"I want daddy," a little one sobs.
Jennie Taylor glances up at the computer screen. A slideshow flashes through photos of her husband in Iraq. In this one, he's wearing body armor, carrying a rifle and wearing a red Santa hat.
The photo is from last Christmas. He'd already been gone eight months at that point. Now Taylor and her kids are on their way to a Halloween party.
The 116th Security Forces deployed to Iraq during the incredibly violent spring of 2007. The Utah National Guard unit returned home in April - all, that is, except for 27 members who, along with Taylor's husband, answered a call to stay in Iraq.
Through it all, Taylor remained the resolutely chipper public face of the unit. As the 116th family readiness group leader, she arranged holiday parties for family members and organized drives to collect educational and humanitarian supplies for Iraqi civilians. She was the first call for distressed wives and mothers. She even coordinated the welcome home celebration for the soldiers that returned as scheduled, though her husband wasn't among them.
She smiled the whole time.
Now, her long race is almost over.
Another Christmastime photo of her husband pops onto the screen. Taylor sighs.
"I want daddy, too," she says.
"Always the plan."
Don't pity her. She hates that. This is what she signed up for. Every midnight worry. Every child's cry. Every exhausted moment.
Brent Taylor asked his future wife to marry him on a Saturday. The following Tuesday they walked into a National Guard recruiter's office in Draper, holding hands. There was no question about what was ahead.
"This was always the plan," Jennie Taylor says. "He always knew that the military was a family decision. I always knew what I'd agreed to."
She's not impressed by stickers, car magnets and slogans. That's not patriotism.
"If you're going to say 'God Bless America,' you gotta be willing to pay the price," Taylor says. "This is our price."
Taylor is driven by something she learned while teaching high school history. In the ancient warrior city-state of Sparta, men weren't permitted to live with their wives and children until they'd served more than a decade in the military.
"Women and children were a liability," Taylor says. "It makes sense. Who wants a soldier in the field distracted by the problems of home?"
From the moment her husband's unit left, Taylor has been determined to turn that historic detail on its ear. "We've adopted this saying, 'stronger than a Spartan,' " she says. "As odd as it sounds, my husband is a better soldier because he left a wife and two kids behind."
"I was so angry."
Not that it's been easy.
The month that the 116th arrived in Iraq was one of the deadliest on record for U.S. forces there. One hundred and thirty-one U.S. and allied service members were killed in Iraq that month - the overwhelming majority in roadside bomb attacks. The 116th was tasked to provide convoy security, escorting military and civilian vehicles on the bomb-laden roads of northern Iraq.
Within the first few days of the deployment, a soldier from a sister unit was killed. By the end of the first few weeks, dozens had been the victims of roadside bomb attacks, and several had been wounded. Brent Taylor was among the soldiers who received a Purple Heart for wounds received in a roadside bombing. He didn't tell his wife.
Jennie Taylor learned her husband had been injured while reviewing some paperwork she was helping him prepare for a promotion. "I was so angry," she remembered. "I said, 'So, the Purple Heart, huh? Did you think that might be something you were going to mention at some point?' "
But that surprise had nothing on what came in January.
"You can't stop here."
It was midmorning in Utah, late evening in Iraq, when Brent Taylor called.
"I don't think I'm done here," he told his wife.
Taylor was at her mother's home in North Ogden. She fell to her knees and buried her face into her hands. He was supposed to be home in just two months.
"It was like getting punched in the stomach," she said, "like running a 10K, getting to the end and then being told, 'you can't stop here, you have to run a marathon.' "
Violence was down. The surge was ending. But stability in Iraq was tenuous - and the Army was stretched thin.
"They need people to stay," the soldier continued.
Taylor's thoughts turned to the other parents, spouses and children who soon would be getting calls like this one. They would need her to be strong.
"OK," she said. "Who else is staying with you?"
Brent Taylor says he wouldn't have stayed in Iraq if his wife had objected. And he knows that she knows that, too.
"There's no way I could have done it if she didn't support me," says Taylor, who is finally due home this week. "She wasn't excited about it, but I knew she was supportive."
"We got us into this."
There are days when it all seems like too much to handle.
"There are days when I ask, 'What about our kids? What about our marriage? What about our lives?' " Taylor says. "I've gotten to the point where I think, 'What on Earth have we gotten ourselves into?' But you know what? It was us. We got us into this."
And so she won't complain. "When I do," she says, "I always regret it."
Kristen Ashworth said she can't remember hearing her sister-in-law and close friend utter a single complaint the whole time Brent Taylor has been away.
"Jennie just says, 'I don't expect anyone to understand, but we both feel it is the right thing to do,' " Ashworth said.
"It's not always easy for her, but she's the strongest person I know."
