Twelve Days of Christmas - Part Two by Allie Pleiter

Dear Daniel,

Seth kicked hard today--he must be trying to say hello across the miles!  Your mother sent Christmas presents, and in the packages were two fluffy stuffed birds to put in Seth’s crib as we wait his arrival.  How special it is to await the arrival of a baby during the Christmas season!

Your mother’s gift made me wonder if you ever told her the story of our “turtle doves.”  How long you must have saved up to take me to that fancy restaurant in the city!  I felt so glamorous--no one had ever asked me to get all dressed up and go "out on the town" like that.  We didn’t have such places where I grew up, and when you arrived to pick me up in your suit I thought you were the most handsome man alive.  I still do; the sight of you in uniform can still make me swoon, dear.

Oh, but it’s your sense of humor I love most of all.  What people must have thought when the waiter brought over those ceramic bird salt and pepper shakers for us to use amongst all that fancy silver! How ever did you get him to go along with such a charade? Ah, but then again you have always been the most charming man I have ever known.  I can still hear the chuckles of the old man and woman next to us as you went on and on about our “two turtle doves,” and how we would keep these salt and pepper shakers in our kitchen when we were married.  God must have known how badly I needed happy Christmas memories, and how wonderful you would be at giving them to me!  I think that night, seeing you so handsome and yet so funny at the same time, was when I truly began to fall for you.  Yes, I know you say I never stood a chance against your pursuit--and truly, I suspect I didn’t.  How could any woman not love such attention and affection!

I’m looking at the birds now, sitting at our kitchen table.  They are together when we cannot be, aren’t they?  I love that everywhere in our home are lovely reminders of how distance can never really separate us. And now Seth will have his own soft, fluffy “turtle doves” to remind him that his father loves him even from far away.

Stay safe, my love.  Use your wonderful humor to bring cheer to all the soldiers with you--they must need you as much as I did!  I still do.  Come home to us soon, we miss you more than I can say.

All my love,

Joy