Many years ago I stood with a few other spouses and I watched the bus drive off with our husbands for a combat deployment. I wasn’t naive as they thought, I had heard the whispers and rumors. Dh and I were 20, married less than a year. I was pregnant. He had no idea when he was coming back. Combine this with the reality that I was married to a soldier and everyone knows military marriages never end well… no one thought we had a chance. And when he came home that time, more than half a year later, dusty, battle worn and a whole lot more grown up, if not much older, than he had been when he left, we did struggle. We hurt each other. We had a baby and new home and we tried for a while but then we stopped trying because it was hard and we thought it would be easy. Somewhere in there he brought up the idea of leaving for selection for another unit and I told him he was welcome to do it. Single. We struggled, but somehow and by the grace of God, by the next tour I was still there. But the hard truth is that when I was saying goodbye that second time, those other wives I had stood with before? They weren’t there anymore. Their loss was weirdly hard for me, like it represented a collective failure of our community, an omen, an eventuality. And now after more than 16 years and 4 deployments, I can almost count on one hand the spouses I knew then that are still around now. Dh and I, we have no magic in us. There’s plenty of couples who are the same…
Today I cleaned the kitchen. This isn’t *that* shocking, I keep a relatively clean house, only because when my house is cluttered my head feels cluttered. But this morning, I had no intention of cleaning. When you live apart for half a year, or, say, more than half of the past 3 years, or huge chunks of an entire 14 year marriage, sometimes big things happen. Sometimes a couple grows apart, someone is unfaithful, someone wants to leave, can’t wait anymore or is just plain done. But other times, other times none of those things happen. You are still very much in love. You’ve never had the time, energy or even the smallest interest in an affair. You’re in this for life Instead something else creeps up when you don’t expect it. Turns out I got really comfortable alone. I made my own choices, my own decisions. If I wanted to leave at 8pm and go shopping, or skip the gym in the morning, or make grilled cheese for dinner all week, no one was there to say anything. Then he is home and I resent it. He is in my space. He has a voice in my decisions. He speaks up and sometimes he says things I don’t want to know or make judgements I am not interested in hearing. So things are tense. Adjusting is hard. I’m not fun to live with, and sometimes that means neither is he. Fuses are short. Sometimes one of us pushes it too far. This morning it was Dh, but that doesn’t mean it’s never me. It just wasn’t me this time. When both of us went to work this morning neither…
This week, Dh gets a new medal. It’s one every soldier gets, just for showing up for 12 years. Dh has 15.5 years in, but I just assumed it was like high school, it just takes some people a little longer to get there. Okay, no it’s actually just the army who occasionally forgets about things. Especially if no one reminds them…. but it’s more fun to explain it the other way. Now, if I was to give you a detailed list of the people who care about Dh’s medals, it would look like this: 1. Me. …. I know. It’s extensive. The truth is, Dh doesn’t much concern himself with what medals he has. It doesn’t bother him that with 4 deployments, he has a total of 2 medals on his chest. It doesn’t bother him that he’s less than 2 weeks from that 2nd bar on his Afghanistan medal, so he will forever look like he’s done less time there than he has. Or that he’s been home months from his 4th deployment and isn’t holding his breath that he’ll see that medal anytime soon. And when he stands on Remembrance Day next to a soldier who commands all the civilian attention due to a rack of medals that actually points to much less experience than Dh has, instead of bitter he’s mostly just happy he’s deflected any attention. In fact, he completely laughed it off when on his 3rd deployment to Afghanistan they gave him a camera to take pictures of the medals ceremony, because he already had the medal and they had…
A few weeks, maybe days after Dh left I found these bowls. My kitchenware is eclectic. I don’t have a set, instead I have bowls and plates and mugs that I chose separately. For Dh’s sake I chose all the same bowls, all the same plates… but the mugs don’t match the dinner plates, and nothing matches the desert bowls. So I’m always on the hunt for ones that I like. And back in October, I found these ones. Dark colored with a big red flower on each, they match the colors of my great room and so I added them to the collection. That was 6 months ago. They are now part of my routine, they hold my breakfast oatmeal and soup for dinner. They have a place in the cupboard. They fit in here now. It’s down to days/weeks now before Dh will return. It occurs to me this morning he’s never seen these bowls. And I have never told him about them. Why would I? Occasional rushed phone calls and emails that share the more important information over 6 months, it’s just one of those things that doesn’t come up. And yet how strange it must be to return home and see them there, in a space they weren’t before, part of a routine that is no longer familiar. The media often paints reintegration as a terrifying balance of happiness and rage, shows like Homeland reach to the extreme and other movies with returning soldiers often focus on panic attacks,anger, fear. There’s huge issues that certainly happen, confronting infidelity, financial misuse, PTSD, traumatic physical injury. Dramatic scenes play out on the soldier’s…
Usually when I’m asked to speak somewhere or write something, it’s to give insight into the lives of Canadian Forces families to a culture that doesn’t know a whole lot about them. Or what they do know, they see on the news or on Lifetime, a jaded, spun and less than realistic portrayal of a life. Many many days, the military plays very little role in my day to day activities. I get up, I go to a gym in my (civilian) community. I get my kids off to (a civilian run) school. I go to work. I happen to work on the base part time, so that part is a little skewed. But then I come home. I take my kids to Jiu Jitsu at another off base gym. I clean up and watch Netflix. I start over. So while the undertones of my life have been set by my spouse’s employment (I live where we were told, not where we choose. I sleep alone though I’ve been married 14 years), for those mundane daily activities we’re not any different. We’re average. My spouse, though in a combat trade and on his 4th deployment, has never been wounded, emotionally or physically. We walk through life like everyone else. Except we don’t. Not always. And there are times of year where the military stops being one of those quiet sideline participants and starts screaming for center stage like a tantrum throwing toddler. That’s the season of life we are in now. And I could yell from the rooftops that the military is ‘just a…
So with Dh coming up on his HLTA in the next month or so, we are reflecting on past leave experiences and I thought I’d share a bit on how to make your very on HLTA a disaster. Because here at She Is Fierce I like to be encouraging… or at least be a shining example of what not to do. This is Dh’s 4th deployment but his first did not have a home leave, so this is our 3rd HLTA. (By the way, that ridiculous acronym is brought to you by Home Leave Travel Allowance, and is just an armyese way of saying his mid – deployment vacation.) I can’t speak for Air Force or Navy but most (not all) Army deployment have a 16 day HLTA anywhere from 6 weeks in to 6 week before the end, depending on which rotation they get. You would think it would be all sunshine and rainbows. I mean, you haven’t seen them in a long time and your being given approximately 2 weeks to spend ‘relaxing’ right? Everything will look like a thousand YouTube videos of cammo hugs and rainbow unicorn kittens…. Ya. You COULD keep assuming that. Or learn from our mistakes: 1. Raise Your Expectations He’s going to get off that plane and you’ll jump in his arms. You’ll instantly love being around him 24/7. Your children will be on their best possible behavior, everyone will get along and he will immediately and completely readjust to life at home. Maybe. Or maybe the first hug will be awkward. The kids will be scared or angry with him for being away. One of you wants to jump into bed and the…
The last several months have been seeped with attempts to win fear. First there was the incident in Quebec where military members were run down in their own country and one lost his life. Scary and heartbreaking, but seemed like a one-off incident. It was a little easier to breath after that one because maybe, maybe that coward behind his car was the only one. Then there was the shooting in Ottawa. Another soldier, this time gunned down by a madman who rushed into our Parliament. The country took notice. It was on everyone’s mind, everyone lips. It was around that time I was sending Dh on his 4th deployment. Everything was standing still. The memories of sending him to Afghanistan after 9/11 started to creep back in, reminding me of the time when the reasons seemed more obvious than they have become. After the years where deployments have started to blend together (“wait, was that during your 2nd tour or your 3rd?“), years where the quiet complacency that can only be found in countries like ours where war and terror are far removed from our normal, clouded the resolve that had once been clear. When I see the news and hear the coffee shop/break room chatter, I want it to feel like it used to. Removed. That while devastating to some, not life altering to me. Selfishly, so selfishly, I want to be one of those people in line at Starbucks who analyze every political talking point of these events with the ease of those who have never watched a bus pull away. I want to be one of those college students on the train who theorize conspiracies and…
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…
It’s been years since Dh and I were with our parents/siblings for Christmas Day. At a past posting, we would see them sometime during the season, usually between Christmas and New Years, but Christmas Day was generally spent with just us, or with friends. We could have driven the 4 hours or so and spent Christmas Day with them if we chose to, but we found the Christmas Day trip made Christmas hectic and cluttered, and we chose to instead stay home. The last few years where we’ve been, parents are no longer a 4 hours drive but instead a 4 hour plane trip away. We haven’t taken that trip home, partly for the cost of it ($4500 for the 5 of us to be somewhere else over the holidays just isn’t in the budget), but partly for the same reason we didn’t drive the 4 hours in year past. We like our home, sitting in our bed Christmas morning opening stockings, making pancakes in our own kitchen, sitting under our own tree later passing out gifts. I’m not big on days and traditions. Some years we’ve put on a big dinner for friends and/or much loved military ‘stragglers’ without anywhere to be. Other years we’ve brought pot luck to friends homes. These last two years, we’ve gone to the movies and had Pogos for dinner. So clearly, I’m pretty lazy laid back about Christmas. This year, it will just be the kids and I over the holidays. We have the opportunity to spend Boxing Day “Christmas” with more extended family who are only an hour or so away, which is amazing and…
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 month 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. So we set out. A few rules we made: 1. Our Sunday dinner guests might be people we know, but they had to be new to our table. We have great friends. These had to be new friends. 2. Our Sunday meals needed to be drama free. I promised to make something all would eat (which is a feat in a house with 2 picky eaters and an autistic child with Selective Eating Disorder) but in return, all had to agree to put it in their mouths. 3. Our Sunday best went on the table. Whether we had a young…
