If Tara Schneider can steal a few minutes during her lunch break, she’ll rush to her Steilacoom home and fire up her webcam. On the other end are her two daughters, 3-year-old Autumn and 6-month-old Teagan, both now living in Miami.

Schneider, an Army sergeant at Fort Lewis, admits this bit of bonding can’t compare with hugging them and talking in person. “It can be kind of tough,” she said. “I miss them, and the webcam really just isn’t the same.”

But with yearlong deployments looming for Tara and her husband, Sgt. Brandon Schneider, the couple doesn’t have much choice. Their daughters are living in Florida with Tara’s father and stepmother, and the family is preparing for the stress of being apart.

The Army doesn’t have a policy against deploying two parents at the same time. Parents are required to submit a family care plan after a child is born, and if they can’t find someone to raise their children while deployed, they could be eligible for a discharge.

For soldiers who want to continue serving in the military, that’s often not a serious option.

It wasn’t realistic for Brandon Schneider, an infantryman heading to Afghanistan with 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, or his wife Tara, who will deploy to Kuwait with the 57th Transportation Battalion, 593rd Sustainment Brigade.

The soldiers, both 25 years old, try to find positives in their situation.

“We’re telling ourselves that the alternative is that he deploys, comes back and then I deploy around the same time,” said Tara, a New Jersey native. “We’d be apart for two years. At least this way we get it over with.”

The couple has dealt with deployment once before: Brandon was sent to Afghanistan with 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division in 2006-07. Tara’s unit was up for a deployment around the same time, but she won a reprieve because it left just a few months after Autumn was born.

Autumn was too young to grasp the disruption at the time. Now, they say, she understands the family will be apart a while.

When Brandon and Tara dropped them off at the grandparents’ home in Florida last month during their two-week leave, they sat down with Autumn to talk about it.

“You know I’m going to be away for a while, right?” Brandon remembers asking her.

“Yeah, you’re going far away,” she answered.

“You know why I’m going, right?” he asked.

“Yeah, you’re going to fight bad guys!” she said.

The kids appear to be handling the separation well, they said. A trip to Disney World in Orlando is helping. And Autumn knows how to take advantage of the distance, such as claiming to her grandparents that her mom said she didn’t have to eat vegetables.

“She’s incredibly smart,” said Brandon, a Bremerton native. “She knows what’s going on, and she’s going to make the best out of it.”

The couple met in December 2002 while studying at Olympic College in Bremerton. Tara told Brandon she liked his dreadlocks – long gone now, of course – and she admits she “pretty much pursued him from the time we met.”

Brandon joined the Army in March 2004; Tara followed five months later. They both knew this scenario was likely, but that doesn’t seem to make it easier.

Tara watched the June 19 deployment ceremony for 5th Stryker Brigade with hundreds of other family members and friends who crammed metal bleachers at Fort Lewis’ Watkins Field.

Brandon, a member of 4th Battalion, 23rd Infantry Division, stood with 3,900 others who will lead the U.S. military’s troop buildup to try to quell the resurgent Taliban.

After the ceremony, soldiers rushed to find their loved ones. Tara stood near the bleachers, a bit ashen-faced.

“Honestly,” she said, “it all hasn’t really set in yet.”

Scott Fontaine: 253-320-4758

scott.fontaine@thenewstribune.com

blogs.thenewstribune.com/military