Gotta Love A Man Who Can Drink A Juicebox With No Shame

In Canada, when a soldier serves 12 years of Service (you know, without getting in too much trouble or breaking any laws….) they get a medal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Forces_Decoration

It is called the CD.  Canadian Forces Decoration.  You don’t have to do anything beside  be a soldier for 12 years to get it (which, don’t get me wrong, is a pretty important!).  Once you recieve it, you even get to put a C.D. after your name on important documents.  Pretty fancy shmancy.

Needless to say (or this post would have no point but to bore you with military medal trivia), DH reached his 12 years last weekend.  That doesn’t mean he has the medal now, that will take however many months of paperwork and the like.  But, it means he is eligible.

12 years ago he walked into the Recruiting Center with his mom and dad, having completed his enlistment process while he was still in highschool and stood there just after his 18th birthday to make the final step… Swearing his Oath to the Queen and Country before shipping off to Basic Training.

October 8, 1999

And I remember it then, because I remember him then.

I didn’t get to go to the Swearing In.  It was for family only and I was just a girlfriend.  A highschool girlfriend, no less, I am sure that it was assumed the relationship would be short lived once he was actually out the door.

But I was there for everything else.  I was there the night before he got on the plane, sitting in a park by ourselves when he asked if I was going to wait for him and I cried.  Oh, how long 12 weeks sounded!

And so I waited.  It’s hard to remember the world before cellphones were big and texting was everywhere, but that world did involve him paying hundreds of dollars in bills from collect calls from him to my parents house.

Sure doesn’t seem like that was 12 years ago, but it was.  These years have had their share of foot-stomping fits of rage at the Army, at their plans and their change of plans and their lack of plans.
There’s been frustrations and stupid arguments and times when I was sure I.  Was.  Done.

While trying to clean out the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Crawlspace of Green Doom, I found myself reading letters from DH’s first tour.  (It wasen’t hard to find them, they were next to the paperwork for his baggage from 2002 and instructions for exercises that happened in 2000….sigh) I found one from another soldier who was back at home.  He wrote that he had talked to me and I had told him I was never doing this again and I was making DH get out and join the Police Force.  Beacuse we were having a baby and well, there can’t possibly be a way to raise a child like this….

Huh.

12 years later, when I debated writing this post because these 12 years aren’t really my accomplisment, they are his, I decided something.  My experiences have not been the same as his, I haven’t travelled the world or been to war.  But almost everything about the course of my life from then until now has had to do with his enlistment 12 years ago. So it’s his moment, but I’m going to celebrate it myself a little, too.  I don’t think he’ll mind.

And I wouldn’t have done them any other way.  It is what it is and we are who we are because of it.  So bring on the next 13 years.

I hope that even as I am more and more proud with every promotion and medal and honour, that I never forget that I started off in love with this kid in his brand-spanking new DUs.  

Decemeber, 1999 coming home from Basic Training.

12 years later.  With a juice box.  Because growing up is optional 🙂 We plan the way we want to live, but only God makes us able to live it. Proverbs 15:9

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