Half a World Apart -- A Wife's Lonely Wait at Home

[darrels joy]

Half a World Apart -- A Wife's Lonely Wait at Home

EDITOR'S NOTE: Tuesday, March 2, was an ordinary day for Kristin Rabe, who spent most of it doing routine chores around her home in Sunnyside. Eleven time zones away, her husband, T.J., started his day escaping injury from a mortar attack in Iraq; he ended it spending the night in one of Saddam Hussein's abandoned palaces.

Today's "Images from the War" package looks at one day in the life of the Rabes, separated by roughly 6,600 miles but linked by thoughts of each other.


By AMANDA HAMMON

YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

SUNNYSIDE ? Kristin Rabe insists that the oven nearly starting on fire Tuesday while she was baking rolls would not surprise her husband, T.J., one bit.

At least the mishap was the oven's fault, not her distraction, as is the usual case with the other mishaps at the Rabe home, Kristin jokes.

Every experience brings T.J. to mind; he lingers in her thoughts. Since he's serving with the 737th Army Reserve Transportation Company stationed at Camp Doha, Kuwait, her memories are sometimes all she has.

But Kristin slides through this day on something more ? 103 seconds of T.J.'s voice. Her phone rang at 9:43 a.m. as
she was running out the door to work. For a few moments, she heard his voice from somewhere in Iraq, a town she can't correctly pronounce.

"I just know I don't like it," the 21-year-old says.

It was the first time she'd heard from him since the previous Friday at 8 p.m.

So all day she prays, "Just protect my husband and get him home safely."

"I must have said that prayer one million times today," she says.

That's what T.J. always tells her to do. She asks what he's doing, where he's at, what he's worried about so she knows what to pray for.

"Worrying about it does diddly squat. Praying is everything," she says. "If my husband can't be in my arms, I'm thankful he's in the Lord's hands."

Her days have a certain sameness to them. Girl time in the morning with her mother, Kathy Jacobsen, then a few hours of work at Prudential Valley Investment Properties. She works for her uncle, dealing with tenants of Sunnyside Mini Storage. Then she's home for lunch and homework throughout the afternoon for the humanities degree she's completing online through Washington State University.

She has things to keep her mind busy. Tyler James, for one.

As she pats her swollen belly, she jokes she is among the 0.1 percent who get pregnant while on birth control. She panicked when she found out. T.J. was excited.

Tyler, says his seven-months pregnant mother, already has a "persnickety" personality.

And he looks just like his daddy. She flips open the silver Sprint picture phone that she is never without. A black and white 3D ultrasound image of Tyler appears on the screen.

"Look, that's my nose. But the face ... " she rubs her finger lightly over it. "That's T.J.'s face."

KRISTIN AND T.J. have known each other since she was in the eighth grade at Sunnyside Christian, and he was a senior at Grandview High School. They met at church; he chaperoned her first date. They landed at Northwest Nazarene the same year, she a freshmen, he a junior transfer from Yakima Valley Community College. She tried to set her "big brother" up with her friends, but they asked why she didn't see anything in him. Then one day, that line from "Amazing Grace" suddenly made sense. Kristin's heart skipped a few beats, his eyes suddenly became greener and she who once was blind could see.

The first time they kissed, they laughed, because they were best friends and couldn't believe what was happening.

Here and now, she is pregnant and home alone. Most afternoons she spends time in her room, one filled with photos of T.J., praying for his safety.

As she heads downstairs to write T.J. a letter, the phone rings.

It's Kimberly Schoolcraft, wife of Staff Sgt. Myles Schoolcraft of Yakima. He's in charge of the second platoon, which includes T.J., so Kimberly is in charge of those left home. Kristin has some sort of contact with her almost daily.

Kristin enjoys this contact with another woman who understands.

EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS TOUR with the 737th has changed Kristin and T.J.'s lives. T.J.'s time in the Reserves was supposed to be up May 20, the day after Tyler's due date. Kristin and T.J. were supposed to be married Aug. 16, 2003.

But last March 10, T.J. received word that his Reserve unit had been activated and would leave March 12. Kristin had a decision: Be his fianc?e and be ignored by the military, or be his wife and be in the inner circle. They married March 11, 2003, in front of 70 or so hastily gathered friends, her parents and sister in a gazebo on the Northwest Nazarene campus.

Of course, the 737th ended up just being on alert. But then the soldiers were activated.

Even though she will e-mail and tell T.J. about the oven, she still writes it in her daily letter. She smiles broadly as she describes how the sparks looked like the crackling gunpowder in cartoons. The letter will arrive late, likely in a bundle of three or four. He will have forgotten the incident, and it will make him smile.

"I try to be really happy when I write him," she says. "He has enough to weigh him down."

The long afternoons home alone aren't unfamiliar. Except that T.J. won't walk through the door anywhere near 5 p.m. But her father, Paul, will. And then her mother will. Her family is strong and supportive. And she has the Lord, whom she credits with keeping her going.

"The life I have right now is the most beautiful thing ever given to me, despite what we're going through," she says. "If I could ask one thing, it's that God will keep T.J. safe. If I could ask another thing, it's that God brings him home."

GORDON KING/Yakima Herald-Republic
Kristin Rabe says she frequently checks her e-mail for messages from her husband or updates from the military. On this afternoon, she reads a message from Maj. Lawrence "Bud" Bittner, the 737th's commander.

[darrels joy]

GORDON KING/Yakima Herald-Republic
Kristin Rabe has a solitary lunch at her parents' Sunnyside home, where she's staying while her husband, T.J., is serving with the Army Reserves in Kuwait. Most afternoons she spends alone at home doing homework, cleaning house and writing to her husband. Though she's accustomed to spending afternoons alone, "the downfall is that my husband doesn't walk through the door" at the end of the day, Kristin says.

[darrels joy]

Lunch alone

[darrels joy]

GORDON KING/Yakima Herald-Republic
Kristin Rabe takes a letter she's just written to her husband to the mailbox outside her parents' Sunnyside home. She writes him a letter every day, and e-mails him at least once a day.

[darrels joy]

GORDON KING/Yakima Herald-Republic
Kristin Rabe gets a phone call from a member of her military family support group. The caller, the wife of husband T.J.'s platoon sergeant, calls several times a month. Kristin says she has a lot of support now, including the military, family and friends.