Episode 6: The Year That Changed Shape
1020 Words
Year two didn’t begin loudly.
There was no announcement, no dramatic shift that warned me life was about to tilt on its axis. It started the way most things in our life had started by then quietly, with routine already in place. Daily calls. FaceTime when schedules allowed. A rhythm we’d learned through trial and patience.
We had figured each other out.
Not perfectly, but enough to know when to speak and when to just stay. Enough to recognize the difference between silence and distance.
When I realized I was pregnant, it didn’t feel real at first.
I sat on the edge of my bed for a long time, staring at something impossibly small that suddenly carried impossible weight. My first thought wasn’t fear. It was disbelief. My second thought was him.
I didn’t wait long to tell him.
I couldn’t.
That night, when his face appeared on my screen like it always did, I didn’t bother easing into it. My hands were shaking too badly for that.
“I need to tell you something,” I said.
He sat up straighter immediately. “Okay.”
“I’m pregnant.”
For a moment, he didn’t speak.
My chest tightened, not because I expected anger, but because distance makes pauses feel longer than they are. Then his expression softened into something I hadn’t seen before. Not shock. Not panic.
Happiness.
A quiet, grounded happiness that settled into his voice when he finally spoke.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “Okay.”
That was it.
No raised voice. No questions fired too fast. No pulling away.
Just okay.
We talked for hours that night. About timing. About logistics. About how nothing about this was ideal, but none of it felt wrong either. He asked how I was feeling. If I was safe. If I needed anything right then.
“I’m here,” he told me. “Every night. No matter what.”
And he was.
From that night on, FaceTime wasn’t optional or occasional. It became ritual.
Every night.
No matter how long his day had been. No matter how tired he was. No matter how late it got. We ended every day together, screens glowing softly in dark rooms hundreds of miles apart.
Seeing him every night changed everything.
He was happy.
Not nervous-happy. Not forced optimism. Just steady joy, the kind that shows up in small ways. The way he smiled when he answered. The way his voice softened when he asked how I was feeling. The way he reminded me to eat, to rest, to slow down when I pushed myself too hard.
“How’s our baby tonight?” he asked often.
Our baby.
We talked about names. About what kind of parents we wanted to be. About the things we hoped our child would never doubt. Love. Stability. Being wanted.
We wanted a girl.
We said it out loud without superstition, without fear of jinxing anything. He teased me about it, already picturing someone small with my stubbornness and his quiet steadiness.
“I think I’d be good at raising a girl,” he said one night, thoughtful. “I’d teach her how to be strong without being loud.”
“You’d be good at raising any kid,” I told him.
He came home once during the pregnancy.
I remember standing in the doorway when he arrived, my body already changing in ways I wasn’t fully used to yet. He looked at me like he was trying to memorize everything all over again.
He placed his hand on my stomach carefully, like the moment deserved reverence.
“I hate that I’m not here for all of this,” he admitted.
“I know,” I said. “But you’re here now.”
That visit was short. They always were. But it mattered. We sat together, talked, rested. Let ourselves exist in the same space again. It reminded us that what we were building was real, not just something sustained through screens.
When it came time to find out the baby’s gender, he couldn’t be there.
That hurt more than I expected.
I sat alone in the room, listening to the technician speak, watching the screen shift and flicker. When she smiled and said, “It’s a boy,” I felt something settle inside me.
A boy.
I smiled.
Not disappointment. Just adjustment.
I told him that night.
He listened quietly. He didn’t fake excitement. He didn’t overcorrect.
“I don’t know how I feel yet,” he said honestly. “I think I thought I knew.”
“That’s okay,” I replied. “You’ll meet him.”
He nodded. “Yeah. I will.”
And that was enough.
The nightly calls didn’t change.
If anything, they grew steadier. More intentional. We talked about the future carefully, not rushing into promises that needed time. He was still serving. Still bound to duty. But his resolve was clear.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he told me one night. “I don’t care how hard this gets.”
Pregnancy reshaped my days.
Some mornings I woke up exhausted, my body heavy in a way I wasn’t used to. Other days I felt almost normal, until a wave of emotion knocked the air from my lungs without warning. Through all of it, he stayed constant.
“You don’t have to be strong all the time,” he reminded me. “Just be honest with me.”
So I was.
I told him about the nights I lay awake with my hand on my stomach, thinking too far ahead. About the moments fear crept in. About the way love felt bigger now, heavier with responsibility.
He didn’t flinch.
He didn’t pull away.
He leaned in.
By the end of year two, life looked nothing like what we’d imagined when we sat in metal chairs in a church basement, when we rode buses to church outings and shared quiet glances no one else noticed.
But it felt right.
Not easy.
Right.
And every night, no matter the distance, no matter the exhaustion, we ended the day the same way.
Together.
- Writer
