The Longest Short Distance, A Love Story in Two Time Zones

A Valentine’s Day Fiction for the Veteran Legacy Network, by Rebekah Ricks

Note from the Author: Before you read this story, I want you to know where it comes from. Because stories like this one don’t come from imagination alone. They come from watching.

This piece of fiction is inspired by my sister—the real one—a woman I watched raise five children through multiple deployments, including over Christmas. More than one Christmas. If you’ve never watched someone you love hold an entire household together with one hand while pressing a phone to her ear at 2 AM with the other—just to hear a voice crackling through a connection that could cut out any second—then you may not fully understand what I’m about to tell you. But if you’ve lived it, or loved someone who has, you’ll recognize every word.

The meaning of “single parent” is at a different level when the other parent is half a world away.

This isn’t a co-parenting disagreement. It isn’t “He’s working late.” It is staring at an empty chair at the dinner table and telling five children that Daddy loves them while you aren’t even sure what country he’s in today. It is being the mother and the father and the plumber and the monster-checker and the bill-payer and the homework-helper and the one who has to hold it all together at the Christmas pageant when your kindergartner sings “Silent Night” and looks at the empty seat in the second row and whispers, “Is Daddy watching from the sky?”

That question will rearrange your insides.

My sister never complained. Not once. She never called me and said, “I can’t do this.” She called and said, “Pray for me,” and then she hung up and went right back to doing the impossible—because that is what military spouses do. They do the impossible on Tuesdays. Before breakfast. In yesterday’s clothes. And they do it again on Wednesday.

So this story is fiction. The names aren’t real. But the feeling is real, because I watched it happen from the front row. And I promised myself that one day I’d write it down—not to romanticize the pain, but because these families deserve to see themselves on the page. Their love story deserves ink. Their sacrifice deserves witness.

This one’s for you, Sis. For your five. For every military family that has loved across distance. And for every service member reading this from a place they can’t name—we see you. We honor you. We remember.

— Rebekah Ricks

★  ★  ★

HER — February 13th, 11:47 PM, Fort Campbell, Kentucky

The dryer buzzer went off for the third time tonight. I let it go—again—because wrinkled pajamas never hurt anyone, and I was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at my phone, waiting for it to light up.

Eleven minutes to Valentine’s Day. Seven thousand two hundred and fourteen miles between us. I’d looked it up. Twice.

The house was finally quiet, which with five children is less a daily occurrence and more a minor act of God. Lila was asleep after her third request for water that “tasted right.” The twins had negotiated a ceasefire over whose stuffed animal earned the nightstand. Jake Jr. had passed out mid-sentence on the couch, one sock on, one sock missing in action, a half-eaten granola bar still in his grip. And baby Grace—sweet Grace, who was born three weeks after the last deployment started—was finally down after forty-five minutes of bouncing while I simultaneously signed a permission slip with my left hand and managed dinner with my foot on the oven door.

Five children. One parent present. Zero backup.

That is the math of deployment.

I pulled Jake’s hoodie tighter around my shoulders. It stopped smelling like him two months ago, but I wear it every night anyway. Some things you hold onto aren’t about what they still are. They’re about what they represent.

My phone lit up. Jake ❤️: You up?

Nine hours ahead. Almost 9 AM where he was. And he still opened with those two words, the same way he has since we were nineteen. Some things don’t change. You hold onto those, too.

Always, I typed back. And meant it in every direction that word can mean. I was always up. Between the baby’s schedule and Lila’s nightmares and the twins’ rotating crises and Jake Jr.’s sleepwalking—I hadn’t slept through the night since before the deployment. Maybe since before Grace was born.

But I was also always up for him. Waiting for that buzz. Those three dots that meant he was still there, still alive, still mine, still breathing on the other side of the world.

Jake ❤️: Almost Valentine’s Day there. And then: Wish I could bring you coffee in bed.

I almost laughed. That man has never once in thirteen years of marriage successfully made me a cup of coffee. He puts the creamer in first. But I would give anything—anything—to watch him get it wrong in person right now.

I’d settle for you just being here, I typed. Deleted it. Typed it again. Sent it.

Because here is the truth about deployment that doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker or a yard sign: it is not the big missing that undoes you. It is the ordinary. Reaching for someone in the dark and finding a cold pillow. Answering “How are you?” at school pickup with “Fine!” when you have not been fine since August. Standing in the cereal aisle, staring at a box of Honey Nut Cheerios you almost grabbed out of habit before remembering no one is home to eat them. Putting five children to bed every single night and hearing “I want Daddy” from at least three of them and having to be enough—having to be everything—when you feel like you are barely holding onto anything.

That is the weight of it. Not the headlines. Not the flag-waving. The quiet, invisible, unrelenting weight of holding a family together alone while the person who promised to help you carry it is carrying something else entirely—something heavy, something dangerous, something he chose so the rest of us wouldn’t have to.

Three dots appeared on my screen. Disappeared. Appeared again.

Jake ❤️: I know. Me too. Every single day.

Then: Check the freezer. Behind the frozen waffles.

I got up. Stepped over the baby monitor, the laundry pile on day four, and the Lego minefield the twins had left as a booby trap. Walked to the kitchen in his hoodie and my candy cane socks from Christmas—our third Christmas without him. The one where Grace took her first steps toward the tree and I filmed it through tears, and he watched the video eleven times. I know because he told me.

I opened the freezer. Moved the Eggos.

A freezer bag. Inside: a handwritten note on a torn piece of yellow legal pad, and a Hershey bar—the kind with almonds. My favorite. The one he always steals bites of.

The note: "Hid this before I left. If you’re finding it, you’re probably up too late, wearing my hoodie, pretending the dryer isn’t going off, and all five of them are finally asleep at the same time—which means you have approximately 11 minutes of peace. I love you more than you know. You’re doing it, Em. All of it. And you’re doing it beautifully. Save me a bite. — J"

I sat down on the kitchen floor. Between the high chair and the dog’s water bowl. And I cried the kind of cry that empties you out and fills you up at the same time.

Eleven minutes of peace. He knew. He always knows.

You absolute menace. I’m eating the whole thing and I’m not sorry.

Jake ❤️: That’s my girl. Happy Valentine’s Day, Em. I’m coming home to you. To all six of you.

I know you are. You always do.

And then—because five children have a sixth sense for any moment of parental vulnerability—the baby monitor crackled, one of the twins called out about a spider, and Jake Jr. sleepwalked into the kitchen asking for cheese.

I wiped my face. Put the chocolate in my pocket. And got back to work.

Because that’s what we do.

★  ★  ★

HIM — February 14th, 8:52 AM, Somewhere He Can’t Say

The Wi-Fi here is unreliable at best.

I have been trying to load a photo of Emily and the kids for six minutes. I could field-strip my weapon in under sixty seconds, but I cannot get a single image to come through on a network that runs on hope and hardware from 2014.

Valentine’s Day. My fourth away from her. Third Christmas, too. And a first birthday—Grace’s—that I watched on a screen the size of a playing card while my daughter shoved cake in her hair and my wife held the camera with a hand that was shaking. She did not think I noticed. I always notice.

People ask if it gets easier. It does not. You just learn to carry it differently.

I hid the Hershey bar the night before I deployed. September. 0200. Everyone asleep. All five of them scattered through that house—Lila in her princess bed, the twins tangled together, Jake Jr. on the top bunk he is too proud of, and Grace in the crib, making that sound babies make when they are breathing and everything is right with the world. I stood in the kitchen and I memorized every detail of it—the smell of coffee grounds and spilled juice, the crayon marks on the counter, the quiet—because I knew I would need it. I hid the candy bar behind the waffles because I knew Emily would be standing in that exact spot at midnight on Valentine’s Day, and she would need something she could hold.

That is what no one tells you about loving someone from the other side of the world when five children are counting on both of you: the distance is not measured in miles. It is measured in everything your hands cannot do. Cannot pour her coffee. Cannot carry Lila to bed when she falls asleep on the couch. Cannot separate the twins when they are at it again. Cannot wrestle Jake Jr. until he is laughing so hard he cannot breathe. Cannot hold Grace. Cannot smell her hair. Cannot fix the garbage disposal. Cannot sit in the pew next to my wife on Sunday.

Cannot be there for those eleven minutes after the last child falls asleep and before Emily does—that window where she would lean into me and say, “We survived another one,” and I would say, “Barely,” and she would laugh, and the whole world would be steady.

I miss the steadiness.

The photo finally loaded. All seven of us—minus me. Church Sunday. Jake Jr. in a tie he fought. The twins matching, which means Emily performed a logistical miracle. Lila grinning, two front teeth gone. Grace on Emily’s hip, grabbing her earring. And Emily. Standing behind all of them with that look—the one that says she is keeping it together and you had better not ask how.

I know how. She does it all. Every bath, every bedtime, every nightmare, every stomach bug, every school conference, every broken thing, every meal—times five, with zero backup. She hosted Christmas without me and made it beautiful. She keeps that house standing. And she still texts me at midnight to ask if I’m okay.

She is not fine. She is extraordinary. And she does not even know it.

The men here understand. Rodriguez gets cookies from San Antonio that arrive as crumbs, and he eats every one like it is the finest meal he has ever had. Thompson wears his wife’s hair tie on his wrist. Has not taken it off in four months. Williams received a video of his son’s first steps last week and had to walk behind the barracks. No one said a word. No one needed to. We all looked at the ground and gave the man his moment. That is love in a combat zone. It is quiet. It is heavy. It is the thing that makes you want to come home—not just intact, but better.

I typed "You up?" because that is our thing. Two words. Nineteen years of weight behind them. I did not have poetry. I had a government phone and a connection that might drop at any second and all the love I could fit into a text message.

She wrote back: Always.

The whole world in one word.

When she called me a menace, I grinned in a room full of men with rifles. That is my girl. That is my family. That is every reason I lace up my boots every morning and walk into another day.

I looked at the photo one more time. Memorized it the way I memorize all of them—like I am storing sunlight for the dark.

Then I put my phone down. Laced up my boots. And walked out into another day I am going to survive—for them.

★  ★  ★

Honor.  Remember.  Connect.

This story is fiction. But the families behind it are real.

Right now, at this moment, there are spouses holding down households alone—not by choice, but by the demands of service. There are mothers putting children to bed and answering the question, “When is Daddy coming home?” without knowing the answer. There are fathers on the other side of the world watching their children grow up in photos that take six minutes to load. There are families for whom Valentine’s Day is not dinner and roses. It is a text message at midnight. A frozen candy bar behind the Eggos. A love that has to be strong enough to survive distance, silence, fear, and time.

Military spouses are not single parents by choice. They are single parents by sacrifice. And the meaning of “single parent” is at a completely different level when the other parent is half a world away—in a place they cannot name, doing work they cannot discuss, trusting that the person they left behind will keep everything standing until they return.

And they do. Every single time. They keep it standing.

This Valentine’s Day, the Veteran Legacy Network asks you to remember that love in the military community looks different. It is not weaker for the distance. It is forged in it. It is tested by deployments and holidays spent apart and milestones witnessed through screens. And it endures—not because it is easy, but because the people who carry it refuse to let go.

To every military spouse reading this: we see you. We honor what you carry. Your service may not come with a uniform, but it is service nonetheless—and this network exists to make sure it is never forgotten.

To every service member deployed right now, reading this on a phone that barely works, in a place you cannot tell us about: your family is holding the line at home. They are proud of you. They are waiting for you. And they will be there when you come back.

Hold the ones you love. And if you cannot hold them—hold on.

Honor. Remember. Connect.

— Rebekah Ricks

Contributing Writer, Veteran Legacy Network

Founder, Courage & Caffeine