Preparing for the Mission

I got a peek at the next several months ahead of us today. You know how it is before a deployment. They are here but they aren't really here. They are training, preparing, tdy'ing (yes, I just made that a word), getting clearances, getting everything in order, etc. etc. They aren't here for much of the time that they are. 

I know how frustrating that can be. I know how much we think they should be with us when they are home. Of course we want them to be here when they are here. That only makes sense. 

But it isn't the reality. 

You have to understand that right now. That. is. not. reality. We live a life that is not just deployment/dwell, deployment/dwell. When they are away they are very much away, but when they are home they are not always 'home'. 

It is so easy to not realize that. There will be a day when your husband comes home and tells you he is leaving in a week for one month for a sudden assignment, and the month after that that he is "home" he will be training and planning training basically 24/7, and that the next month will be field time with only weekends home and so-on and so-on. And then, at the end of all this training, at the end of all this time apart while his boots have been very much on American soil, when all the preparation is done, those very same boots, those worn, high-laced boots will board a plane, fly to the other side of the world, and step foot into a desert. 

Pre-deployment is hard.

Pre-deployment is very, very hard. 

It is easy to become resentful. It is easy to argue that this is time that they need to be with their families most. And to a point, that's true. But, when those boots step off that plane, when those boots begin their mission, I want the man standing beside my soldier to be as well-prepared as possible, to be as well-trained as possible, to be as ready and as confident and as capable as one can be. I want these men to enter into their mission in the way that guarantees success. 

That means that there will be many, many weeks and months that take them from us to prepare. You cannot grow angry with them for that. Every training, every week-long period in the field, every night-fire, every month-long assignment away is one more step to help to ensure that they come home to you. They have to be ready for what they are about to enter into.

This is where it is so hard. It is one thing to accept a deployment. To accept that they aren't here when they aren't here. It is far easier to accept the sacrifice when you can't do anything - when you don't see another option -  but, to have to accept that when you see their clothes in the hamper, and their wet soap in the shower, and a half-eaten bowl of cereal on the table, to be able to smell them, to see the signs of their presence while hardly ever seeing them is harder than we dare to believe.

This is the job. This is the commitment. This is the sacrifice. We share part of ourselves with a nation.

They are at all times soldiers. They are at all times servants to their country. When they are home and when they are gone. They are always soldiers.

So when you hear those training dates, when you add up the days that they will be gone, look for that grace. Know that the preparation matters as much as the mission. Find comfort in knowing that the man beside you soldier, who will have his back, who will fight beside him, will be trained to do so.

Let go of any anger and resentment and frustration. He doesn't need that. You don't need that. Your children will pick up on it. Be with him when he is here. Love him when he is home; love him when he is not. You are strong enough for it. Your marriage is strong enough for it.

You are living this life because you are meant to. You are loving a soldier because you were made to. 

Take a deep breath when you hear those dates and see that schedule. Deep, deep breath. Pray for the safety of these men; pray for the strength you are going to need. If you ask for it, if you seek it, strength and grace will get you through. 

To Give What I Had

I grew up in the suburbs of New Orleans. I love that city. I loved my neighborhood. To me there was never a question as to whether or not I would raise my children there - whenever I had them. I always planned to leave for a time - four or five years - and then come home, marry a New Orleans man, and dress my children in seersucker in the summer and have picnics in city park. It's not exactly a vision I clung to - it was just always the way it was going to be. There wasn't another thought. Families live within blocks of each other. Cousins aren't always really cousins - aunts aren't always aunts. People are born there and they stay - not because they have to, but because they could never, ever bear to leave.

I have two very, very close friends that my boys call "Aunt". We have known each other since we were five-years-old. We started Kindergarten together. We chose the same high school. We lived with each other through college. We cried over boys together. We figured out make-up together (well, I'm still figuring it out). We celebrated birthdays - many, many birthdays. We cried over break-ups. We watched each other make mistakes and helped to pick each other up from them. We celebrated each other's successes. They stood beside me at my wedding.

All three of us love that city. All three of us always thought our children would grow up together. All three of us just assumed we would have the same things.

Logan will meet his preschool teacher tomorrow - at a new school. Last year at this time he was walking up the steps to my preschool. Last year at this time I took a picture of him standing on grass that I stood on and smiled while wearing my little backpack. Last year I got a glimpse of "my plan". 

I'm not upset that he is going to a different place than the one I know. I am not upset that the way I planned it isn't the same as how He planned it. I am hurting because I know that my sons will never have the same experience I had. My boys will never have the friends that they know and see everyday for nearly twenty years. My heart is breaking because Logan is three and this is his second school. My heart is breaking because I wonder who will stand beside him at his wedding. I wonder who will know him the way those two women know me. My heart is breaking because he won't have these same two people that I have. 

I've thought about it before and have always swept that to the back of my mind - because I can't change it. Because in no way - in the most perfect of military circumstances - can I give that to my children. 

I know that children are resilient. I know that military children don't know it any other way - that they are all going through the same thing. That - like so many things - it will be "normal" as far as they know. But I want to give that stability to my boys - the same grammar school, same high school. Two schools. Period. I want them to have the same friends that they know through it all. I want to give them what I had. And I can't. 

I feel like I took that from them. I feel guilty that they won't know that.

Today is one of those days - one of those days when we have to once again acknowledge that this life is really, really hard. That there are parts that we really, really want to change and can't. 

Tomorrow I will enjoy seeing him meet his classmates. Tomorrow I will be so very thankful that Logan and Eli have such a special friendship that will be a constant in this changing life. Tomorrow I will find the strength. But today I want to give them the beauty of what I had and still have. Many, many tomorrows from now I will find the beauty that must come from the friendships he will make along the way - with other kids whose mommies and daddies are also part of something bigger. I know I will find it - because He wouldn't bring me to a place that didn't have it. 

It's another part I am learning. Another part that we will all learn through. Another part that will show us what we are made of. 

We'll find the beauty along the way.

Counting Up

"We don't know how long this deployment is. We aren't planning on R&R. We are planning for twelve but are being told six. Everything is in limbo." Of all the uncertainty we face in this life this one killed me the most. And this wasn't even C. Mine had come home and her's had just left. There is a big difference between six months and a year. And to not KNOW? Ugh. I felt for her.

She sounded just a little defeated - just for a moment - but I heard it. I can't imagine.

Some of us still - every now and then - face a possible twelve month deployment becoming a fifteen. And many are beginning to face the six becoming twelve or vice versa. Punch to the gut. There is always the possibility that dates will change - that things will move to the right or the left. C's last deployment was cut a month short. And while that was a JOY for our family, we knew that that meant another unit was deploying a month early. 

Time tables change. 

It's almost a given.

I was talking to another spouse about "counting down." She emailed asking what I thought about "count down" posters and the like. Another talked about counting down from twelve when twelve was uncertain. We all do it - it can help, can be a comfort to count down those days. It's fun for our kids to have something that marks one day less without daddy. But in the situations where time is so uncertain, it can jolt us. It is a physical reminder that that time table just became longer. That we thought we were "this close" and now it feels we have miles left to go. It's thinking you signed up for a half marathon and then being told at the half-way point that you accidentally committed to the whole thing. 

So I talked to her about counting "up". When we don't know a definite timeline (and nothing is a definite timeline) we don't risk having that physical reminder that everything changed. I told her to buy a large vase or pretty container of some sort and place it in a display area of her home. Then to find something that you love or that your child loves. Find pretty pebbles, or color different sand, collect seashells, or find something important to you and add one every day. Every day it becomes fuller. Every day it becomes more beautiful. Every day it becomes more and more a part of your home - your life. 

And when your soldier comes home put a glass lid on it and keep it. Let it be a reminder of the journey. Let it show you how strong you have become. Look at it and know that it started empty - like we all can feel during a deployment - and it became something strong, something beautiful. Keep it for the next one and start another beside it. Recognize how far you come, each and every time you place something in it. Because you are counting up, moving up another day. 

A deployment is very much like climbing a mountain - we are fighting our way up. I don't think there is a downhill part of deployment. You can say that the second half counts as that but I don't really see it. The challenges don't suddenly stop just because we made it past that point. Every day we are battling uphill. Every day we are filling up that vase. Everyday we are going one more step forward until we make it to the top and we know that we made it. You feel accomplished. You are stronger. You did it.

So think about counting up instead. 

Just an idea. ; )

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What helps you to track time during a deployment?

Tick Tock

(This has been posted AFTER the fact. I will never post his movement while it is occurring or when he is preparing to move on this blog. OPSEC - for everyone's safety. He is currently home.)


There isn't a single ticking clock in my room, not in the boys room, definitely not in my car, but I hear it everywhere:


Tick Tock. Tick Tock.

Everywhere I go I hear it.

Tick Tock. Tick Tock.

It's a simple, quick "tick". Not like a tongue clicking, or an overly dramatic time scene in some movie, but a quiet, swift "tick." It follows every step.

I am so very excited and impatient and ready. But there is so much more wrapped into the ticking of that clock. Because right now - it seems steady but so very, very slow. Hours and days keep being added rather than subtracted. As each tick brings it closer another change in the plan adds a thousand more. I am waiting. And waiting. And ...

But how quickly will that ticking change when he is home. How quickly each little moment will go by - each precious, tiny, tiny moment. How much will that sound change - becoming louder  - so much more like an annoying clicking tongue. And everything that we will try to do in that small window of time - 15 days - will make is go by so much quicker. I keep saying that next time we will be like other couples - next year we will disappear for those two weeks with just our little family. No one but me, him, and our little boys. Our tiny family. Because when it comes down to it, this time is for us.

I cannot tell you how much I struggle with this - how much I admire those who can turn the rest of the world off for that time period and shut everything else out but eachother. I am not brave enough for that. There are so many people who love this man - who want to see him with their own eyes, and touch him, and know that he really is here. I can understand that because that is all that I want - to see him, to touch his skin and know he is real, he is alive. He is safe. So how can I fault anyone for wanting the same? I can understand it.

But this time is such a precious time - such a vital time - for us to be together. More precious than I think anyone who doesn't live this can possible understand. Because with each tick of the clock, we know that there will be another goodbye. With each tiny moment that we cherish we know that they are limited. And that time is ours - selfish, maybe, but ours.

There will be a goodbye again. This man will kiss his children goodbye - again. This man will walk away from those he loves the most - again. This man will break my heart ... again. And every tick will remind me - as we struggle to fit it all in, to make everyone happy - that that goodbye is closer, that goodbye is eminent. That these moments are the most precious of all moments.

I will see him before me - not as a blurry, digital image - but him. I will touch his hands, his face, his arms, his chest and feel the heart that beats inside of it. For these precious moments I will know that he is real - for another day, for another night - he is alive, he is safe, he is mine. And those moments belong to us.

How selfish. How necessary. How much I can't wait.

He's coming home ... for a little while.

Tick Tock. Tick Tock.

Preparation

I am beginning to breathe again.

The last two weeks have been hard for me - everything is okay - but there have been a lot of "coming up's" all coming up at the same time and it has been overwhelming. I have been planning for a cross-country move with two kids and without my husband. So today I did something that seems basic - and I know horribly simple - but that calmed me. I didn't expect it to be calming - I expected it to have the opposite affect. Maybe even to be the tipping point to my sanity. But, it was a necessary task so I jumped into my car and went to my home away from home (no, not Starbucks - the other one) - Target. 

There were two things I needed (okay - only one thing I needed - one thing I wanted) and I managed to leave the store forgetting to grab the "thing" I actually needed to get. Yep, made it all the way to the car. Maybe that meant I could wait a while - do it another day. But that wouldn't help and I put my keys back into my purse and headed back through the sliding red doors.

I headed up the escalator (yes, our Target is two stories - awesome, I know) and then turned around and headed right back down after remembering they were only up there during the holidays. I felt it coming - slight panic in my chest, pressure around my spine. The fear that I would start crying due to mental exhaustion when my eyes found the aisle. I continued walking - feeling the tightness pushing into my throat making it harder to swallow. And then I saw the three aisles they took up - so many colors. Here it comes ... any second ... any moment its gonna hit me ... I know it ... any minute ... here it comes ... 

And it didn't. I felt the tension leave my neck, my shoulders, my back loosened, I could swallow again. No panic. No tears. No embarrassing freak out in the middle of Target on a weekend. 

I listened to my own steady breathing - calming, reassuring. 

I grabbed three large ones and headed back to the front of the store. I felt the slight smirk spread across my face.

Storage bins.

Who would've known?

Lost

"Did you already pick up Logan?" she asked - slightly confused. 


"No?" I answered, not understanding. "NO!"I jumped up. No I had not picked him up. It was 2:20. He had to be picked up from preschool by 2:30. I ran out the door - barely catching a glimpse of the surprise on my mom's face. 

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"One sec, I need to get a call." I clicked "hold + answer" on the screen not recognizing the number. 

"Hello?"

"Megan? Do the kids have practice today?" No way - what was WRONG with me?

"Oh! Yes, yes they do! I'll be there in a minute." I grabbed my purse - not even bothering to run upstairs to grab the folders of music I may or may not need with Logan following behind. I walked onto the porch, "I have practice!" I shouted to my mom - clearly upset with the malfunctioning of my brain. I didn't just catch a glimpse that time - I saw her full expression and I tried not to process it - I was shocked enough myself. "Eli is still asleep." 

"Okay," she responded. Simple. I have such a good mom.

I cranked the car and turned in the neighbors driveway to head the four blocks to the school. My eye caught Logan confusingly waving "bye" to me through the glass of the door. 

What was wrong with me? I shook my head the entire drive up to school.

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No, No - it isn't the migraines. I can't blame it on that - those are almost non-existent now. The headaches are back but those I know are stress headaches. They are nothing in comparison to what the pain was before. This is all mental - 100% mental.

I am mentally exhausted. Emotionally drained. Unable to remember routine, basic, simply, everyday, this-is-how-my-schedule-is-every-wednseday, kind of things.

I am never late - very rarely. And if I am late it is because there is a very large Starbucks cup in my hand and I don't count those times. That cup of rich, wonderful, power java that I may be holding is well worth the five minutes it cost me. I will get more done with it, I will be happier with it, I will be far more useful to whoever was waiting on me with it. I do not count those times, so - no - I am never late.

But I am not really 100% me right now.  My family has reached a fork in the road so to speak - but really it isn't a fork. It is more of a single crack in dry mud that once pressure is applied breaks into a fork, and that fork breaks into other forks, and those forks break into other forks and those each continue to break into their own tiny, little, little forks until there is just a land mass of broken ground and no where to step.

The Army doesn't give you forks in the road - there aren't any crossroads for us - my wouldn't those be easy. The Army gives you a flight scheduling board - listing dozens of different possibilities and then it says wait.  Because whatever flight you think you are going to be on has suddenly been delayed - or better yet - cancelled or - who knows - early! And maybe the flight you thought was yours can't take off until this other plane heads out of here and then the next depends on when this one leaves and so on and so on. Or perhaps, one flight comes in sooner than expected and now everything else has to be adjusted because that one key point changed. It is overwhelming to stare at those screens and search for the flight that says, "This is you. This is how you will get from A to B. Take THIS route"

And I am talking nonsense 1) because I honestly may have lost it a little bit right now, 2) because I am caffeine deprived  3) because I know very, very little,  4) because the little I know I can't say and 5) because whatever I do know will probably change 3 or 4 times anyway - this month alone.

And I will never understand how the largest organization of this nation can't make concrete decisions that seem so simple to me. It is in everything - hurry up and wait. Plan for this ... plan for that ... and then we are going to change it all anyway. If the Army gods were women ...

So right now I feel lost - standing before a hardened ground of a countless number of cracks, each depending on another as to which direction it will take. Each one breaking from something else. Each decision affecting another. Each presenting its own unknown. Each scaring the life out of me - relinquishing my ability to focus on the basics. Each taking away my energy which we all so desperately need. 

I cannot move forward until I know which little crack is ours to follow - and I can't know that right now. I don't know when I will.

And that is what makes me feel the most lost.

Just When I Have a Grip ...

Army 236 / Megan 0. But who's counting, right?

Some time ago, while having coffee with a then soon-to-be spouse I told her, "Write in pencil."

I honestly think that this may possibly be the absolute worst life-style for a planner (which I am). But I cannot tell you how many of my friends are just like me. And some have given in a little bit more than me - they write things down in pencil in the planner that they cling to. Maybe they have a little more sense than me - maybe a bit more sanity. I won't give up my pen. I don't care how much I know that whatever I just wrote next to whatever date will change, and will change again, and will change - yep - let's go with at least one more time. I know that. And I will take my pen and draw a single line through whatever I wrote, and write it somewhere else, and do it again, and again. My monthly calendar pages sometimes look a bit like prison stripes. Maybe I do it to torture myself - maybe I think that just this time its gonna stay the same. This entry will not be crossed through. This time. This time is the time.

But I know it won't be. But I won't give up my pen.

But I didn't even have this written down - it was just in my head. A general timeframe - a general plan of how these next four months would pan out. I had planned around this general timeframe - done a lot of planning. Harmless, right?

Army: 237 ...

I swear I would have pulled the hairs from my head one at a time if it would take the pressure away that was building up inside of it. "Are you KIDDING me?" I didn't say it out loud - it wouldn't make sense to him. And it wasn't the big things that needed to get done that were hitting me - I wasn't really stressed about those. I had already thought of them - those were kind of the easy parts. It was everything else that they had covered up. The toys - the tons and tons of toys. The magazines. The "stuff" that was everywhere all of a sudden. The box after box after box of stuff that not only did we have to move, but we had to store because we probably wouldn't need them before the next move. When was that gonna be? In a year? In two? In three? Could I leave them here? That only made sense if we moved back down South. No, no, they should come ... but maybe they should stay.

And the large baby items - to hold onto them or sell them or donate them. To store or to move? Made sense to stay if we PCS'd sooner rather than later. But I didn't know! Clothes - hold onto the three sizes that were now too big for me? Or donate them. What if I needed them again? Ugh! No way. And the car - trade up to the vehicle that was better equipped for a cross country move with two toddlers and a moving trailer in tow? Wait till we made it to CO to do that? Keep the long miles off the new car? Or keep 'em off the trade? Hmmm ... Did it make sense to move thngs that may just be stored anyway or wait to move them from here for the next one? Take that crib apart one more time or just get a toddler bed when we get there. Hmmm ...

Oh no - I couldn't think straight anymore. I wasn't just stressed over the change in this move - I was overwhelmed by the unknown of the next. Seriously - what other life leaves you to stress about planning your NEXT move while completing a current one.

I swear if the Army gods were women ...

But they aren't and this is the life. And somewhere down deep - I find it. The good. This stress means this move is going to happen. This move means he's almost home. Just a few more months. We're almost there - just one step at a time. One foot after the other. I can do this. I will do this. I am doing this. One step after another. Bring it on. I got this. He's coming home.

Maybe I will go find myself a pencil.

Maybe.