It was NOT a  normal night. Mommy let me and Ally stay up past our bedtime, playing with our blocks on the living room table. I remember feeling happy, because I was spending time with my favorite two people in the world, my mom and my twin sister. My new mousey pajamas kept me feeling warm, matching perfectly with Ally; it was very nice of grandma to buy them for us.

Ally and I tittered quietly, our 4-year old babble floating around the room as my mother watched us silently, an indifferent look on her face. Just as Ally had finished explaining to me how my teddy bear was the princess of her castle, a sharp tapping sound came from the front door, a few feet from where we were sitting. Before anybody could get up and answer it, a severe-looking man with a buzzed head and a heavy camo outfit walked through the doorway and stood right in the middle of my livingroom. He released his huge army bag and it landed on the carpet with a dull thud, but it seemed as if the man standing before us wasn’t aware of anything but my sister and myself. His eyes never strayed from our tiny toddler faces, his cheeks shiny from the tears falling from his red-rimmed eyes. I turned to my mom and saw her crying silently. I thought for a moment, searching my memory to see if I recognized the face of the man. I gave up after no success. “Who’s that, Mommy?” I timidly asked. Nobody answered me, so I turned to Ally for help. We stared at each other quietly, confusion filling both of our faces. Yet after two seconds of our silent, deeply connected conversation, we understood at exactly the same time.
It was as if a tirade of memories burst from the tight seams of our mind, filling the holes in our hearts with remembrance. We had finally got it. My sister and I both shot up and hurtled ourselves at the stranger. “Daddy!”
He fell, his knees dropping to the floor, as his two little girls ran to him. We clung to him for dear life, for our father remembered us. He came back. We had missed him for years, our little minds slowly letting the imprint of him fade away; yet something beautiful occurred moments earlier, when my twin sister and I gazed at eachother. It was as if I showed her and she showed me through our eyes, our minds combining to help us understand who exactly the strange army man who stood in our house really was. He was here, my daddy, safe from the horrendous acts of war.