It was a few days into this deployment, and I was feeling pretty good.

We were tired, for sure.  A 3 a.m. drop-off on a dark boat dock isn’t exactly refreshing.

And my kids were sad that Daddy was gone, as was I.

But we were all fed and clothed and dressed.  We even made soccer practice on time that week.

And then, late on a Friday afternoon, I opened my garage door to throw in another load of laundry and found myself standing in several inches of water.

“Oh my god!” I screamed, while my children squealed with glee, the 2-year-old yelling, “Pool, mama! Pool!”

I immediately assumed my washer was leaking and pumping all this water onto my garage floor.  But I couldn’t tell.

I had to back out my van and start pulling things off of the wall before I saw it, leaking, nay pouring, out the bottom of my hot water heater.

“Oh god no!” I yelled some more. “No, no, no, no, no!”

I then grabbed my phone, called the first friend I could think of and yelled at her, “My garage is flooded! I need help! Please come now!”

I had to dig my way into the water shut-off outside the house; it had been caked by dirt and mud all winter and was barely movable.  And then I had to figure out which breaker led to the hot water heater, in my unlabeled breaker box, of course, while standing in several inches of water and praying I wasn’t electrocuted.

Then my friend showed up. Thank god, she had brought her husband.  She grabbed our shop-vac and started sucking out water, while her husband found the volt meter and made sure it wasn’t a fire hazard.  We all start calling plumbers while using towels and a leaf blower to soak up and blow away the lake that had been my garage.

A third phone call to another homeowner-friend-Navy-wife revealed she knew a plumber.  Or, rather, a better option.

Her husband, who had replaced their hot-water heater two years prior.

He came over, grabbed my credit card, bought me a new hot-water heater and installed it that night while his wife and my dear friend, along with her four children, helped me clean kids and dinner prep without running water.

I went to bed that night exhausted, wishing I had played the lotto.

This was the third deployment in a row in which, within a week of my husband’s departure, something major has broken. What are the chances?

And this is the third time in a row that good friends, a savings account, husband-borrowing, and a dose of “Oh crap! I guess I have no choice but to deal with this!” have come to my rescue.

I’m not sure I can express the kind of gratitude I feel when someone sacrifices their Friday night for me just because I’m a fellow military spouse in need.

No other community has that kind of loyalty, that kind of ferocious protective nature over their own.

I will be forever grateful that, if nothing else, this life has taught me that a few inches of water have nothing on the power of a military community.

Without that community, those few inches of water would have surely drowned me.

And while we in the Navy community like to laugh at the pun, “We’re all in the same boat,” it really is true.

And I really am thankful for that alone.