Dear Santa:

Thank you for bringing my husband home right before Christmas. It is the best Christmas present I could ask for this year. Since my husband and I got engaged in December 2004, we have only been able to spend 2 Christmases together so this will definitely be a special holiday for us!

However, I just have one more request. No deployment questions this Christmas please!

I realize that friends and relatives have no idea what it is like to be on our end, and that this request might seem a little selfish of sorts. But since he just got home 24 hours ago, I want to focus on having a wonderful Christmas together and avoid any talk about the next deployment, which we all know where that will be. Its not that I’m avoiding the inevitable, I just want to focus on what is happening now and not months from now.

I did share this with my mother and she understood, but I still realize there is no way to avoid this question. In fact, if I were on the other side, I would probably ask it too. So besides asking you Santa to whisper the request to family and friends, I’ll prepare myself for the question and ask my husband to just tell them he doesn’t know.