Stock Photos and Reunion Videos

So I spent time I didn’t have today watching sappy reunion videos on YouTube.

I got linked to one on facebook and that led to another of course and like some kind of sick addiction, I kept clicking those buttons like somehow I had both the time and the hydration to spare.

But as I sat afterwards, I thought back to the conversation I have had with many people about Internet reality.

Have you seen the website It’s Like They Know Us?

If you haven’t, go there now.It will open a new window, go ahead.

Hilarious, right?  Because while having a baby is beautiful and wonderful in many senses, it is also horrible, messy and sometimes terribly, terribly painful.

So is everything in life.  Everything.

And so the reason we lash out at things like unrealistic photos of women in white pants on their periods playing on beige carpeting with perfectly clean toddlers is that it hide the messy.

Not just the literal mess, because holy crap this is what my son looked like the last time we were in public.

But perfect Internet photos also hide the other mess.

The real mess.

Stock mom and newborn photos hide what 72 hours of labour, more stitches in places you cant see that anyone should have, a terrified husband and a baby in the NICU when you haven’t even had time to sleep.  Ripping your stitches walking to the incubator at 2 am and hiding your exhausted tears in the breast pump room so the nurses won’t see because you’re afraid they’ll think you can’t cut it.

And stock couple photos hide the 8am screaming matches, dirty looks and those times when you were genuinely scared that faith and good intentions just weren’t going to be enough.

Those stock parenting photos are the worst, hiding messy kids, forgotten lunches, the time they drank from the sippy cup that had been under the couch for a week and when you wake up wet next to a child who crawled in your bed while you were sleeping and peed against your stomach.

Well, friends, after talking to some friends who are not connected to the military, I’ve learned that is a little of what those Reunion videos do.

Years ago when I was in the airport waiting for my husband who was coming home on a mid-tour leave, I watched another couple doing the same.

Her toddler was with her and when her husband saw them, he ran up to scoop up his little boy.

And his little boy….. he ran behind his mom and cried.

My heart instantly broke.  The soldier’s face fell and his mom looked devastated.  The truth was this little boy didn’t recognize his dad and he was scared of this man who was trying to play with him.  He was overwhelmed with emotions and had probably been told for weeks to look forward to this and in the end, couldn’t cope.

I looked at the people who had all stopped, hoping to capture this reunion for themselves.  They had all quickly turned away.  And this young family, they were left trying to find out what went wrong.

Nothing went wrong it just didn’t go how it does on TV.


Life is messy. 

The truth is that my mixed feelings about viral reunion videos is that for the rest of the world they are presenting an aspect of the military for them to see.  For many, it’s the only aspect of military family life they will ever be exposed to.

And just like a stock photo pretends to tell us what parenting looks like, it pretends to show a non-military world what deployments look like.

But both fall short.

Homecomings are not our story.  

The preparations, the farewells.  The fear, the anger.  Depending on the deployment, maybe emails or skype dates.  In our case, in the past it’s always been just occasional satellite phone calls.

I still remember the ones that ended in the sound of rockets and dead air.

The fights when you are so sick at home of doing the things you TOLD HIM to do before he left.  The tears on what should be happy moments when you connect the fact that your spouse is missing it.  Even those rare occasions when starfish on the bed gets old.

And then there are reunions.  Sometimes the homecoming itself goes perfectly.  Just like you see featured on YouTube.  There’s happy tears and hugs.  Everyone is ecstatic.


Sometimes the homecoming goes wrong.  Sometimes the children are uncomfortable, overtired for a 3am flight or just plain don’t remember their parent after months and months of missing them.

Sometimes the spouse who has been gone doesn’t want anyone that close to them.
Sometime the spouse who has been at home doesn’t know what to do.
Sometimes the spouse at home doesn’t show up.

But when the film stops rolling, that’s what perfect reunion videos miss.

The expectation is that all is right in the world when you are reunited.

But the truth is that while reunions can be magical, reintegration is messy.

Reintegration is when you try and work together again after 6 months or 15 months.  It’s when you renegotiate what it means to be a team.  When you give and take roles.

Reintegrations are when you both find yourself sitting with tears on your face on the floor of the kitchen wondering if you are the only ones who feel this way, since this isn’t how we thought it would be.

Reintegration is a mixing of home and war.  It’s trying to piece together two very different lives.  It hurts and it takes time and it’s not what you think it will be if you only ever watch it on TV.

Every time I watch those reunion videos where dad jumps out of the cake, or runs from behind Santa, or comes into the classroom, I see that little boy hide behind his mom and I wonder how many videos ended when that was the reaction.

I bet those videos never made YouTube.

And I almost wish they did, because there’s nothing wrong with homecoming videos (says the woman still dehydrated from the last 5 she watched), and I can’t say I would never film one, because I just might.
I just can’t help but think that if we show the good, we should also show the messy.

So nobody thinks that military life is all hugs and laughter.

So  no mom thinks she’s done something wrong when her child won’t hug daddy.

So no couples stare at each other across a room and think it has to be over, because no one else is this messy.

I can only speak for myself, but I am that messy, friends, and you are not alone.

Life is messy.
And mess is okay, even if it doesn’t get the same number of ‘likes’ on YouTube.

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