Day +3: Bugs

Today, I'm having a few issues. My husband came home very sick from Iraq and I couldn't NOT KISS him. So he's still recovering from a horrible cold, jet lag and combat.

Then I got sick and the baby got it too. She spent the entire day with snot just pouring out of her. It was really disgusting.

My throat started hurting last night, but by the middle of the night, it was so painful that I struggled to sleep. The baby was up every thirty minutes for most of the night. I was up with her for a few hours and then my husband was up with her.

For our first day alone together, we spent it sitting on the couches in the living room miserable. We are both too tired to do much or say anything much. And to top it off my computer is having issues.

And a fussy baby with a bug, a new puppy with chewing issues, a sore throat and the accompanying exhaustion, aches, etc. with a computer that won't charge has made for a rough day. For now, let's just say that reintegration has been a bit rough. Not really arguments, but we both went through so much stress and need some time to decompress. Being sick and tired is just making it harder for us to get to the next stage.

For today, we survived. But it was not the romantic, emotional reunion we had hoped for. I do know that we need a lot more time together and I have to get up and go to work tomorrow. I've never been less excited to go back to school. 

Day 19: Fiasco

The last twenty-four hours or so have just been one minor disaster after another. First, my eldest step-son pulled over a set of shelves, fully stocked with heavy, pointy things, onto my car leaving a series of dents and scratches. We just paid off the car a few months ago and just seemed like a jinx. The dents are very small, probably not worth reporting to the insurance, but will hurt the value when we trade it in, which we were counting on to continue to purchase vehicles only in cash.

Then we had an incident with the pool and had to drain it partially and refill it while shocking it and filtering it. I don't even want to think about how much yuck needed to die. We're trying to run the pump, but the pump keeps shutting down. I've done everything I can to keep this pool clean and clear, but it is getting harder and harder. Maybe it is all the extra use with the boys here. They spent like 4 hours in the pool yesterday.

Last night, I was trying to pull a ivy vine kind of weed from the yard, and it happened to house a fire ant nest. My hand was immediately covered in ants. They bit and wouldn't let go. Then they swarmed my foot. Now my right hand and foot are covered in horrible bites, swollen and itchy.

This morning, trying to get the baby into the living room/baby jail, my toe got caught in the hem of my pajama pants while trying to carry the baby over the ottoman, knocking me off balance. I crashed into the ottoman, twisting my hip and ankle and slamming my shin into the wood frame. A three inch by 1/2 an inch spot was raised about 1/2 an inch almost immediately.

Then yesterday afternoon we went to run an errand and the car wouldn't start. I couldn't get a service call to the house that late yesterday afternoon, so we waited until this morning. Then we got a phone call from Chad, which was great except he was cranky and grouchy. I wasn't in the best mood after waking up late due to a dysfunctional baby monitor and the tripping incident. We almost argued over a set of car speakers from the 90's that Chad is apparently more attached to than makes sense to me. I wondered why he was keeping them. He doesn't use them, won't use them in the foreseeable future, won't ever need a car stereo that thumps serious base again, and has never done anything but drag them around from place to place. I asked him why he didn't just get rid of them. He got snippy with me about throwing them away. His comment was, "Why don't I just throw your stuff away?" Which was a little over the top! I just asked him why he was so set on keeping something that no one would buy, he didn't use and wasn't planning on ever using. I wish I had thought to remind him that he did go around the house and sell some of my things without asking me at one point.

After I got him to realize no one was threatening his things and I was just asking so we could start paring things down if we're going to be relocated soon. He told me how to go about jumping the car and getting a new battery. So, the boys and I started pushing the car out of the garage. Once we got even with the truck, I tried to move the truck so it was closer to reach with the cables. I got stuck in the stretch of grass that is partially my and partially the neighbor's. The grass and ground was damp from trying desperately to water the grass enough to make it look less crappy for Chad and we got stuck. It took me a few minutes of desperately pushing to remember that I might be able to rock it out of the ruts by switching from drive to reverse repeatedly. It worked pretty quickly, but the ruts were there.

I finally figured out that we could get the hoods closer by rolling the car into the street and driving the truck in front of it. Beat myself up over not thinking about that first. Now I have to buy the neighbor dirt to fill in the holes. By the way, this was over an hour in the horrendous heat.

1) Car dented and scratched
2) Pool drained, filtered, shocked and then filter falters
3) Stung to swelling on my hand and foot by fire ants
4) nearly argued with my dear husband whom I miss so much
5) car died
6) hurt my leg by tripping
7) trashed yard with husband's truck

This week has just been one fiasco after another. I'm so drained emotionally. This afternoon, I was playing with Lil Bit and she was just being so stinking cute. She was doing this adult huffing laugh thing she does and holding her tiny, chubby fist over her face. I started sobbing for all the moments that my husband has missed and is missing while he's waiting for a plane home. While worrying about him in danger is hard, in some ways, it is nothing compared to knowing that he's just waiting for his turn to come home. We have no idea when he is going to move or when he'll be home.

Every minute seems to last an hour. I was so drained by the day, we didn't do anything else. We ate lunch and dinner, but the rest of the day, the kids played and we just rested. I look around and see a million things that need doing, but couldn't dredge up one ounce of energy.  I just feel more done and beat up than ever. I know I am more than ready for him to be home, but we both know that after the first few days are over, we'll be facing more challenges and have some hard days ahead, remembering to be patient when we get frustrated and when our days have more fiasco than finesse.

Day 20: Returning to a year old baby

I think I've dealt with this issue pretty well by keeping her father very present in Lil Bit's life, but my husband has to be concerned in some way that the child he left won't be the child to whom he returns. Even the little girl from R&R is so different than she was 5 months ago.

Like most parents returning after such an extended absence, Chad worries about how his children will deal with his return, how they've coped with his absence. The older boys are more practiced and emotionally better equipped to deal with the absence and return, but still struggle with missing their father for a year of their lives, every other year.

Anytime Allyson hears voice coming from the computer, she rushes over, blows kisses, waving and saying "hi dada." For all the life she can remember, Daddy has been a voice from a book, a picture on the wall, a face on a screen. Very little of her life and I'm not sure if any of her memory, has he been flesh and blood.

She is a very friendly child in general, so I'm not too worried that she is going to react poorly when he gets off the plane. I'm hopeful that she will walk straight into his arms. But it is more than whether she'll cry or remember him easily, he is also now coming home to be her parent.

Spending two weeks with her for R&R, he did take care of her, but being here full time is a different dynamic. He has to learn her moods, the tricks to get her diaper changed, all her signs and almost signs. She signs "bird" backwards, it looks like she's pinching her mouth and "flower" is just all kinds of wrong. He'll have to learn that before bed, we do "praying hands," say our prayers with her praying bunny. Tonight she even reminded me before pjs that it was time to pray. Funny because she doesn't sign prayers any other time we go into her room, but somehow she knew that we pray at bedtime. Funny how fast she picked that up. He'll have to learn all her expressions and noises.

And I'll have to be able to step back to let him get to know his daughter. I'm going to have some rough times the first few weeks. I am going back to work almost immediately and will be leaving her in daycare all day. My heart will be broken enough missing her all day and sharing her will be hard. Heck, sharing him will be hard.

Plus, we've done pretty good with our little routines. Lil Bit and I have found a rhythm that works for us. Adding Daddy back into the picture is going to change some things. Some things will be different, some things better. Honestly, I think it's normal to feel like I'm going to miss having her all to myself even just a little bit. But I won't miss having to do it all by myself every night. I might even be able to ask for a night off here and there to just sit and play with her.

It will be different, that is for sure. Chad and I have never both worked and had children. We're going to have to try to find a new rhythm as a family. It will have some great moments, like when he goes in to get her up in the morning, and she is so silly. I can't wait to see him react to her.

We'll have some tough moments, sharing chores, cooking, etc. Balancing each of our needs. In some ways, I am chomping at the bit to have a couple of hours of free time here and there, getting a haircut, a pedicure, run to the store, etc. I'm sure he is excited to get home to us, but he has a lot of hobbies that take him out of the house. He's going to want to leave us a few times too.

I really am not sure how my husband feels about coming home and facing a child he barely knows, but he's done it so many times over. I wonder if it gets easier or if it is just different as he returns home, older, wiser, more mature. I just can't imagine spending a day away from her. I've been busy in the last few days preparing the house for his return, even if it doesn't look it right this second, that I've left her playing with her brothers and I feel like I'm losing these last few precious days.

I'm sure he can't wait to make up for lost time and is a little apprehensive about getting to know this tiny person who blows him kisses and plays peekaboo via video chat. 

Day 31: More than disappointed

All the redeployment briefs and meetings and preparations kind of sneaked up on me. I've been so busy surviving this year, and then all of a sudden, my husband's regiment was sending out all this redeployment information, websites, Facebook posts. I didn't feel ready. I immediately went into the first stage of return prep, anxiety. Will he be happy to be with me? Does he still love me just as much? Will he be different? Am I different? Can I re-adjust to being married? For a little while, the panic makes you kind of wish for more time.

That may not make sense to you, but, it's true. I haven't lost 40 lbs. like last time. I didn't finish my novel, the one I'm trying to write. I didn't watch a million chick flicks or get even halfway through my movie queue. It isn't that I didn't want him home, but emotionally I kind of shut down and went into heart hibernation.

As much time as military wives spend alone, it is self-preservation to find a way to enjoy being alone. You take over the remote, maybe even his closet, you make decorating choices without asking him, you enjoy the freedom of not having to compromise the day to day things with someone, not balancing your needs with someone else's, not compromising what you want to eat for dinner. Being alone is easier in some ways than a marriage is (probably why so many marriages are failing). Marriage is work, and learning to enjoy the break is part of surviving the heartbreak of being separated so often.

I love my husband and want him home, but emotionally, I have to wake back up. I was doing pretty well without him, keeping busy, filling my days, then it started, redeployment talk. And I ignored the first few rounds, kind of like ignoring the stores putting out the Christmas displays the week after Halloween. You see the Santas and scoff, for a couple of weeks, but you start thinking about Christmas and traditions, presents, maybe plans and the next thing you know you're shopping and it is only Nov. 15 and you have 40 days to wait to give your mom that amazing cashmere sweater she is just going to love.

Two weeks earlier, you weren't even thinking about Christmas, but now you can't wait for it to get here. Each day gets longer, and while you're busy and have so much to do, the days pass slower somehow. And December feels farther and farther away.

That is how I feel tonight. I haven't really cried just from missing my husband in a long time. I've cried at a sad movie that turned into tears for Chad, but it doesn't solve anything and it doesn't bring him home and I don't want to be weak for my family who need to know I'm OK and tough. So I've learned to shut it off. I used to cry every Sunday afternoon when we were dating. I lived 5 hours away and drove down every Friday night and home on Sundays. It was really hard. I knew we were only going to be apart for five days, but leaving him broke my heart every week. If I managed to get into the car without crying, I cried for the first hundred miles after he couldn't see me.

I'm not colder, at least I don't think I am, but I am more guarded. I don't let myself focus too much on missing him. Even this countdown is a way for me to be positive because I can see that I'm surviving, that the time is growing smaller. But all the redeployment talk started things going in my subconscious.

I've been dreaming about relationships, weird stuff that doesn't make any sense, but that I know reflects the emptiness I feel right now and the lack of intimate relationships I feel like I have. Then today I looked at the calendar and realized that my countdown might not be off by weeks, that he might not make it home before my school year starts, that he might not get to see his sons before they have to go home. And I've been sad all day. I'm really trying very hard not to cry right now.

I don't miss the way he leaves stuff everywhere and moves things I thought were perfectly organized. I don't miss the fiery furnace of heat he puts off when I like to be chilly when I sleep. I don't miss his cutting up dead things in the kitchen and using my good dining chairs for the clamp on his meat grinder. But I've realized today, that I am aching for him so much. I don't think "I miss you" even touches what I feel.

I've been cut off in any meaningful way from the one person who feels like an extension of myself. He is the best friend you stay up all night talking to because you can't wait to see what you'll talk about next. His laugh makes my heart giggle. I hear him laugh and a laugh bubbles up inside of me and it can't come from anywhere but my heart. I watch stupid movies that he loves because when he laughs, I can't help but crack up with him.

Even though we email and chat, I don't tell him so much. Sometimes at the end of a rough day that I somehow managed to survive, the last thing I want to do is write it all down and tell him about it. I don't want to complain about the girl at work who acts friendly one minute and snobby and witchy the next or the office politics about who gets which room or class to teach or gets belittled by the administration. Some of the things that make my day so hard are just too hard to email. If he were here, I would just fall into his arms and let him hug me until I could face whatever is hurting me.

Looking at the actual calendar today instead of guesstimating, I realized that his return isn't quite as imminent as I thought and I am more than disappointed, I'm a little broken. I started getting into the Christmas spirit before Thanksgiving and December is a long way away. 

Day 32: Night out

A friend of mine from school invited me for a girl's night in. We had dinner, a little wine, and talked, played games, etc. When she planned the get together, I was still sick as a dog and just couldn't plan how I'd feel minute to minute, so I didn't plan on going.

But this week I decided that I felt decent enough to try to search out a babysitter. I have left her about four or five times so far in her life, two of those times were date nights with my husband and two were doctor/dentist appointments. She had a sitter for a few hours for a my same friend's bachelorette party/bridal shower. Tonight would be six times she's been watched since she was born, and you could maybe add another three or four trips to the grocery store, errands, etc. while we were visiting family or they were here. In 15 months, I think I've left her less than 9 or 10 times at all, not including daycare.

I thought after spending the whole summer with her, I deserved to take a few hours with friends, and I certainly did. I was gone for 5 hours, from 5-10ish. But it was hard for me to leave her. I spent the afternoon playing with her, feeling guilty for leaving. Around ten I started missing her face. The only reason I wasn't home earlier was because the girls got me talking about how much I love her, love being a mom.

I know my mom didn't spend all day every day just sitting around playing with us. She spent more of her time cleaning house, doing laundry, cooking, running errands, but I feel guilty when my attention is taken away from her at all. Some of my responsibilities mean I spend an hour or so researching on the computer or shopping online so that I don't have to drag her into the 110 degree heat or paying bills.

I really spend very little time cooking or cleaning while she's awake, and try to be really present with her. After all of June and July with her, I thought taking one night would be easy, but it wasn't. I felt lonely for her after a few hours. I needed the night out. It was so nice to have some hours that I wasn't focused on her. I had a couple glasses of wine, sat and talked with friends without worrying what she was breaking, getting into, or more recently climbing! She is going to be my little monkey for sure!

I needed the break, but also feel guilty for needing the break. I liked having a bit of adult freedom away from the baby, but really struggled with leaving her with a relative stranger since we don't spend a lot of time with the young neighbor girl. I wonder how it will feel after my husband comes home. Will it be easier to leave her for a few hours with my husband or harder because I'm sharing her attention?

I got home and found my little sneaky pete sitting on the couch, just pleased as punch with herself. The sitter tried to put her to bed twice, but Lil Bit is a manipulative little cuss and started screaming. Being 14, she just didn't know that she was getting played. After we walked her home, I just took her into her crib, put her down and walked out. She didn't make a peep. But that also felt good, like she needed mommy. The night out felt nice, but coming home to a warm smile and big hugs and kisses felt awesome.

Balancing myself as a woman and person with who I am as mommy has been pretty hard this deployment, but she gives me a reason to be and frankly, she is so freakin' cool that it is hard to put her to bed most nights. I just wanna see what she does next. Deployment is hard, but it gave me a year to bond with my little girl in a way that I won't ever forget, even if she doesn't really remember it. Of course, I would trade it for being able to share it with her daddy, but since I can't, I feel amazingly blessed to have gotten this time with her.

Day 36: Operation Homefront Surprise Homecoming

A few months ago we got an email about interviewing to be on the TV show on TLC. I dismissed it because Chad surprised me three deployments ago with an amazing proposal. If you haven't read those entries and don't know us personally, it was an amazing day. He had the local sheriff pull me over and pretend like he was arresting me, when I didn't know he was home from Iraq. We were filmed on the local news and on the front page of the paper. It was amazing, but I think I had my 15 minutes of fame.

I see the promos for the show every once in awhile, but haven't made it a point to watch. In fact, I've kind of made it a point not to watch it because it brings up all the emotions I try to manage daily. Especially now as it gets closer to my husband's return, it is harder in some ways to watch those kinds of shows. TLC's show has soldiers surprise their loved ones with returning from combat, but it is hard to watch and not be just a little jealous, and I just can't watch with dry eyes.

I am happy for the people on the show. I am happy their soldiers came home safely and are reunited with family and friends, but it is a little hard for me to watch when his return is so close and yet so far away. I don't know that all wives feel like that. Some throw themselves into every welcome home ceremony until it is their turn, but others have a hard time watching all the joyous reunions while they are still so sad and so alone.

One of my friends during Chad's third deployment got really emotional when some of our friend's husbands started coming home. Our husbands were all in separate units, divisions even, but were pretty much deployed at the same time. I think it took a couple of months for them to all be home, but it was close, but when the first one came home, she took it really hard. It was their first major separation/deployment and she missed her husband so badly that each day was pretty tough in general. She didn't mean to be a downer, but watching our friend celebrate and be happy was just a reminder of how much longer she had to wait.

I think her emotions were more pronounced than mine, but as Chad's return draws closer and the days feel longer, I am kind of understanding how she felt. I don't need to watch a show reminding me that my soldier isn't home yet and making me cry and get all weepy. I do better to avoid such shows. Once the tears start, it is hard to stop them, but last night the show featured some friends of ours from church.

I had to watch. Philip got to see his baby daughter for the first time and surprise his three older children at school. They were the last segment of the show and I didn't make it through the first story without crying. They started on Fort Campbell, where we used to live with a young mom and one year old baby daughter who hadn't spent much time with her daddy after her birth. I listened to her talk and felt sad all over again for all the precious moments Chad has missed with Lil Bit. By the time they got to Philip and Katie, I was a goner. I cried my mascara off watching his children rush into his arms.

While I'm glad I watched it, tonight feels a little more lonely than last night, and the days are dragging. When we got to the 15th, I knew we only had 3-4 more weeks to go, weeks!! not months or years, weeks, this should be easy, but today is only the 19th and that feels like a lifetime ago.

I don't want to rush my summer vacation away, especially after spending the last two weeks sick as a dog, but what I wouldn't give to have Chad home with me for these next three weeks. OK that is enough of that, I'm gonna get started weeping again.

I do kind of wish I'd had Chad apply to be on the show, not to surprise me, but his mom. She was in on my surprise 5 years ago. I think it would be awesome to get her back. I didn't react too much because I processed pretty quickly that we were on TV and everyone we knew was standing around so I didn't do much but hug him like my life depended on it. If we were to surprise her, I think she might have a heart attack. I'm sure the scream would be heard around the world. I can already picture her reaction and it would be hilarious. I'm sure she's reading this right now and thinking, you'd better not!!

At this point, surprise or not, I just want him home!! The Welcome Home Troops signs all over town are always up because at Fort Hood, someone is always coming or going, but they are hardest to see when he is leaving or has just left and in the weeks before his turn comes. My heart has spent a lot of time coping with feeling abandoned by friends who aren't military wives or had their husbands around and they don't understand, feeling overwhelmed by raising this baby alone while trying to be a good teacher, feeling lonely and sad, worrying about his safety, being afraid that I would have to raise his daughter with only his memory, and I think I've reached a point where I'm getting tired.

I'm glad I watched the show, tonight, but it did stir up all sorts of emotions. The house is really empty tonight, especially since the baby had virtually no nap today and crashed about an hour ago. I just wish I had someone I could call to come over. I know I seem self-sufficient and maybe that is why everyone leaves me alone, but I run out of strong sometimes too.

Day 37: Now it gets hard

The waiting starts getting hard when they get close to coming home. I went grocery shopping today, and started picking up a few things in preparation for Chad's return and resulting Welcome Home celebration. I went to a grocery store closer to post than I usually go because it was closer to Lil Bit's doctor.

Turns out we have a pretty rough virus. I had it worse so far, but no guarantees that she isn't on the road down with her fever and crabbiness increasing. No treatment works but time, which is good news and bad news.

Either way, I decided to make a run to the grocery store while Lil Bit was in a fairly decent mood. The store was full of soldiers. Just seeing the uniforms, started bringing up so many emotions. Then I was putting the groceries into the trunk, trying to juggle my purse, the cart, baby and heavy bags. I started thinking about having to make several trips into the house, which is complicated with an ambulatory baby, and realized in a few weeks, I would have my soldier home to help.

It got kind of real then, in a good way and I realized how long the past few days have felt. The days are starting to get long, no matter how I try to fill them. I kept really busy today, busier than I've been in the past two weeks. But at the end of the day, only one day has passed. Months seemed to fly by at the beginning, but now the days drag on, drawn out like warm taffy.

It is just a mental thing, I know that. But somehow, the closer he gets to coming home, the longer each hour seems. I'm afraid to hope. I'm afraid to let my heart start opening and wishing for him again. But it is too late. Hope started to bloom during the redeployment meeting. We should be down to under a month or so, but rather than getting easier, considering the 11 months we've already survived, my Lil Bit and me, it gets harder. The days seem longer and time feels frozen.

Every day feels like you're tempting fate and yet, also running out of time to get ready, and yet ... and my mind starts just circling with concerns, fears, etc. These last days, however many we really have now, will each feel much longer, and strangely more lonely. Maybe my brain is with my heart and slowly preparing myself for the hectic craziness of having the boys here, the family and friends and FINALLY Chad, the other half of my heart. Without whom, I feel empty and conspicuous. He makes me fit in this world and I need him. I hope these days pass easily. I don't really want them to fly since I am on vacation, but I'll settle for not feeling like forever.

Day 45: Stay at home mom

The images this title brings to many is a relatively leisurely lifestyle. Of course, you have to feed the kids and get them dressed, but what do you do with the rest of the day? They're pictured laying around in front of the television and doing a whole lot of nothing. People dream of this job. I dream of having the luxury to have this job, but it is not what most people imagine.

A stay at home wife, might have time to do more things with her day, but honestly, you'd be surprised how fast a day fills up with cleaning house and running errands, paying bills, clipping coupons, laundry, etc. and how much stuff we just don't do when we work. Now once that wife has turned into a mom, all bets are off.

My day starts without an alarm clock, but with a random squeal. The squeal varies in mood, but generally she just uses volume to get my attention and is grinning from her crib when I walk in. I get her up, changed, and head to the kitchen for her breakfast. If I'm lucky, her squeal was not too angry and I took the time to brush my teeth and make the bed and pee before running in to her room. Then I spend twenty-thirty minutes trying to teach her to eat with a spoon. After she is wearing most of her oatmeal, I fry an egg for her to get her some protein. I still haven't eaten. Then I see if I can get her to drink some milk. An hour or so passes before she is changed again and in some clothes (or not, as her recent penchant for nudity dictates).

I could then put her into baby jail for a few minutes and work on dishes, but I have to chose between eating or dishes. Forget about getting showered. Showering while she is awake means I have to keep her occupied for about an hour if I have to get dressed and ready to leave the house. Generally, I wait until she naps if I can help it or I move her from jumperoo to jenny jump up or exersaucer and baby jail (the living room blocked in) to be able to take care of any task that demands my attention. I have tried to have her in the bathroom or bedroom with me, but in a flash, she tends to find the most dangerous things that I haven't put up yet or digs through trash cans, both hazardous and gross.

Basically, that kind of business is my whole day. I don't get much time to myself. I feel like I spend all day preparing food, feeding food, cleaning up after food and then making small inroads on another task only to get five minutes in and the baby is letting me know she is dirty and wants her diaper changed. Then I have to cook and eat for myself too. By the time I do that, it is time to get her a snack and then lunch and then nap time, which was like an hour yesterday and only two today. If I shower during naptime, that is really all I have time for. Then I have to feed her another snack.

By this point in the day, it is about 1-2 and I've changed her diaper at least 4 times since she got up at 8. We've had two meals and two big snacks and one handful of Cheerios that Lil Bit gleefully chomped on until she was full and then smashed the rest and swept them into the carpet. I've had to feed the dog and let her out twice (the new puppy is going to be awesome!). And I still haven't eaten lunch.

If I take a second to get myself some lunch, the baby stands at my elbow and begs for my food. She spent the last three days just walking around crying and whining. I think it is her teeth, but in general, she just is in a mood. She was a little warm earlier and tylenol seemed to help a little, but as soon as it wore off, she was whining and crying again.

I had an hour to myself today (shopping online for dishes, which we need desperately) because she refused to wear a diaper after her nap, so I put her on her potty in front of her potty video. She sat there dancing along to her video and actually pottied! But my search has been frustrating. Nothing I like comes in our colors and I ended up spending most of my free moments searching every site I can think of.

The toddler stage requires constant vigilance. She needs my attention more than she has in the past. She wants me to play with her, attend to her almost constantly. If I dare walk out of the room, she screams. Today she had three screaming jags due to a toy that alternated between amusing and terrifying her. I try to leave her for only a few minutes at a time. By the time I put her to bed, I feel like I've run a marathon, even if I spent most of the day in my pajamas in two rooms of my house. It is amazing how many miles you can run in one room, most of it on my knees.

My idea of a successful day is very different. Now, both of us are fed at least three meals and get to bed within an hour of bedtime and I get to watch her do something new. Today, she signed that she needed to potty. I put her on her potty. She went pee pee! I was so excited. She smiled from ear to ear and didn't fight her diaper. I don't think she's ready to potty train for real, but she is certainly on her way. And that is about all I got done. In fact, as a peruse the house, I'm pretty sure it looks worse than it did when I got up. = ( !

On a work day, I would be getting to bed about thirty minutes ago, and probably have accomplished more. Being a stay at home mom may not be a "job," but don't let anyone fool you, it is work! Watching a one year old is the hardest, most patience trying jobs I've ever had. Now, I'm trying to summon up five minutes of energy to do a quick clean so I can go to bed feeling less like a failure.

Day 50: How hard is a deployment on a marriage?

I saw that someone was searching this phrase when they stumbled upon my blog. I don't know if they found what they were looking for, but I hope they found some answer. If not, let me try to address this question here.

Have you ever started watching a dvd and fallen asleep. You wake up, turn off the movie and stumble off to bed. The next night you try to resume the movie, but where you turned it off was certainly not the last part you actually watched. In fact, you're not sure where you left off exactly. You spend ten minutes rewinding search trying to stop when something looks familiar. You find the last scene you remember and press play, but now, you realize you saw this scene, but don't remember exactly what led up to it, so you rewind a bit further and rewatch a few scenes. If you're lucky, you stay awake this time and finish the movie. If not, you get to do this again the next night, just further into the picture.

This analogy is pretty close to part of how a deployment is hard on a marriage. While time passes, and years of your life are eaten away, it feels like a great, big, giant pause button in some ways. You grow and change as an individual, discover new likes, dislikes, hobbies, interests, but your relationship is frozen as it was the day he left. He comes back slightly different too, but the relationship hasn't grown or changed much because of the deployment. Emotionally and romantically, you try to pick up where you left off, but that feels a little off because you're not the same and stuff has actually happened, so you rewind a little bit and try to start there. But by the time you're back to where you left off and starting to work on building new parts to your relationship, he is gearing up for another training school or something and will be gone again. We've been together for almost 7 years, but are still very much newlyweds in many ways.

I think we have a good marriage, not perfect, but very good. But also we have a lot of room to grow as a couple, just not enough time to do the growing.  We went to a great marriage retreat for two days a few weeks before he left, but I would have like a more intensive marriage seminar if it was meant to do something important and more time to practice the techniques. Two weeks after the retreat, he was gone. We just haven't had enough time together to get past the excitement of welcome home and get into growing more deeply as a couple before he is gathering his gear for another school, training, field exercise, or deployment.

One deployment is hard on a marriage because you have to learn how to be apart, trust each other, communicate maturely over email and chat which is harder than you might think because a joking comment doesn't have a tone of voice and can sound harsh or angry. You have to learn who you are as an individual but not as a single person. As a couple, you have to divide responsibilities and chores differently for twelve months and find a way to reacclimate towards each other.

I thought the second and third deployments were easier. We had a plan and tried and true techniques for dealing with a lot of the stuff that we knew was coming. We still missed each other, were lonely, had arguments here and there, but easier.

This fourth deployment has been the easiest in terms of logistics of our household stuff and the hardest in terms of being apart and feeling decapitated from each other. We are more than lonely for each other, we are literally drowning in how much apart can we do before we don't know how to be together?!?!? We need to have some good solid together time, but it doesn't look like we will get too much time. We will have five months before he leaves for his next school.

Deployments can make a marriage stronger. If you keep communicating, are extra patient with written communications and with the invariably difficult tasks each faces in his/her roles as soldier/single parent or spouse, you can find your love stronger, more trusting and deeper on the other side, but it is work. Like any marriage, you'll have people who can handle it and those who can't.

So far, we're ok. I just wish we had more time together. I'm so tired of goodbye. Gimme some hello!!

Day 59: Contact

My sister and I were pretty close as children, but argued a lot as we got into school age and high school. Then I went my way to college and she went her way. We've worked harder the past few years to build a better relationship, but it is hard surrounded by kids, mom, and the day to day sometimes to find ways to really talk.

Just once this week did we really talk. One afternoon, we drank basil lemonade and sat on the front porch for a few hours until we both couldn't wait to pee and needed to feed our children dinner. We talked about college and kids. We talked about what careers we could see our children choosing. Of course, her kids are five so it is easier for her to imagine them choosing careers. With Lil Bit being only a year old, it is hard still to imagine her choosing an adult career. We talked about IQ's and whether we would want to know our children's scores. We talked about growing up and who we were as people.

We had a nice chat, but somehow the close feeling of contact from that afternoon didn't last. Our private little bubble ended when we came back inside. Somehow the realities of being mothers invaded the moment and we haven't been able to find private time again to chat.

I leave tomorrow and the morning won't be conducive to any more conversation. I just feel so left out between my mom and sister sometimes who have always been so close and now share nearly everyday together. They don't try to make me feel left out, but we just don't seem to really talk. I wish I could just find a way to get to know my sister better.

We can spend a week in the same house, but somehow don't quite manage to make contact. I love her and she loves me, but our relationship has always been just short of true and easy friendship. I hope that changes someday. I would even like to meet her somewhere someday for a just us weekend or maybe make a date once or twice a month to call and talk but no kids talk, just us.

One of the things I've struggled with as an army wife is the distance it puts between us and our families. It isn't easy to maintain close contact when you can't just pop in for dinner or hang out in the backyard like friends do. Maybe our next move will bring us closer? or force us to work harder at it. 

Day 84: Marriage

Marriage is a union of two people, but what that union looks like is different for everyone. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way what marriage isn't. And eventually learned what it is through my wonderful husband. I also know that our journey together has barely begun. Marriage means a lot of tough stuff.

Most of our television and movies depict marriage as the goal line, the last scene before the credits roll. Very few images in our culture show what a marriage looks like surviving life. In our current culture of if it doesn't work, we throw it away or if I'm not happy, move on - I don't know that many people understand how to make a relationship work through the worst life and each other can throw at it.

With recent friends dealing with various crises in their marriages and a few friends getting engaged and married, marriage has been on my mind a lot. It is certainly the hardest thing I've ever done (or a close tie to being a 'single' mom with the stomach flu). It is hard to look at someone who just made you so angry you could spit and imagine sleeping next to him for the next 50 years or so. It is hard to get up everyday and ask yourself what I can do to love him today, not what can he do for me. It is hard enough for the two of you to get along with being raised in very different environments, but add in dealing with extended family issues, parent's health concerns, children, religion, money, and the exhausting day to day and you have the bare minimum of what marriage is.

I wish I hadn't rushed into marriage previously. I said yes to someone I believed I loved because that was what you did after college, and I was afraid I would end up alone, couldn't see a future as an adult without getting married right away. I wanted to have my children young so that I would be the cool, hip mom, but because I made my decision based on some imaginary timeline instead of realizing that marriage meant truly tying myself to someone forever, I ended up divorced.

I look around me and see people in my life treating marriage as the next logical step for their life, not necessarily because it is the next logical step for their relationship. I know I spent many years being terrified of being alone, until my ex finally left and then I realized being alone wasn't the worst thing in the world. Being with someone cruel was much, much worse. I would rather be alone, trust me. But knowing that gave me immense power, finally to walk away from negative relationships and realize I deserved to be treated well.

A good marriage is a beautiful thing, but if you asked me to choose five marriages in my life that I would want to have, I would be hard pressed to come up with five that truly seem happy. Being married is kind of like buying stock for a long term investment. Sometimes it is up and sometimes it is down, but your future is tied to it either way and you have to hang onto it and hope for the best. I wish I would have thought about it that way before attempting it. It is a whole new way to consider the strengths and weaknesses of someone you love. Most of the time we jump in the pool because the water looks nice, only to find it an icy shock.

Because loving someone for a lifetime isn't about the romance, it's about the daily grind. Do you share similar habits around the house or are you going to be bickering about stupid stuff for the next 50 years. My husband and I share cleanliness levels, but argue about organizational issues often. I am trying to get better about picking the battles that really matter and I've caught him organizing things of his own volition. But we've had some pretty good "discussions" about the benefits of keeping stuff in the same place so we can find it again. I'm all for it, but sometimes that is just too much for him to process while cooking or cleaning. But I knew that going in and decided I loved him anyway and would have to find ways to compromise (mostly I just don't look in his closet).

Does his idea of a perfect house match mine? NO - not even close, but we're working on compromise there and since we can't afford diddly squat, this is a non-issue. Does his ideas about our future match mine? We're getting closer on this one. Two years ago, we had a ways to go, but we've learned that being financially secure and appreciating the things we each value are the keys to finding some balance between what we want and need.

Is our marriage perfect, no? But, I am more in love with him today than I was the day I married him. I appreciate him more and worry less about dumb stuff. I'm not afraid he'll leave or cheat, but fully believe I will be a hunting widow every year for several different seasons of critters. Because we both failed at marriage, we knew what we were getting into, how bad it could be and maybe that made us appreciate each other more.

We still have things to work on and places to grow, but we're doing really well at talking about them and learning the language of communicating. I think what we've done right so far was pick someone who fit in the myriad of tiny ways someone just clicks into place and work really hard to smooth out the places that didn't mesh right away. Mostly, we got married because we couldn't spend one more day without each other, because a life apart wasn't worth living, because literally for better or worse, we wanted to share that life with each other. I felt no pressure to get married when he asked. I even had a friend play devil's advocate to help me make sure it was what I wanted before we started planning. Neither of us were nervous about marrying each other (he was a bit nervous about the ceremony part), but we knew that we wanted each other to weather the storms of life.

We've only been married for almost five years and together for seven and he's been deployed a lot of that, but we've made it through a lot so far. And will have tons of trials to survive in the future. But I think we'll make it. I just hope that we're as happy twenty years from now as we are today or happier. We certainly have the right recipe, now only time will tell if we can take the heat. 

Day 101: Redeployment

This is a ridiculous word. Usually the prefix re- means to do something again. In this context though, re-deployment, doesn't exactly mean to deploy again. The word redeployment is used when the guys are about to come home.

I have awhile to go, obviously about 100 days (I almost typed years - just how it feels some days). But I have a new reader who is about to welcome her significant other home from his tour of duty. While it is a joyous time, it is also filled with a lot of anxious emotions as well.

Spending significant time apart, creates all sorts of emotions and reintegrating can be a nervous and stressful time. We've done this a few times now and each time it is a little different, but if anything we've gone through helps you deal or prepare for it, I am more than happy to share.

First is the frantic panic when you get around a week out. There isn't enough time to lose that last five pounds, do all the things you'd been meaning to do, etc. and you've got to figure out a lot of logistics.

Depending on where you are, you may have to figure out the big welcome home ceremony on post. Where to park, how early you need to get there, if there are potties for little ones. I would say, plan on no bathrooms and bring some water and snacks and toys. Most of them are a lot of waiting around with little to occupy your time. If you've got some time before your guy heads back this way, you can get an awesome sign made from buildasign.com. They do one free sign a year for military families. I made my sign rank and unit free - just Welcome Home essentially. This way I can use it again and again.

If you're not near a post, you may have to figure out picking him up from the airport with little advance warning. My husband usually shoots me a text message when he lands in North America. Which leaves me excited and nervous and struggling to focus on the day to day activities for several days.

Also, there is coordinating welcome home activities. Most military members have very proud families who are just as anxious to see their soldiers return home safely as their spouses, fiances, or significant others. Sometimes having to coordinate family visits makes life a bit challenging. Until this spring, I've had to coordinate my ex-husband's father or mother taking turns with deployment ceremonies and welcome homes to keep the peace. While they deserve to be part of the happy celebration, parents sometimes have a way of swooping in and taking over or forgetting that they aren't the only person in their child's life anymore. My personal preference is to have a big welcome home, the more the merrier, friends, family, banners, parties, etc. right away when things between us are new.

I am not a touchy feelie person. After going a year without much physical contact, it takes me awhile before it feels natural to touch someone else all the time. Even daily emails and phone calls can't replace the organic way we communicate in person and the closeness that brings. I need some time for us to get used to each other again, and he needs time to decompress. Having everyone over right away keeps everything fun, light and lets us find our way back to each other slowly. But when I plan it, I tell people, you can come for a couple of days, then you need to go. We need our time together. While some MIL are pushier than mine or more demanding, I think if you make every effort to include them in the welcome home ceremony and give them a few days, they will be more likely to respect your need for privacy sooner.

One of the best ways to prepare for reintegration is to start talking about it as soon as possible with each other. Explain what is going on at home, what your thoughts are, what you are imagining and hoping for. Then let him do the same. Once my husband and I both wrote our "dream reintegration" emails and then shared them at the same time. I read his with an open mind, and he read mine with an open mind. Then we tried to make the other person's dream come true. Most of the time we end up coming to a functional compromise.

It is hard. He's been missing his whole life not just me, but I've mostly been missing him. I tend to want just some serious quiet time together to talk and get reacquainted. He has fishing and hunting and time with his children that are part of his plans. We have to try really hard to listen and compromise without getting too emotional. Reuniting is emotional and hard enough without arguing over how to spend it.

The last part of reuniting I am going to talk about for right now is the let down. Once he is in the car or at home all the adrenaline and emotions hit the brick wall of "now what?" And the truth is, now you go back to living. He is going to have to get used to traffic again, putting away his dirty laundry, not swearing like a sailor, sleeping on a different schedule, and sharing a bed. So many of the daily things we take for granted are going to feel strange or new to him all over and I find that it takes me a few weeks to get used to his being home.

You may think R&R prepared you for coming home, but it didn't R&R is like running a 100 yard dash. Coming home is more of a marathon. Last time, Chad slept a lot. It took him months of being exhausted to be back to normal. He would fall asleep at 3 in the afternoon and again at 9 p.m. He came home and dumped Army gear all over the house. All the cleaning and organizing I'd done was up in smoke in less than 24 hours. It takes a lot of patience to welcome him back into your space knowing he isn't going to keep it the way you do and to understand that he kind of have to re-civilize himself too.

I keep wanting to say the trick is, but there is no trick. Coming back together is a physical and emotional journey that takes some strange twists and turns. During R&R, Chad and I had some pretty good arguments because he was acting so closed off and couldn't reach out to me and I was trying so hard to get back to us. All the fights ended with hugs and long talks, but we had to get angry to let the other emotions out too, which felt really awful and then great, but we worked through it. Being open, communicating, compromising and loving are the keys to making it through redeployment.

Don't feel badly when it all doesn't feel like the Hallmark moments you expect. It is better if you don't have those expectations, but that swell of emotion lasts maybe a few hours at best. Then the hard work of truly becoming one again starts. Remember back to when you first were married or first lived together and start there. Your learning curve will go much faster, but if you can keep in mind that in many ways you're starting over, maybe your expectations will be more realistic and your relationship will be that much closer and that much stronger for it. 

Day 106: Things not to say to an Army wife

This is modified from a variety of lists floating around the Internet. The list of ideas is partially borrowed, but the responses are mine. I like the ideas behind many of the lists, but some were a little more hostile than I felt comfortable sharing.

I think a lot of people really are just ignorant of military life and the realities of how it affects soldiers, wives, families, etc. Most people live in a world where three day business trips are "forever" to spend apart, in which death is a vague possibility not a daily potentiality, and when they are confronted with someone who lives the way we do, they don't know what to say. They feel sympathy, empathy, but don't even begin to understand what we do or what our husbands do. The things they say sound awful to our ears, but are their attempts to understand.

This is a list of things people say trying to get a glimpse into a life that seems so foreign to them, so unbelievably hard.

1. “Aren’t you afraid that he’ll be killed?”
      Of course. The reality of modern warfare is death is a reality, but injury is far more likely. Either way, it is terrifying. Truth is people are far more likely to die in traffic than war statistically, but somehow we accept that where as with war, being in mortal danger is unavoidable. We worry everyday. We try not to think about it. We can't. It would be like walking around with an open wound, too painful. We try to focus on other things, like the kids, work, things like counting down the days, writing a blog. Asking us brings it back to the front of our minds. Please don't. 


2. “I don’t know how you manage. I don’t think I could do it.”
     Maybe you couldn't. A lot of people can't. But I never thought I could either. I almost walked away from dating my husband because he was stationed 5 hours away and in the military. But I couldn't help myself. I fell in love, and I decided that I loved him enough to have half a life with him rather than a whole life without him. If you love your husband as much as I do, you could do it too. You would hate it, cry, scream, get angry, etc. just like I have and will. Army wives are not magical, we're just women who decided a commitment to our marriage was just as important as our husband's commitment to our nation. 


3. “At least he’s not in combat.”
    Most army wives hear this about once a year. Guys head out for training, school, field exercises, etc. Yes, it is better than combat, but gone is gone. They are gone SO MUCH that any more time gearing up for leaving, saying good-bye and taking on double duty is awful. To some extent, it gets harder and harder with repetition of good-bye. Our worry is less when they are in country, but our hurt isn't. 


4. “Do you think he’ll get to come home for Christmas/anniversary/birthday/birth of a child/wedding/family reunion, etc?”
   NO. While sometimes commanding officers will make a point to get a dad home for the birth of his child if at all possible, most times when they leave for deployment, they are gone for a minimum of a year with a two week R&R in approximately the middle. Some MOS's (jobs) deploy more often for shorter times and sometimes the circumstances dictate a longer or shorter deployment, but they leave when they leave and they come back when they come back. If you are VERY lucky, he will get to choose his R&R dates, but we've had to fight for decent R&R every deployment. While he has always had supportive CO's, it is hard to worry every time whether he will get to come home the one week he will have his boys or when I am off work too. If R&R coincides with a special occasion, it is just luck. Chad missed his daughter's first Christmas, winter, Easter, BIRTHDAY! They don't get to come home for anything short of a death or impending serious health issue of a parent, spouse or child. My husband's father was near death for two months. He got to come home about half a week after his father's death. They don't get to come home until the tour is over. It isn't our choice or theirs. There is nothing we can do to have them home. 


This is a touchy subject for me because one of my acquaintances once made a comment that Chad must like being gone because he is deployed so much. My husband has never volunteered for a deployment, but has never shirked his duty either. He has been gone 4 years. Not a choice! 


5. “What are you going to do to keep yourself busy while he’s gone?
     This is a reasonable question for some military wives. If you don't work and have no children, then a year deployment can feel like an eternity of days stretching out in front of you. Even if you work, having no children, it can be rough to fill the time, but it does get filled. Once you have a house, pet and children in the picture, you don't worry about filling the days, you worry about having time to sleep and get everything done. You worry about not baking the diapers and freezing the bread. You worry about be patient and kind with a child who has decided to use your shoulder as a teething toy while you've been throwing up for three days. Your days are over before you know what happened. 





Tomorrow I will finish this list. For tonight, I have spent most of the day still feeling pretty sick, cradling a baby who was miserable most of the day. It is almost 11 and I have missed two days of work being sick and have been too sick or dealing with a cranky infant for most of the day to get much done. We did get to chat via computer call with Chad today. It was super cute. She heard his voice. He said hi to her and she said in her baby speak, "hi da da." She was pretending to hold a phone to her head too. It was super sweet and cute on so many levels.

Day 128: Divorce part 1

Being a stepparent for the second time and watching the struggles of my stepsons has really made me think about the effect divorce has on children and the carelessness with which people separate.  The children are forever torn between two people who live apart. They rarely have both parents in the same place at the same time so are forever missing one parent.

Even if you take away any arguing on the part of the divorced parents, being bounced between two households is hard. One of my stepchildren has confessed to me that a secret wish is for the parents to remarry. Regardless of the likelihood of such an event, they wish for it. They want to be able to love both parents without  feeling disloyal. They want to spend time with both parents at the same time.

Obviously, if my husband and his ex-wife had not gotten divorced, he and I would not be together. I am incredibly in love with him and look forward to a life together. I am glad we found each other, but that does not diminish the effect divorce had and will continue to have on his children.

I decided to do a little research on the lasting effects of divorce according to experts.

A caveat here - I think marriage is hard. I’ve been divorced. I know that people, me included, get married with a romanticized view of marriage and the reality is very different, sometimes the reality of WHO you’ve married only sinks in once the rose colored glasses come off. And our current culture doesn’t value marriage the way it once did. So I am not trying to hold myself up as a judge over anyone, but I think if people really understood how much divorce truly affects children, they might think twice before divorcing or perhaps even getting married. It might have given me pause in my younger years. Maybe if people really grasped that the children are better off if the parents stay together in all but the most abusive situations, perhaps more parents would try to work it out.

Now, I am not in favor of staying married in an abusive situation or one in which a partner has been unfaithful; however, marriages can heal from both of these things if both partners are willing to work at it. People today in general need to take marriage more seriously from the start and need to be more committed to making it work.

Some of the research I found showed that divorce has a lasting negative effect on the children – forever! 20-25% of post divorce children were considered troubled adults when measured against a list of psychiatric disorders while adult children of intact families only had a 10% occurrence. The researcher, Hetherington said, “Now, that two-fold increase is not to be taken lightly. It’s larger than the association between smoking and cancer.” (Hetherington 2002, p. D6) Everyone knows smoking causes cancer. We have laws that protect advertising cigarettes to children due to this fact. We have warning labels on the sides of packages and on all advertising. Smoking is illegal in most public places, on television ads and even outdoors in some areas. But children have no protection from divorce.

According to a 25 year study by Wallerstein and Lewis,  ALL the post divorce children to a certain extent reached a conclusion that “personal relationships are unreliable,” failing to trust even the closest of family relationships. Even when the parents had positive second marriages, less than ten percent of the children whose parents had found stable new marriages felt secure and welcome in the new family unit.

That statistic makes me realize that no matter how well I try to parent the boys now, they are going to struggle with feeling loved and welcome in my home. They are going to be suspicious. If parents can leave, what would make a stepparent stay? That lack of trust kind of explains a lot of defensive argumentative behavior I have seen from several of my stepchildren over the years.  It also makes me want to call them right now just for a verbal hug. I feel like a failure. After losing the children I had so lovingly raised in my last marriage, I have struggled with getting close to the boys. I am afraid to love them too much because they have a mother and I am afraid I would get so emotionally invested in them that I would struggle with letting them go. I learned the hard way that, no matter how much I love them and how well I try to “parent” them, they aren’t my children at the end of the day.

But I am responsible for who I am for them and with them while they are in my home.  I need to make a larger effort to help them feel loved, welcome and secure in our home and with our relationship. If they, even on a subconscious level, fear losing relationships, I need to make sure they understand that I will always be available to them no matter what. I will say that my older stepchildren from my previous marriage are both in contact with me. We talk once in awhile, visit when possible (a few times a year) and email and Facebook often.

My take away from this tonight is to make a bigger effort to be good and understanding when the boys visit and to work very hard at making my marriage work. We’re doing OK so far, but we’re not quite five years in, nearly seven since we met. Hopefully we have a long way to go.

Day 134: Emotions

Military wives deal with a lot of emotions. But we push a lot of them down in order to suck it up and support our spouses. Despite the fact that we struggle with so much, sometimes we have a hard time admitting it. One of the hardest things for me to do is admit my marriage is struggling. We’ve never really had problems. We fight, but even the biggest arguments blow over by morning.  And we certainly have no problem in the being in love department. It is just the damned distance, both physical and emotional of deployments, adding repetition to the mix just adds to the difficulty. I would say if a fourth deployment was an Olympic dive, it would be a reverse 2 ½ somersaults with 2 ½ twists in pike position (most difficult dive at the Beijing Olympics a 3.8 out of the now 1.5-4.0 scale).  Just random trivia for you!

One of the hardest parts of this deployment for us as a couple is dealing with our and each other’s emotions. As a man and woman, we struggle understanding each other on this issue anyways. I am a very emotional person. While capable of being very logical, my emotions tend to run the show whereas Chad tends to be a calm sea, only the very high and very low can be seen. We both have such different emotional needs when we’re together that being apart only complicates the process of sorting through the fluff and getting to the good stuff.

During a deployment, I work very hard and keep pretty busy. After several experiences with separations and deployments, I know how to stay occupied and keep myself from missing him too much. It is a defense mechanism. I know it is. If I don’t think about him too much, then I don’t hurt as much, his absence just isn’t part of my day to day. But we become accustomed to what we do and it took awhile for me to warm back up to him when he came home.

Yet, staying emotionally close is very hard during a deployment. If we were separated but he had his own room in which he could talk to me nightly, talk about his day without worrying about OpSec or perception of his fellow soldiers, we would be able to stay closer emotionally. He is in a position where all of his emotions are pretty much anger, frustration, anxiety, exhaustion. He is surrounded by such a high stress environment that he doesn’t want to tap into those emotions. He just pushes down his feelings like a trash compactor. But that doesn’t erase his feelings, but they open slowly once he comes home. Like a tightly folded rosebud, his feelings open layer by layer slowly and only with patient and gently care. 

But while he's there, he stays so closed, like a pebble sealed against feeling. When we do talk on the phone, he says very little. Every day for him is pretty much the same, of what he is able to discuss. My days are pretty repetitive too. I get up, go to school, come home, play with the baby. There is only so much I can say either about what I did today. When you're with someone everyday, things come up in conversation and its natural to talk about the tiniest of details, but when each call is potentially overheard, recorded, or simply just not enough of contact, it is harder to find the words. Sometimes we talk long enough and they start to come, but then the hanging up is harder.

Maybe we both ball up our feelings and save them for each other at the end of the deployment. I know the more times he goes, the more I wall up my heart against the hurt. So it seems easier from the outside, but it is harder and harder to take down those walls and let him back in. I know his walls were nearly concrete when he came home for R&R. I hope against hope that we can get off this deployment train wreck for a cycle or two so we have a chance at knowing what marriage feels like, no walls, no ticking clocks, no counting down calendars. Heck, we're only celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary, why should we know what living together is like? 

Day 158: Empathy

One of the best parts of being an army wife is other army wives who get it. There are those out there who are all about the negativity and the drama, but the great ones hear your hurt and just nod. Sometimes they have never been in your shoes, sometimes they've been there more than you have, but they know that whatever it is, for you right now, it is hard. It doesn't have to be the hardest thing you've ever experienced, sometimes it is just the hardest this week.

Many of my weakest moments come from stupid things. Last night I was putting away baby clothes and a thought crossed my mind that in a few days I will be back to arranging baby outfits for the week ahead just to stay afloat. I will again be all mommy all the time. I started crying when Chad took the boys hunting and I realized how even one evening lost is too many when we only have a few left.

Yesterday I watched Chad giving the baby her evening bottle. She drifted to sleep in his arms. He gently wiped her face and caressed her cheeks not knowing I was watching. It was so gentle and sweet to watch this gruff, rough and tumble guy be so tender with her. As much as he protests he isn't a baby person, I have watched him fall in love with his daughter this last week. It breaks my heart to know that he will miss most of the rest of her infancy. By the next time he sees her, she will be a toddler. He will miss her first steps, her first birthday, but more than those times, he will miss the tiny moments of her silly smiles when she is being flirtatious or the way she claps and dances to music, or the way her eyebrows crinkle when she hears Daddy practice his duck calls.

The moments I think about the moments of his sons' success, Chad missing Trenton's state honor society award and Nathan's first band concert, the moments of missing his Lil Bit, the moments of missing time together as a couple are the moments I find my heart breaking, tears looming. In those moments, sometimes he doesn't even understand how I feel, much like I can't really feel what he does having to leave and say good-bye. But my friends, especially my army wife friends can. Sometimes I don't have to even explain what I feel, they just know.

I have many friends who are so special, some military wives, some not. One of my friends always seems to just get what I am saying without having to one-up with her pain even when she totally could, sometimes without saying anything. She wrote me a reply to one of my blogs from this week that brought me to tears understand what she is experiencing. All I have to say is I know! I don't know what it is like to be pregnant, but I do know what it is like to have a tough army guy missing precious moments and hoping he gets to be here for the biggest ones. Tomorrow, if she doesn't mind, I will share her blog about her fears and hopes for her and her JJellybean.

Day 162: Pieces

Dear Army, can you please mail me the pieces of my husband that he has left in Iraq. No, all the physical parts have returned, but pieces of his heart and soul seem to be damaged or missing. After four deployments, I think the stress of constant battle, violence and being ripped away from his family repeatedly has finally started taking its toll.

This deployment has been hard on both of us. We have been trying to take some time to have some serious talks, but it is hard to break through the walls we put up around our emotions knowing we have to say good-bye so soon. We both feel a little numb. I know for me it is so hard to be alone over and over again so I have closed off a little bit because it breaks my heart so many times to let him go. For him, he goes through that and the horrors of combat and responsibility for his soldiers. Four years of that stress is a lot to hold onto or hide from.

The other night I finally got him talking. He rarely tells me stories about his deployments. Once he told me it was because he didn't want me to have to live with the horrible images he has had to. I think it is because the moments were so awful that telling me is tantamount to reliving them. I finally just hugged him and let him talk.

For personal and OPSEC reasons, I won't share here what he talked about, but I was shocked about the level of gruesomeness he has been exposed to and he only told me about his first day in country this year. It sounded like a horror movie to me. Unfortunately, my brain immediately pictured the scenes he described. In my arms, I listened to him talk and felt the years of being a guarded man, unwilling to submit to his own emotions, slip away. For a few minutes, I could hear the little boy in his voice and felt devastated that he has had to experience such moments of helplessness, witness such graphic events that we would rate his life NC-17 for fictional violence. What is a person supposed to do when confronted with REAL things no one should see?

He has been so strong so through so much and continues to be strong, but he can only hold onto so much before it changes him. He is afraid to feel anything good for fear of having to feel the bad. He does great with the kids because it is easy to laugh and play, but connecting with me, allowing himself to go into the deep places where our connection is, where our love lives, means opening the floodgates to all of his emotions.

He so meant to be a soldier. He was born to wear a uniform. He is so good at it, but he still has to deal with his emotions from time to time. He is great at bottling them up, but the bottle can only hold so much before it starts to leak. He has to be able to let go of some of these memories and feelings. All I know how to do is listen. For him, for me, for us, for our family I hope listening is enough. 

Day 200: not a milestone

Somehow, this nice round number should be a milestone, but it really isn't. We are getting close to the six month mark, but it is still a few weeks away. It feels like a lifetime until R&R.

This deployment has been so busy I haven't had a chance to catch my breath, rushing past in a whirlwind of chores and baby time. And yet, tonight it feels like a lifetime since I had my husband home. Somehow being too busy to miss him also makes it feel like forever since he left and maybe with him less on my mind, he feels a little more gone.

I don't know if there is a trick to this stuff. Being married and staying happy is hard enough for other families. It is extra hard to stay in love throughout the separations and deployments. I love him, of that I have no doubt, but I understand how a couple could fall apart. At some point it feels like you're just alone and I could see how easy it would be to start feeling single and acting single.

Part of what makes this so hard is that we have to act single a lot. It is part of losing that dependasaurus I talked about a few entries ago. We have to become independent and our hearts less tender so that we can survive.

When I was going through counseling during my divorce, my counselor told me that it would take a year, living through each holiday, each season without the children I had raised or my now ex-husband before I would be ready to move on. That you have to grieve each milestone before being able to put those feelings away.

And now we have thousands of military spouses on the home front essentially grieving that loss for a year, over and over, each time becoming a little more independent, a little less attached. When your husband is gone a year, home a few months and then gone for training, home and gone, home and gone and then deployed again, it is an emotional roller coaster and human nature protects ourselves from the repeated hurt by growing more callous. The first time he left, I sat with him until they made us separate. The second time he left, I sat with him on post for a few hours until they moved to the main processing area. This time, I hugged and kissed him at the front door when he left with one of his fellow NCO's.

I cried a few tears and went on with the second day of school. I went on with what I had to do. But it gets harder to have my heart in two pieces, the piece reserved for him and the piece pretending I am OK. I know we will survive this deployment because we are crazy about each other, but I would be lying if I said the separations weren't taking a toll. I wish the powers that be could understand the cost and put a cap on deployments or find a way to put soldiers serving fourth, fifth, sixth deployments on stateside duties. They wonder why there is so much suicide, divorce, abuse. People aren't meant to live like this.

It is hard to spend so much of my life missing him. It is hard to have so much of my heart walking around half a world away. They say being a mother is learning to live with your heart walking around outside your body. It is just as true of being an army wife. My heart is where he is. I just wish it were a little closer a whole lot more often. I will keep counting down until he is home, praying everyday we can catch a break and get off this deployment cycle. I don't know what we'd do with two years together, but I am willing to find out. 

Day 213: Breaking point and phones

This weekend we got a phone call from Daddy. He and I are both having a rough time. In fact, I think this is the worst deployment for both of us in many ways. He is bouncing back and forth from post to post every other week or so. He never gets to feel settled or established. It is like an entire year without a home, privacy, peace. It seems strange to talk about him having peace in a combat zone, but having a bed, a room to call your own is at least a slice of peace, if not the real deal.

Of course, you know why I am at my breaking point. There are literally piles of unattended to crap everywhere. The carpet needs vacuuming but I would have to pick up in order to vacuum and since that isn't happening . . . I spend 90% of everyday feeling like a failure as a mother, wife, teacher, person and 100% of it tired. Even when I am asleep, I dream about being tired. Now that's wiped out.

Then we get a chance to talk and all we both need is to be able to vent and what happens? The phone is broken. FIVE TIMES mid-conversation I all of a sudden can't hear him. Once he called back and I couldn't hear him from "hello". I was ready to cry. He calls maybe once a month, sometimes twice. This week he needed some information for a security clearance, so he called late one night. We got a chance to hear each other's voices TWICE, woo hoo, in one week.

I know guys who can call everyday. I know wives who want that. I have never had that with him in Iraq, but our relationship started long distance. We talked on the phone for hours every night, from 7-10. It was the best and worst part of my day. Hearing his voice sound so close and be so far was torture. Being able to talk is what created our love and friendship, but it was painful to not be able to be together. If he called all the time, it would keep the sadness of missing him more present in my mind. I can't know for sure, but when we say good-bye my heart breaks a little. I can't bring myself to end the call. Every time we talk could be the last. I can't imagine saying that kind of good-bye daily.

We tried to talk about some serious stuff, but the less than wonderful phones kept interrupting us. It is time to start thinking about what happens when he comes home, what does he do next to start working toward his next promotion. What does his career progression mean for us as a couple and me as a wife? Do I teach next year, do I stay home? If I stay home for a year or two, how hard is it to get back into teaching? Will we be moving? If so, when? where?

We are both so tired, it is hard not to get emotional. He has concerns. I have concerns. We hate this separation again. We hate the problems being apart brings us. It takes so much time away from his life that he feels like he has to cram everything in when he comes back and I feel like I have to play second fiddle to everything else. I have to be understanding and share him with his dad, mom, sister, children, hunting, fishing, friends, all of which wives complain about when they see their husbands everyday. It is hard not seeing him for a year, then having to let him out of my sight for even a few days is so difficult, it hurts to write about it now, but unfair for me to ever say much to him about. The least I can do is let him have his time to himself, even when I just want to be around him 24/7 for awhile.

He will come back right when I go back to work. He will come home and get 30 days leave, and I will have to go to work everyday. I can take off, but the first few weeks of school are challenging enough to set a tone for the year without taking a few weeks off. I am trying not to cry thinking about how emotionally difficult that will be, especially if he wants to take a trip somewhere and I have to stay behind. Somehow, being without him for a night or two when he comes home is harder to consider than the next seven months without him here now.

So we're on this phone call, trying to discuss our future plans, make big decisions and he has to call me back every few minutes and eventually switch phones completely. He is trying not to break down; I am trying not to break down. The baby is alternately screaming into the phone which makes everything even, cuz now he can't hear me either. We finally decide nothing except to start looking into things and come to a decision as soon as we have some options for what he might be able to do or be next.

Before hanging up, we decide that this year is testing both of our patience and will be a good growth year so that we are more patient with each other in the future. We say a 100 I love you's before really hanging up. Never enough time, never the right words, never good enough. It is so hard to love a soldier, but so easy to love Chad that I signed up anyway. The love doesn't stop it from being hard, just makes it worth doing.