Many couples, even in the Ukranian conflict of the past year, marry quickly before going to war. It’s an optimistic casting of what bread they have to the wind, the hope of a surer foundation than they fear.

Connie Ruzich had blogged about poetry in the context of WWI, and in an August 2018 post, she dwells on a woman who wrote about enduring the wait with a reference to Odysseus’s wife, Penelope.

In the pathway of the sun,
In the footsteps of the breeze,
Where the world and sky are one,
He shall ride the silver seas,
He shall cut the glittering wave.
I shall sit at home, and rock;
Rise, to heed a neighbor's knock;
Brew my tea, and snip my thread;
Bleach the linen for my bed.
They will call him brave. 
            — Dorothy Parker