Recently, I found myself going through my husband’s footlocker and I discovered something that surprised me about my husband: He is really a sentimental sap.
While he was in Iraq, I tried to do something outside of the box when it came to care packages. He had a PX, he had a Burger King, Pizza Hut and Subway available to him so food was not an issue but homesickness was a huge issue for him and I spent much of the time trying to find a way to make him feel a bit closer to home.
Early in his deployment I read about a program offered by the Salvation Army named Operation Pillow Talk. The program offered pillows and pillow cases to design with drawings, messages of love and support to send to the deployed troops. I attended one of their functions and sent a pillow to my husband and also to several other soldier’s in his unit because their spouse or parent couldn’t attend. The Salvation Army incurs the cost and you can send to as many as you like. If the pillows are going to one post, they ask for a contact person to send them all and have them distribute in order to cut costs. They ask for donations but they don’t require them and you are never pushed to do so.
Given I have always had my own silly sense of humor I sat in the middle of a busy mall on a Saturday afternoon, put on more lipstick that I normally wear in a year and put kisses all over that pillow. I am not artistic by any means so the drawing was limited, instead I wrote messages to my husband. Today, that pillow still sits on our bed because he refuses to give it up.
Upon going through the footlocker I found the pillow wasn’t all that he kept close to him during his deployment. For Easter, I sent him a care package with an Easter basket and filled the plastic eggs with little notes instead of candy. I found the notes in the case he kept his glasses in along with a lock of my hair that he took before he left.
Much to my surprise I didn’t find the DVD’s or the books that I had sent packed in his footlocker instead as I went through his life in Iraq, I found the little things such as my letters, photos and the jar of dirt from my garden that I sent when he said he missed good old American soil.
I made the mistake of thinking I was going to dump out the dirt that day and found that my husband would not allow me to do so, when I explained that we had a whole backyard full of dirt and he could get more his response to me was “No, I can’t this was home for me, when I couldn’t be here.” That jar of dirt now sits on our dresser.
Care packages are not about how much you spend but how much love your put into them. Next time you are preparing a care package make sure you put a bit of yourself in that box as well. You are your soldier’s tie to home and if you send them a bit of home you will give them something they will cherish forever.
What a care package means to a military family
Volunteering can mean sending care packages
Projects to support our troops