I stood hugging him for the last time for the rest of the year. I was 3 at the time, and Dad was going overseas to fight in Iraq. Me and my brother were crying and my Dad was close to tears. He stood up and looked at my stone faced mother. “ What’s the big deal?” she said coldly. My Dad looked sadly at her and begged her to give us a real christmas, and to get some guys from the church to help her put a tree in. My Dad knew in this moment that the marriage was over. He walked to his plane and boarded. We watched it take off before we left the base.

The car ride home was full of tears, mine and my brother’s more than our Mom’s. She looked at the road with no emotion on her face. It seemed like forever before we got home, we got out and walked inside. My brother sat at the table and I went into my room and layed on my bed and fell asleep.

When I woke up it was time for dinner. We had leftovers, which was spaghetti and meatballs. I didn’t taste it very much, I was too focused on figuring out what I was going to do without my pillar, my rock. I looked to God and I knew my Dad would come back, that he would be okay.

The months scraped by with me holding onto the hope that I would see him again, I cried every night, wanting him back. There were things that we got when he left that reminded us of him, a stuffed doll in the shape of him that had his picture on the front, all dressed up in his military uniform, a giant cardboard cut out of the same picture, and a video of him reading The Cat In The Hat. These things helped my know that my Dad loved me and was a hero.

It was Christmas time and my Mom decided to put up a cardboard tree. She said that we were going to our Aunt and Uncle’s place. When we got there, our cousins were excited and sympathetic. Kean and I went into his bedroom and tried to guess what our presents would be, then we pretended to be ninjas, before finally going to sleep.

I woke up early Christmas morning and woke Kean up so we could wait for the parents to call us out. After a few minutes my Aunt Jennifer told us to go into the living room. We walked out there together, Frank and Hannah were already there, and Uncle Greg was in his bedroom, sick. We sat there, looking at the pile of presents beneath the glowing tree, and waited for someone to be anointed “Santa.”; the person who would pass out the presents to people. A minute later a man dressed as Santa walked into the room. We thought it was Uncle Greg at first, thinking that he wasn’t actually sick, but then I recognized my Dad, I ran up and hugged him, tears already staining my cheeks.

It was later that day and I heard my Mom and Dad arguing. He was complaining about the fact that my Mom didn’t put up a real tree. She was saying that she didn’t know that he was coming back this soon and so she didn’t bother putting one up. His argument was that the tree was for us, not for him. I decided to go into my room, because the fighting was scaring me.

The fighting continued for months, with my Mom kicking my Dad out, and my Dad crying, because he wanted to see us. Eventually the filed for divorce and my Dad stayed at his friends house, he got custody of us after a year or so and they have been fighting ever since.