home. She’s one of only three ninth-graders who made marching band, has a group of friends she adores, and I think she might even have a boyfriend, though she hasn’t said anything yet. The prospect of being torn away from here when the next orders come is unthinkable to her.

I find myself thinking more and more about the dreams I put aside all those years ago to follow Steve on this journey. Right or wrong, I didn’t let myself embrace those dreams or even confess them to Steve because his seemed so much bigger and more important. Now I understand that the human heart can’t survive without dreams.

Sometimes life hands us moments. We can let the moment pass, or explore and embrace the chance we’re given. Right now, life has handed me a new moment.

I don’t know what will happen when Steve comes home this time. I keep trying to envision what will happen, but I don’t have a crystal ball. How do you tell the story of a marriage?

When my grandmother was still alive, she sent me an article she’d saved from a 1975 issue of Redbook magazine, underlining her favorite passage. On it, Gran had written, “I was married for sixty years. I’m not ashamed to say that sometimes, this was the reason.”

The article was by a wise writer named Judith Viorst. The words Grandma had underlined are these: “One advantage of marriage, it seems to me, is that when you fall out of love with him, or he falls out of love with you, it keeps you together until you maybe fall in again.”

I think about that a lot these days.

a cognizant original v5 release october 09 2010