Of absent husbands and mothers-in-law

My groom-to-be is a Navy man. He's proud to be a sailor, though he has agreed to leave active duty once this current assignment is complete in 2010, mainly because I am not interested in traveling every three years. In the interim, however, he has been recruited for a voluntary assignment in Iraq. It's a four month deployment for which he was specifically approached due to his prized skill-set and experience. His current assignment is loaning him out to the war-effort from September through early January of this year.

He's excited about the opportunity. Frankly, I'm terrified.

Last weekend, he and I were in TheMiddleofNowhere, MO, to visit his parents. It was the first time I'd met them in person, though we had spoken on the phone. I made the mistake of mentioning something about this upcoming deployment to his mother, assuming (wrongly) that he had told her the orders had, indeed, come through. (We'd known it was possible for several weeks, but had heard for sure a day or two before we left Baltimore for T.M.O.N., MO). She started to cry. He started to repeat in this odd voice I hadn't heard before "Mom, mom, don't cry. Don't cry." I wanted the earth to swallow me up.