My son was in the Army and spent the last year in the Middle East, in the desert.
When he came home, it was early spring, but the temperatures were still in the low fifties. He was shivering, even with the furnace on. My daughter came home from school one afternoon and asked where Bryan was. I told her he was in his room. She ran up the stairs without even saying hello. She knocked on his door, and all he said was enter. She pulled a box from behind her and told him happy birthday. He said his birthday wasn’t for another month, but she wasn’t going to wait. She had stopped at the store on the way home and bought him a space heater. She noticed how cold he was all the time, and thought an extra space heater for his room would give him some comfort. He told her to sit with him a while, then opened the space heater. I saw the first real smile he had when he came downstairs an hour later. He had his arm around his sister, and they were talking like they did before he joined the Army. i saw a genuine friendship there, and he asked if I knew what she gave him for his birthday. I shook my head. He said he got a new space heater for his room. For the first time since he got home, he was finally warm. If we could only erase the haunted look in his eyes as easily as the space heater erased his cold.