The Big D: Passed the 100 Day Mark

09 July
Ok, the kids are in bed and it's late but I'm going to crank this out while it's on my mind.

A while back someone asked me why I moved to our FDS when my husband deployed so quickly. I responded hastily and without much thought that I am 33 and too old to be living with my parents and gave her a little smiley face. This is all true, but after spending a LOT of time with my family on a little "vacation" (that's only half over--ugh!) I kinda feel like I owe it to her to find that thread and let her know that my reasons really go much deeper than that.

I love spending time with my family. They spoil me in some ways--not in others--but generally, we are a happy, healthy, functional bunch.

At an amusement park over the weekend after the 4th, my sister and I are in this little boutique that sells bath salts and body lotions and stuff. I'm sniffing bath salts and there's this one I keep going back to. I nudge my sister and tell her she needs to smell it too because I really like it. She takes a sniff and says, "Ew. It smells like a man." I tip back the container and see that it is called "American Cowboy," and is, in fact, a man's scent. Oops. I sheepishly put the lid back on and tell her I guess it's because I haven't smelled a man for so long. She quirks her eyebrows and shudders a little bit like she doesn't know if she should be amused or grossed out and leaves the shop but I steal another sniff because I realize that it faintly reminds me of my husband and I'm not ready to pull myself away from it yet.

I consider buying a little package of it but don't feel like explaining to my family why I'm buying men's bath salts so I just let it go.

When our day is nearly over there's a free concert when the park closes. They do this big patriotic tribute and ask the veterans to stand up and be recognized and there's the usual smattering of gray-headed old guys in leather vests from Vietnam who stand.   No big deal. But then the guy on stage says that last year a soldier who had just come home from Afghanistan personally requested that he also thank the families of those deployed, specifically, the wives and children who are left behind. I just about lost it. I'm shrinking in my seat, trying to hold back tears and my 7 year old spins around to flash me a big smile because she knows that guy is talking about us. I give her a watery grin and hope she doesn't notice and ask me why I'm crying. I wouldn't be able to speak if I had to and even if I could, I wouldn't because there isn't anyone here who understands.

That, friends, is why I couldn't stay home, 120 miles from the nearest Army post, 1000 miles from where the home is that I will share with my husband. He may not be there with me right now but the promise of him is. His things are there: his uniforms hang in the closet, his tool box is in the garage, his soap is under the bathroom sink. The office where he will work when he gets home is down the street. And there are thousands of people there who have been right where I am. They're living it right now. They know. You don't have to put words to what you're feeling when you are so lonesome for your husband you could cry. They don't baby you and they don't need to because in the presence of those who've gone before you and endured one or two (or more) deployments, you feel a little stronger and you know you'll survive it too.

I am here tonight in my parent's living room, surrounded by people who know me and love me and feeling a little bit lonely. I am actually sitting on the same old hard blue couch that I grew up with and finding myself homesick for our duty station, where I now feel that I belong, even though I had never stepped foot in the state prior to moving there in January. It makes me marvel at how wonderfully, miraculously adaptive we human beings are. We can pretty much get used to anything that's thrown at us and have the capacity to make the best of anything. Everyone has this capacity, I think, but most people are so afraid of pain that they avoid change in order to cling to a thin thread of comfort (which is really only just a facade, isn't it?). Those people really sell themselves short. We Army families are lucky in a way to be forced into big life changes without being asked. I would have never said to my husband, "Let's move to another state and start over," but here we are, happily adapted to it, calling it "home," and craving the new comforts of it.

Night, all. *Yaaawwwnnnn*