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Invitations: A Deployment Project. Update #2

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Here in my house, pity parties are not allowed to last the night.

Sure,
it’s okay sometimes to sit with your glass of wine and your bag ‘o
chocolate and moan because you’re doing it on your own again, or because
you’re little family won’t be complete at Christmas, or because not one
child will have dad home for their birthday this year…..

but then you pick your bloated, wine filled ass off that couch and you pull yourself together.

Life
moves on.  And sometimes pulling yourself together just involves enough
energy for yoga pants and wiping the grime from the toilet before
someone thinks there’s a frat house using your bathroom.

But it’s still progress.

In my house, we move forward because experience has taught me nothing gets better if you’re waiting for the ideal moment to try.

So last fall when Dh left I decided we wouldn’t be sitting on our butt waiting for
community to magically appear and make this 4th deployment easier.

We were going to make community.

Inspired by Sarah Smiley and her book, we started our Invitations Deployment Project.

Each Sunday, we invite someone new for dinner.

Each Sunday, we have a new chance to expand our community.



You can see how our first month went here.

The first week in December, I already had Christmas decorations up.

I love to decorate for Christmas, and without Dh to pull back the reigns a little, I can get going pretty early.  So by the time General Dean Milner and his beautiful wife Katrin came to our door I had already strung the lights, hung the garland and decorated the tree.

They brought wine.

I was going to need some.

I had met Dean and Katrin at events with Dh’s work before.  General Milner is the Commander if the 1st Canadian Division Headquarters.  He was the final Canadian Commanding Officer in Afghanistan before we ended our major contribution there.  He has a strong presence, of someone who is comfortable with a room and getting things done.

Conveniently, my home is rank free, and there are no troops here.  So instead of sitting with ‘just’ General Milner, we had the chance to spend a wonderful night chatting with another military family, one a little farther along on their journey with amazing stories of postings and deployments, of parenting and their own personal challenges and victories.

After dinner I put out a kit for a Gingerbread carousal.  We dove in, and it was, well as fun as it was lopsided.  There’s a lot you learn about a person when they are trying to stick gingerbread walls together.

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Now, it’s important to understand that I had been warning the kids not to touch the little bowls of the candy decoration all afternoon.

“Don’t even think about it!”  As I shoo their hand away “those are for decorating!”

Why is it important to know that?

Because while we were putting up the carousal foundation, our guest grabbed a candy from the bowl and ate it.



So Monster…..smacked him.

Thankfully, Dh still has a job.

The next Sunday, our dinner hour was taken up by not one dinner guest, but instead 10 of them.  Age 7 and under.  It was Monster’s birthday party!

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We had (of course) a Ninja Turtles Themed party.  We made Ninja Turtles Christmas ornaments (thank you pintrest) and had Ninja Turtle Cupcakes (no thanks, Pintrest, all your ideas were wayyyy above my league).

About 20 minutes into the party, a surprise guest came.

One of our past dinner guests, PJ, came bearing gifts and stuck around to hang out with the partiers.

Now, the poor guy is in his early 20s and I was on my own with a dozen screaming 7 year olds.  So he may not be having any children for a good long while (sorry PJ’s fiance).

I think he assumed other parents would be there, but what he didn’t realize is after a certain age, parents just start kicking kids out the door of the car for birthday parties and enjoying their hour or 2 of freedom.

So PJ and I helped with crafts and served cupcakes.

The kids started arguing about who was oldest.  Finally Monster said “My mom is oldest!” 

Then another kid said “what about that guy?”

To which Freckles replied “he’s WAY younger than my mom.” (Thanks, kid).

Then a little girl next to me asks “So…. are you and him………?”

Now, I’m not sure what ……. means to a seven year old, but while I was trying to think of a response to that, Monster piped up

“No, but my dad is gone right now.  So…..”

Sigh.

This is how I envision some rides home having gone:

Parent: “So, were you a good boy/girl and listened to his mom and dad?”

Kid: “Well, his dad’s gone but it’s okay because there was a guy there that comes over when he’s away.”

That can only end well, right?

When everyone was gone Drama asked:

“I know PJ likes Ninja Turtles a lot (this is not an exaggeration, his sleeve tattoo including all 4 plus Shredder and Casey Jones speaks for itself), but why was he here for the party? Did he know it was just kids?”

Monster replied “because he’s my friend and that’s what friends do, they come to your parties.”

The next week saw a new guest, a local radio personality and news director.

While I have heard his voice a lot since he is on the station I usually listen to, I had never met Matt in person.

As we sat to eat, at one point the topic came up of what it was like growing up with Rheumatoid Arthritis.

As such a positive person, this was not the focal point of any conversation, just simply a fact.  One that had clearly been accepted and overcome with strength and perseverance.  We decorated cookies (because I make my guests work for dessert) and laughed about music tastes and radio station choices, about provinces and weather and journalism.

After dinner ended and he’d left for home, my kids asked

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“What’s Rolaid Arthrigis.”

We googled it together, even though I knew, so they could look up all they wanted and understand as best they could something they did not have to experience.

Freckles said “this sounds like it hurts a lot.

Then Drama said “you can’t tell that when you hear him on the radio.

I said “when someone meets you, can they tell that your heart is sad sometimes because your dad is gone?”

And there was a realization in their eyes and their hearts that I couldn’t have taught them by reading a book or taking a class.



That in their big community, everyone is fighting their own battles, and we usually can’t see what they are just by looking at them.

That there is so much to learn about each person, that there’s a value in taking the time to really get to know those you interact with and share in their challenges and their victories.

That when you invest in your community and the people in it, you learn about their strength, and their resiliency.  About their ability to lead an entire Division that is paralleled only by their ability to lead 3 sugar high kids to create a gingerbread masterpiece.  Their ability to flourish in different cities, provinces and countries with quiet dignity.  Their ability to be more than an illness trying to hold them back and instead be that voice that now causes my kids to say “that’s OUR FRIEND” every time they hear him on the radio.

Their willingness to be the coolest and tallest friend at a 7 year old kid’s birthday party.



So far in 7 weeks of Deployment Project dinners, community has been the best part of the lesson.  

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