My husband and I already celebrated on the five-month mark, when we broke out the cake and champagne with a sunset toast on the beach.

We knew the real day would be bittersweet, because he's deployed to Afghanistan, and we won't see each other again for another six months.

We've now been married longer apart than together.

It's weird being a newlywed without a husband around. The house seems too empty. The daily routine seems too routine. But somehow, my husband finds ways to keep me smiling.

We e-mail at least a few times a week and hope for a good connection when he has a chance to call on a satellite phone.

The bright side of separation often comes in the mail, particularly with hand-written letters. About once a month, my husband digs through a picked-over stash of greeting cards and changes the words on his favorites, crossing out "get well" or "I'm sorry" to tell me he loves me.

Last week, a big box arrived for me at the post office. It was an anniversary surprise — two Afghan rugs and a video of my husband giving a tour of his camp and wishing me holiday greetings all the way through Easter.

Those are a few of my favorite things, along with his T-shirt I keep under my pillow, even though his scent has faded.

The little things help get me through what feel like the big things, like the knot that grew in my stomach when he e-mailed me a few weeks ago to say he was being flown to a doctor to find out why he was having hives and chest pains. I imagined he was having a reaction to some war-zone poison or that he was going to have a heart attack.

Turns out he thinks it was a bad reaction to anti-smoking medication. That was another thing that was supposed to be a surprise.

"I have been thinking," he wrote in a "get well" card that arrived last week. "Here I am halfway around the world. I work pretty hard every day to make sure I come home to you. I do all of that and I smoke. It hit me the other day I want to grow old with you. Kinda hard to do when I am inhaling cancer. Anyway, I decided to quit."

About the same time I read his letter, he should have received his anniversary gift from me: a humidor full of cigars.

Good timing is not exactly my forte. But I have been blessed with good fortune.

I never pictured myself sending my groom off to war and then wishing time would fast forward. But, as my mom likes to say, life happens when you're making other plans.

Sometimes I think military deployments are just a cruel test of patience for everyone involved.

Then I count myself lucky that my soldier is safe, he makes me proud, and he does things that make me fall in love with him all over again.

Happy Anniversary, honey.