My husband has served 22 years in the military. He left again on another deployment. This trip is over to the middle east or "the sandbox." I sit here with a few more wrinkles and a cloudy haze swirling around in my head. I have gone several weeks lacking sufficient sleep. Once within the past week I managed to snag a nap which brought me to a total of 9 hours worth of sleep. I wear a fitbit to help track my pulse for health reasons but one bonus is it tracks my sleep patterns. If I could win an award for little sleep, I would be killing that competition. Man oh man did I feel like a champion when I got a nap and yet I woke up feeling guilty after taking an inventory of my day only to realize very little on my to do list had been accomplished. Bills have to be paid. Errands need ran and children take up a lot of my already limited time. Ain't no one got time to sleep.
I have stacked firewood and loaded it numerous times. I have gone grocery shopping, ran errands, cleaned and then cleaned some more. I plus the help of our girls have chores daily in order to care for our geese, rabbits, and other pets. I have dealt with a sick toddler and have been there to wipe away the tears as an attempt to guide our girls through the absence of their poppa. I constantly try to keep up on laundry but that feels like two steps forward and one back.Maybe burning half the pile would level the playing field.
I am playing two roles. One of the mother and then I sit attempting to compensate for the other role my husband normally plays. He is worth missing. He is actively involved in our lives. He dances with the girls in our kitchen and helps them build giant Lego cities.
He sees when I begin to feel deflated so he wakes up early to load the kiddos on the bus. I, in return get to sleep in. He scoops them up when they start getting emotional and he sits down on their level to talk about what is troubling their little souls. Me, well normally I can only take so much crying and emotional girls for one day that I am the last one to jump to their rescue. I lack patience.It must be a Sarah thing. That attribute is still a work in progress. I normally make the jokes and keep the family laughing.
We have survived. I and the kiddos have made it through 9 days without him. Luckily this time he drove himself to his base. The girls have school and other activities so we chose to stay home and not watch him board the airplane.
We did that a few other times. It always involved a days drive across two states where we all dread the inevitable. There were tears, sadness and the trauma of watching him fly away knowing it would be weeks before we see him again. Then we would turn around and drive back across two states all alone in the silence of our vehicle. That experience was probably the worst especially when two of those trips included projectile vomiting the whole trip home. Who knew kids would suddenly get sick at the exact time of it being inconvenient. Luckily this time he walked out, said goodbye and it seemed like his normal routine of heading to work. Luckily no one cried. It was a miraculous thing and I had the added bonus of not having to trek miles listening to crying, fighting or wishing kids would wake up so I could take a bathroom break. He left. The girls watched some movies and I extra cleaned the house to distract myself. All in all I think the choice to stay was a major win for us all.
Life is by far a struggle with my husband gone. We miss him. We worry an awful lot and we always jump the minute we hear the phone. Any email, text or face-time call feels like we just woke up on Christmas morning. The girls ask tons of questions regardless if they have already been asked or already answered. I always try to find ways to keep our family connected. He texted us pictures the other day about his dinner and how during a stop for their flight, he ordered BBQ pulled pork for dinner. I made the girls the very same thing the next night. We always compare time zones or distances apart as best we can. In the past we have even created a jar filled with Hersey kisses. Each day the girls would get a "kiss" from their poppa and it counted down until he came home. This year I found a company who makes Hero or Daddy dolls.
I submitted a picture of my husband in uniform and the company turns the picture of him into a stuffed doll. Therefore, prepare yourselves for every family picture to include a strange stuffed version of our Rodney. The company is even taking the picture and putting the image on a set of dog tags for each girl. His picture will be on one side while a scripture is on the backside that reads, "May the Lord watch between you and me while we are apart" Genesis 31:49. All these little things add up to the big things such as allowing us all
to take each day as it comes and then successfully surviving the course
of weeks and then months.
The constant overwhelming amount of love and support through each deployment keeps us going as well. We tend to focus on that more then the emotional days or the days where nothing goes right. Thrown in sometimes is the added bonus of it feeling like everything breaks. We may eat more processed foods. We may not even get all of their homework done. We might even miss the bus (already happened twice) but we still manage to smile, laugh and cling together. We cling to our faith and praise our blessings despite the storms. People call. They stop by and drop off food or even watch the kiddos so I can leave and be an adult without snot boogies and milk stains covering my entire shirt. It is these people who understand that we are all just clinging on and attempting to survive that continue to keep us moving forward. Their support helps us trust in each new day we must push through. People have become the hands and feet that give us the strength to cross off another day. It all pushes closer to seeing our Rodney.For that, we are more than grateful. Even now sitting in the middle of our house is a tree that was donated by "Trees for troops."Yes it may be in a 5 gallon bucket and is leaning over daily despite the wire attached to the ceiling but it is a huge reminder.
It appeared one day with a knock at our front door. The tree lacks my normal fanciness of ornaments and is decorated with homemade paper chains and lights because I lack the desire to drag out a bunch of Christmas decorations. I dread the idea of fighting a toddler to not steal them but there it sits as a reminder of the true spirit of Christmas. For that I am beyond happy. This year is another year my girls get to value the idea that Christmas is not about getting an overabundance of toys. They understand that Christmas is about the gift of health, of life and being together. We have been forced to value the closeness of friends and appreciate the idea of loving one another during the good and bad times. Their wish for Christmas; having daddy home, won't come true this year but if he manages to call, I promise you that will mean more to my girls this year then any present anyone could buy them. They dread the holiday with him gone but we know he WILL come back home. This Holiday season we are so beyond lucky to have a daddy worth missing.
Merry Christmas to you all! Love those around you and may you find joy this holiday season.
