My husband recently arrived home from his second tour of duty in Iraq. He's in the Marines and is gone away from home a lot. I checked Gmail probably hundreds of times a day in hopes of hearing from him. Since the computers in Iraq aren't the greatest as far as technology is concerned, the layout of Gmail was easy for him to check periodically, without having to wait for images to load or a bunch of different links to click on. He just logged in and there was an email from me (or twenty, what can I say?) Gmail kept me sane throughout the first deployment. THEN there was the chat feature, which enabled me to see when he was online! During our second deployment, I used Gmail to check back and see when the last time he e-mailed or the last care package I sent arrived, because I had all of our emails archived instead of having to delete them. We would write page long letters, little snippets or jokes, and simple "I love you"'s. Honestly, I can't imagine how much harder the deployments would have been had I not had Gmail to check, because even if I didn't have an email from him, I had Gmail sending me links to news stories right to my inbox about the battalion he was with and the city he was deployed to. Gmail was my crutch throughout our time apart.
Whitney, Housewife
California
Labels: keeping in touch