Reintegration and Red Flower Bowls

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.

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 return on the big screen and on our TVs.

At our home it’s always been a little quiet. Each reunion has been different, kids ages have changed, one involved a childbirth, one a scared toddler, another a newborn. We’ve been different people each time, too, with different experiences and expectations. I can only rely on past experience and try to guess a little what this time will look like, and I’ll never be able to know until the time comes.

Each has had its share of drama. Arguments. Nightmares.

The accidental elbow to the face when his half asleep brain can’t find his rifle in the bed.

Staring at each other, sitting on the floor of the kitchen, wondering if it is even possible to fit together again.

But most of the time reintegration has been a quiet dance.

Made up of “oh, we don’t drive that way anymore, it’s faster this way” and “she’s on the basketball team now, so she leaves an hour early” or “that hasn’t worked in months, you need to do it this way“.

Past the heartwarming videos of homecomings and surprises, there are a hundred conversations that no one makes movies about, and they sound a lot more like

And sometimes, sometimes it’s not okay. Those aren’t the right bowls. And we’re not the same people. And it takes so much time and effort, it takes more than just love to get through reintegration.

That’s right. I said more than ‘just’ love. Because love is nice place to start. But marriage in general takes more than love, it takes work. And fitting back into each other after months and months apart? That takes grace and compromise and held tongues and long conversations and patience and peace.

It takes a willingness by both of you to move the battle home and fight for your family.

Don’t get me wrong, we are excited, and will be fortunate and grateful to have yet another chance to say welcome home to our soldier retuning in one piece. Trust me when I say that at the tail end of a combat soldier’s 4th deployment, his family could never take that for granted.

But in a few days or weeks or so, when eventually my facebook and Twitter show signs of happy kids and a weary, relieved and complete family, there’s the authentic part I hope to show past all those happy photos.