"Thank you also for your sacrifice." To me? Really?

I love going to the post office. I go there usually once a week, and at minimum once every other week. I usually have at least 2 boxes to send to Seth, and yesterday was no different. I even have a favorite postal worker. Her name is Lucy. I really like her, she’s very nice and has a sweet little voice and she’s been there since I started sending Seth care packages back in 2008. I always hope to get her when I go in there. Yesterday I got a new lady. I’ve seen her there lots of times before, but I don’t think I’ve gone to her window. I really dislike Douchebag David. He’s rude and I try to avoid him. This new lady yesterday, I’ll have to find out her name, but she was really nice too. She told me I could go to the website and order large flat rate boxes and have them sent directly to me, and I told her I’m at the post office so often, I just pick them up while I’m there. I was sending quite a few books yesterday, so my packages where sort of heavy. I put them up on the counter and gave her the customs forms, and she was reading through them. In one of the care packages, I was sending only books and magazines. She said they probably don’t get many magazines, but I always send my dad’s Time magazines. I’ve asked him to save them for Seth. In my other care package, I sent Seth a few bottles of hot sauce per his request and she asked if they were in “absorbent material in a plastic bag.” I told her they were wrapped in paper towels and placed in the plastic container I was sending (which is for ground coffee I sent in a previous care package). She said something like, “I take it you’ve done this before?” I told her yeah, I’ve been sending packages to him for 2 ½ years now. We made other small talk and she said it was nice of me to support the troops. Then she said, “thank you also for your sacrifice.” I really didn’t know what to say to that, so I mumbled a lame, “thank you?!” I don’t know what I was thanking her for. I need to come up with a better answer, but it caught me off guard. I sacrifice some things while he’s deployed, but I think he sacrifices a whole lot more.

I do have a fairly standard answer of when I get the occasional comment of, “I don’t know how you do it. I couldn’t do it at all.” I try to keep it simple for their sake. I just say, “he’s worth the wait.” I could go into a much deeper reasoning and explanation of why I do wait and tell them how hard it is and how not fun it is and how I would love for him to be home every day, but it’s easier to keep the answer simple and also if I were to really explain it, I would increase my odds of crying and I prefer to keep that at a minimum if I can control it. Especially in public. So it’s simple: I wait patiently because he’s worth it.