Are You a Carla?

I was a military wife, mother to three young children and one huge Dalmatian. About to be stationed on a Portuguese island in the middle of the Atlantic, I was excited about the adventure that awaited our family of five. We left Turkey and boarded a plane for the Azores, excited to spend two more years living overseas together as a family.

Shortly after arriving, I met her. Also a military wife, she had two young boys of her own, a nice match for my three- and four-year-old sons. She lived off-base. My husband, too, had wanted to live off-base. During our time in Turkey, he had gotten slightly burned out as the doctor on a tiny base. He felt that at this new assignment, he needed some separation between work and home.

I was nervous about that. I’m a people person. I loved the “Mayberry” life of overseas base housing. But I agreed. It turned out Carla lived around the corner and invited us, just a few days after we arrived, to attend VBS with her and her two boys.

None of our belongings had arrived yet, including our vehicle. But each morning, she’d pick up me and my three littles, figuring out a way to strap five car seats into her minivan so we could spend the day at the base chapel. Suddenly the island life away from the base didn’t feel so lonely after all.

Over the next few months, I got to know Carla. She was simple. Loyal. Kind. Helpful. Faithful. Since I had the bigger house, she’d bring her kids over most days of the week, and we’d let them play inside while the relentless rains battered our little island day in and day out. She didn’t ask for anything. We were teammates. She was homeschooling her kindergarten-age son and began to show me the ropes as I prepared to do the same for my boys.

Then I got pregnant. Unlike the pregnancies before it, this one broke me. I was horrendously ill and became severely depressed. I dry-heaved hundreds of times a day and often couldn’t even speak. I couldn’t read or watch TV, either, lest I get even more ill.

I kept waiting during the long months that followed for Carla to give up on me. To say she couldn’t come to hang out at my house and share her days with me. To subtly remove herself from the downer of a person I felt I was. The burden I had become.

But she didn’t.

She just kept coming. And kept saying that she didn’t need me to be anything I wasn’t. I was her friend. We didn’t have to talk or have adventures to be friends. She’d listen to my repeated anxieties and fears day in and day out. She’d sit alongside me when I felt well enough to crack a joke.

With Carla, I could just . . . be.

Some days we barely talked at all. Some days I napped on the couch the whole time she was there. Some days she did the same. She began battling infertility during this season, and I tried to listen and be supportive of a journey I knew all too well. When she shared with me that she had miscarried, I mumbled, “That really sucks,” and later, she told me how much that meant to her—just knowing I didn’t need to try to fix anything.

We made random food together and tried not to complain about the weather that greyed the skies each day. Our kids took swimming lessons together in my pool when the weather cleared, and we walked the village blocks and sat at the Red Café together, eating donuts. My daughter, Abigail, who is incredibly shy, warmed up to her. Carla became one of the only people aside from my husband and myself that Abigail could stay with if I had appointments or just needed a break.

One year after we arrived on the island, I delivered my Hannah, and the nausea and depression floated away. So did Carla. It was time for a new assignment for her husband. We remained on the island while they flew away to another one: Oahu. The other side of the globe.

That was five years ago.

I haven’t seen her since.

The military life is like that. Moving in different directions at different times. Paths not crossing like you wish they would.

She has five children now to my four. We keep in touch on social media and have sent each other Christmas cards and occasional notes of encouragement or gifts. Our kids remember each other, but their memories become fainter as the years go by.

But my memories of Carla have not waned.

Are you a Carla?

Do you know that you don’t have to do anything monumental or huge to make a lasting influence on someone’s life? Sometimes, all you need to do is be present. That’s what Carla did for me. She was there. She didn’t give up on me. She supported me. But when I think back and try to list how she did that, all that I remember is she was there. She showed up. She was a teammate, day in and day out, even when I couldn’t provide much in return.

As this new year—this new decade—launches, you may be tempted to think you don’t have anything to give. You are busy with your family. Husband. Children. Work. Illnesses. Losses. Volunteering. Maybe even homeschooling or farming if you are as crazy as me.

But this year, I want to encourage you to look for someone who needs a Carla. Just show up. Stand with her. Love her. She doesn’t need gifts or fancy words or anything more than your presence. She just needs to know that she is good enough to have you on her team—no matter what she is facing.

Thank you, Carla, for teaching me how much it means to simply be someone’s teammate. Thanks for being my Carla.

Wendi Kitsteiner is a former city girl now living on a farm in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee with her husband and four young children. She is passionate about the causes of infertility, adoption, and keeping it real as a mom. You can follow her at flakymn.blogspot.com or becauseofisaac.org.