Life can be tough for a military family. The person in the military usually has to be away from his or her family for a while. When my brother decided to go into the Air Force, I was really heart broken. As much as my brother and I used to fight, you’d think I would have been happy for him to go, but that wasn’t the case at all. Whenever he left for basic training, I kept my feelings confined from my parents. I didn’t want to prove them right that I loved my brother more than I had put out. Yes, we always had fights over the stupidest things, but after a week of him being gone, I was starting to miss our arguments.

My brother’s girlfriend, Tricia, was way more upset than I was of his leave, but I didn’t see it that way. “I miss him way more than her!” I’d always think. I thought that my brother would have missed me more than her, but that wasn’t true.  Whenever he was able to write home, he’d only write to Tricia. He’d write a good two pages to her each letter he would send; I had pure jealousy against her. I’d go crying to my mom and dad about how I never got a single letter, and they told my brother about my want. So I wouldn’t feel left out, he sent me a letter. I was real excited when I got it in the mail, but, being my ungrateful self, I was quickly disappointed when I saw it was only one short paragraph.

It’s been a few years since then, and I thought it wouldn’t get worse than that. Oh boy, was I wrong.

In September of this year, my brother will be deploying to Afghanistan. When I heard this news, I was shocked. Everything had been going smoothly; He lives up in Abilene with his girlfriend—I mean, newly wedded wife, Tricia—and visits us frequently. Tricia started a garden in my backyard (since they can’t have a garden in their apartment) and I mend to it every day. Life was good, but then I heard the news. Again, shocked. Looking back when he went to basic training, it wasn’t really a big deal because I knew he was safe, and it wasn’t like his job was going to be all dangerous. All he was training to do was to fix and pamper the planes.

His job is going to be the same in Afghanistan, work on the planes, he isn’t going to fight. Despite knowing this, I also know that it is very possible for his base to be attacked and bombed. I know that I am probably being a little paranoid, but I don’t want anything to happen to him.

In our past, we fought, we bickered and hit. We were two separate people seven years apart in age. He was the teenager who knew everything, and I was the baby who always had to get their way. We had our differences, but it wasn’t all bad. We would sometimes have playful fights, and on occasion, he’d let me play his video games with him. We had inside jokes and had stuff against each other so we could blackmail one another, but it wasn’t bad. He was my big brother I looked up to him, and I still do. If anything, anything, were to happen to him, I don’t know what I would do. He is my Airman brother, and I am his little sister.