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" Sheldon Barr, a 27-year-old San Antonio native, spent the last year-and-change deployed in Afghanistan. Yesterday he returned home to surprise his three-year-old son, Joey, through a Dove Men+Care campaign. On the occasion of Father&amp;#039;s Day, we talked to Barr about what he&amp;#039;s learned about being a military dad serving abroad.  Knowing I&amp;#039;m going to be gone for a year... It&amp;#039;s hard. I know I&amp;#039;m going to miss a lot of important times.  Any chance I get to see him, I try to take advantage of it. He&amp;#039;s grown a lot. Every time I see him it&amp;#039;s something new. It&amp;#039;s tough. Really tough. I don&amp;#039;t see him as much as I&amp;#039;d like. Even when I&amp;#039;m at base, I&amp;#039;m in Florida and he&amp;#039;s in New York.  You do the best you can with phone and Internet to keep in touch. When I&amp;#039;m able to, I Skype or FaceTime or call on the phone. I don&amp;#039;t know how much he truly understands right now. But he understands that Dad has to work far away. And that he misses him. You never know what&amp;#039;s going to happen on any given day \u2014 what first thing is going to happen today? He&amp;#039;s so young. You never know. When a whole year goes by and you come back, there&amp;#039;s a lot of firsts. It&amp;#039;s hit me hard. When you realize, &amp;quot;Wow, I could have missed this, this, and this,&amp;quot; you appreciate it. All the time I have with him \u2014 I don&amp;#039;t want to miss anything that I could be a part of while I&amp;#039;m here. If you&amp;#039;ve got a dad with you, you&amp;#039;re going to know it. That&amp;#039;s just how military guys are. They all feel the same way. They all want to be home.  Don&amp;#039;t take anything for granted. Plain and simple. Take those moments. One way or another, times are gonna pass. Whether you&amp;#039;re there or not, things are gonna change.  \u2014Interviewed by Dan Hyman  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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