National Guard Mom watches daughter grow a world away

Mother logs on, watches her daughter grow up a world away
By James Janega and Sara Olkon Tribune reporters
August 2, 2009

In the predawn darkness, Ashley Calhoun's laptop cast a blue glow over her tiny Army National Guard cubicle as she adjusted her Web camera so she could be seen in her living room back home.

"You have to say hi to Mommy," he told their daughter. At the moment, the toddler wasn't interested, another torment for her mother in a year of missed milestones.


Around her in the tight quarters were a still-warm bunk, a folding metal chair, a 9 mm pistol on the floor and 103 photographs fixed to the wall -- all but five chronicling the life of a little girl Calhoun has watched grow up over the Internet during the year she has spent in Afghanistan.

"Zoey, come and see Mommy," Ashley Calhoun begged softly in her plywood barracks. "Please?"

Thousands of miles from her home in Rockton, Ill., yet connected through a peculiar online intimacy, Calhoun watched on her computer display as her husband, Tim Calhoun, turned off the family television in an attempt to coax Zoey's attention from a Dora the Explorer cartoon to her mother's image on the computer.

The girl was 14 months old when Ashley Calhoun left home, committed to a career in the National Guard and resolved to endure the separation. Since then, however, the Rockford police officer has missed a year of holidays and watching her child learn how to run. Zoey has discovered how to ride a tricycle, started to speak in sentences and gotten dressed up for her first class picture, all without her mother's help.
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