Day 191: Valentine's Day

Just a stupid, greeting card holiday, right? I don't need a day to tell my husband I love him or that he loves me. When we were dating, he was big gesture guy, sending me two dozen roses to school so I would have to show off my flowers to everyone. We've done romantic dinners and enjoyed them, but that doesn't really matter either. Today, my first email was a gift card for a spa day to use when he is home in a few weeks. I mailed him DVDs of all the videos of our daughter since he left. Considering the effort that went into figuring out how to make all my old tech work with the new, I spent a couple of weeks making those DVDs. It wasn't expensive, but hopefully he can come home feeling caught up on Lil Bit's growth and progress. We each make a gesture, but the same gesture we would make any day.

If today is important at all, it is because it is just another excuse to put someone else first. The new Hallmark commercials are really touching. I like the slogan that Valentine's Day is a day to say, "I love us." It is a very touching line. Someone on their ad team probably got promoted over that, but it did make me think.

Valentine's Day should be for celebrating US, not just the other person, but who that other person makes us be. I know my love for Chad, my respect for him, who he is brings out the best of who I can be. I think he feels the same for me. I may not be perfect, but he makes me want to try.

While we don't get to celebrate very many Valentine's Days together and I already know he will miss next year too, one of the things we can celebrate is how good we are at handling all the stuff the Army and life throws at us. So if you were lucky enough to share today with your someone special, I hope you wake up tomorrow and the next day and the next and give them 100% of everything you can everyday.

Still not feeling very good, so I will keep this short, but Valentine's Day was lonely for a lot of soldier's wives, a joyous celebration for the few whose husband's came home and a tearful good-bye for the wives who watched their soldiers deploy today. A friend of mine said she saw the tell-tale white buses driving toward the airport full of soldiers. I can't imagine why any general or whoever is in charge would make a soldier's departure day Valentine's Day. It seems like someone would think about how hard that would be and move it back a day. I don't know how things get decided, but our deployments are so routine now, someone had to have considered that flight plan and thought on some level, "who cares how hard that will be for the soldiers or their wives?" and then they wonder why soldier's commit suicide and why divorce rates keep rising. Stupid little things like taking them away for Valentine's Day, a stupid, greeting card holiday until you're alone again to "celebrate" it.

So tonight, I kissed my teeny Valentine good-night and will pray as I drift off that my other Valentine will come home safely to me always. I hope you take an extra second today to not take yours for granted. So much of life we take for granted not knowing what it is like to miss it. Army wives don't have that luxury, but on the bright side, we know what a precious gift our love is.

Day 282: Different

Thursday, on our anniversary, WAND aired the updated video of our proposal story. I watched the video several times with various people over the past few days. The more I watched the four years ago me hug the four years ago him the more my mind replayed that feeling in my mind.

I remember the scratchy weathered feel of his uniform, the smell of his cologne, and the feeling of his broad shoulders under my arms as I reached around his neck to hold him. Then today I saw a soldier on a motorcycle. Something about his build and carriage reminded me of Chad. The emotions hit me so hard and so fast I almost lost my breath.

This deployment has been different. Honestly, ask any military wife and she'll tell you that every deployment is different. The marriage is different. The contact available is different. Your life is different. Our first two deployments though had more in common with each other.

Being a mom has changed everything. Taking care of Lil Bit takes every second of every day unless she has a good day and I get the first hour and last hour to myself. And then I am busy doing stuff that is life sustaining: showering, eating, restrooming (you can insert your own colorful verb here), dressing, flossing, etc. On excellent days, like today, when Lil Bit was just perfect, I have from 9:30 to whenever I get this done and get into bed.

I don't have time to miss him. I have days I get lonely, days I wish for an extra set of hands around the house, but the missing him button is buried deep and it takes awhile to get or just the right smell or sound or day. When it was just me, I had plenty of thinking time and spent a lot more of it on him. I just don't have the mental capacity. Lack of sleep and time means my brain functions at about 80% most of the time and things have to be triaged. I have to judiciously parcel out my time for myself and throwing a pity party just isn't on the agenda.

I feel bad, like I'm not a good wife, because I am not sitting here pining away for him every moment of every day like last time. I think about him a hundred times a day, I pray for him any time he crosses my mind and I have a second to throw a word or two in God's direction, sometimes just a wordless thought. God knows what I mean.

I am quite sure that being parents together is going to change our marriage. This summer we had both boys and Lil Bit. It was certainly different that our times alone, but we're used to having the boys and being parents in an on again off again way. They are here nine-ten weeks and then it is just us every night for most of the rest of the year. Being full time parents to a baby girl is going to be different for us together, so I guess I can't expect that it wouldn't be different for me alone.

I can't drop everything a run to the movies or on a whim run over to a friend's house. I am a little more isolated in that way, but on the other hand being so horribly, wonderfully busy makes the time glide by in ways it never did before. Yet, watching our beautiful baby girl growing and changing daily creates a longing for him to share it. In some ways this deployment has been easier than others and in other, harder than I could ever have imagined.

Either way it is different. And I just want him home, safe and sound. If wishes count for anything, now'd be good too.

Day 362: the news

I check my email first thing and spam, spam, spam, Chad! Yay! While I knew he was safe, it is nice to hear the details. He has his first cold of the deployment. I don't know if he gets sick more often in Iraq or is more aware of it because he has nothing to take his mind off of it. Poor baby. When he is sick enough to take medicine, I know it's bad. I wait to reply until I can get to the computer. Typing an entire email on my cell is less than ideal. But even reading his email puts me behind schedule and I must have spaced out in the shower, because at 7:30, I am just running out the door. Why do I do this to myself, try to fit ten activities into five minutes? and schedule myself down to the last second? I don't know why I keep doing it when I know it makes me run late, but I can't seem to stop. I do make it to work on time, but barely.

I take a second to catch up on Facebook and see several military wives are hearing some of the same things I am. "Why is your husband going to Iraq? I thought all the combat troops were home." It feels like a punch in the chest when I hear that, like somehow my husband's sacrifice this year won't count as much because people don't know about the troops that are still there and still transitioning INTO country.  I make it a point NOT to watch the news while he is gone because every roadside bomb sends my heart into a tailspin until I hear his voice again, so I don't know if it is ignorant reporting or crappy listening, but why don't most people know that no one extra came home. Soldiers scheduled to finish their tours came home, but all the hoopla over bringing the last combat troops home is ridiculous. All they did was say some of the troops are now support personnel. I know people who were combat troops one day and "not" the next. We are still sending people over there. It is still dangerous. They still need rifles, pistols, hand grenades, but are primarily supporting and training the Iraqi army and police to take over fighting the insurgents. I guess I am partially angry at the blatant propaganda that is deliberately slanted to misguide the American people into feeling good that that Iraq war thing is over and partially upset that people continue to talk about things of which they are ignorant. I don't understand the details of many things and sometimes am guilty of complaining about how things are done, but when people criticize the army or the soldiers and don't have a clue what they are talking about, it makes my blood boil!

Yes, they get paid and we do get free health care during active duty, but that doesn't change the fact that these men and women were not drafted into the military. They volunteered to put themselves into harm's path for the rest of us, just like a police officer or fire fighter. The pay they receive seems to be pretty average overall and the extra combat/hazardous duty pay is a few hundred dollars a month. We couldn't live on just his salary without cutting back significantly but he makes about what I do. Of course that could just mean both teachers and soldiers are REALLY underpaid.

I hear more people say ignorant things about soldiers than anything else. Like someone close to me suggested, not to my face luckily for her sake, that my husband must want to be away from his family all the time to keep getting deployed. They don't have a choice. Some duties do not deploy and there are circumstances under which a soldier ends up non-deployable or in a garrison post, but if your unit is slated to go, you go, whether it is your first, third, or fifth deployment.

Not all soldiers are perfect or even good people, but a majority of them are heroic by nature and heroes by choice just for going over there so we don't have to. Take a second to mentally or physically thank a soldier or his/her family today. I am sacrificing the day to day moments with my husband that most people take for granted. He is risking his life and leaving behind most of the things that the rest of us would consider elemental to our cores. He doesn't get to hunt or fish or eat dinner with his family. He doesn't get to sleep in on the weekends, or ever. He works 19 hour days without relief with basically frozen dinners for every meal. He misses his favorite TV shows and Christmas every other year. It is a sacrifice you wouldn't make, so don't disrespect those who do. Disagree with the politics all you want, but thank a soldier for the right to do so.