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…
Christmas. I love Christmas. I love the spirit of the year, the extra kindness people bestow on each other regardless of their religious affiliation. I love the atmosphere of stores and the overall happiness of the time of year. But increasingly, I’ve noticed something else that comes out at Christmastime. It seems that more and more, Christmas is the most entitled time of the year. Whether it’s free Christmas gifts or parties or events or childcare, within the military community when it comes to what is offered, it never seems to be enough. I’m not talking about business’ offering discounts or free items to military families. While I feel uncomfortable and unworthy most times people want to give me something like that, I recognize that a gift is a gift and many times it’s at the benefit of the person offering it. If someone wants to show their appreciation in that way, while I don’t always think it’s deserved, I do believe in honouring their generosity. What I am referring to, though, is the services provided to military families through the various agencies who are mandated to provide those services. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, as I’ve seen people with sometimes completely valid and sometimes unbelievably entitled arguments on both sides of the issue of what they deserve, and I’ve realized something. Free things don’t neccesarily build resiliency. Resiliency is built in a strong and supportive community. One that knows and looks out for each other. One who’s members know when to admit they need help and have people they can ask. Resiliency is found in communities that are…
“So, who’s *your* support network?” I was talking to another military spouse in church and after explaining the ways I had meddled got involved with the various services during this deployment to support other spouses, this wasn’t the question I was expecting. At this stage in my life, I enjoy being the nosy overbearing support for other spouse’s. I’ve spent more than my share of time being the one supported over the years. I try to be the one to organize the events, to contact the lady on the message board who feels alone, to bring a meal or a babysitter or an ear to someone who’s struggling. I like ensuring that someone is getting their snow cleared or that there’s a regular coffee time for others to make new friends. These things make my heart happy. They are why I run a Spouse’s Night Out group, why I drive onto base a couple times a week from my house 20 minutes away. For the most part, they are why I run this blog. “Who’s YOUR support network?” Well, I don’t really need one, do I? This is our 4th deployment. I mean, if there was an emergency I’m pretty loud empowered. If I thought about it I know who I could call if I needed to. I can make Christmas happen, I can plan an HLTA, I can attend school meetings and work a Power of Attorney and sell a house. I know my acronyms and I can yell at deal with Brookfield. I know when it’s free to send packages and I know…
I’ve written a lot of things about Remembrance Day. So have many other people, and we all have opinions. Whether it`s to make it a Stat holiday, to stop people from decorating for Christmas or it`s about how or when it`s okay to wear a poppy, there`s a lot of talk about how it should be observed. And never without controversy. We all know there`s that ONE STORE every year who says or does something offensive to those selling poppies. Whether it`s Target or Cabelas or whatever other store of the week, there`s a focus, new battle line drawn every year. Everyone has a different opinion. Even among veterans. I know a WWII vet who likes to decorate for Christmas as soon as possible. Even before Halloween if he could But I know there are others who feel like it should wait until the 12th. Then there are those who feel strongly that the 11th should be a holiday so that families can mark the day at ceremonies together, while the flip side is the concern that it will be just that, a ‘holiday’ and people won’t bother teaching their kids by taking them to a ceremony. My Dh is very insistent that a poppy not be worn after the ceremony on November 11th. Tradition says that it is left at the cenotaph and to him, it is symbolic of taking that torch and moving forward as opposed to mourning forever. But I’ve met vets who would wear one all year long. It’s dangerous to speak for veterans or the military community because it makes the assumption they all are of the same opinion. And like any community, that is rarely the case…
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…
So this week, I was inspired. Having read before about Sarah Smiley’s book “Dinner with the Smileys“, I was intrigued about the idea of inviting community members to join us for dinner or adventure during my husband’s current deployment. Our last posting and the deployments we endured at it were made bearable by the people we knew. The community that supported us. And while there are people here who have welcomed us so wonderfully, it is a much quieter place. Our home is not the open door of activity it had been when we were living in our old community. But who’s fault was that? Dh has big shoes to fill and we would never replace him. He couldn’t be replaced. He is their dad, invincible and bigger than life in their eyes. As it should be. He adores them and they adore him. Nothing will ever change that. But there is a chance here to fill his temporary absence in my kid’s lives with the wisdom, support and encouragement of their community. So the kids and I brainstormed. We had an opportunity here to learn about our community and grow in our relationships in it. There was a chance to learn, about occupations, about people, about supporting each other and making connections. And since even here on this blog I’ve written about filling those empty chairs with the people around you looking to fill one, it was time to step up. With dad away, we have many months of time that we could be intentional about inviting people from our commmunity to join us. Who would we start with? So we made…
*Disclaimer: the dates of these events and information of this post, including the date of publication, has been changed or delayed for security purposes* Today I felt the change in my face when you told me. We were at the gym and you grabbed me on a quick second, I know you’d been waiting all day and this was the first time I had seen you since the morning. You said ‘I’m going‘ and my eyes blinked and hardened. I swallowed and I know my entire expression changed. It changed to be expressionless, that was the entire design and my superpower. The ability to remove expression and emotion and take in what I needed to hear without drama or fear. I have a lot of practice with it. * Today as I walked out of my evening class my phone confirmed what I already knew. We were going down this road for the 4th time. I stared at it a while. Someone behind me asked where you were. They joked with me about how eager you were to get out and do your job. I smiled and agreed that it was who you were, I joked that you were pretty lucky that I loved you enough to put up with it. I was laughing when I got in the car. When I pulled out of the parking lot I was already crying. But only until I pulled onto our street so the kids wouldn’t see. * Today you prepared your uniform for the changes you would need while you are gone. We went for coffee and I made you a list of what I need done before you left. It’s all business of home improvements, Powers of Attorney and snow shovels. This…
I am not a Family Photo kind of person. I don’t think we’ve ever had them done, honestly. Once we were in a magazine article about military families that they sent a photographer for, and that’s our one professional family photo in 13 years. We have a handful of shots of our family together, taken by friends and family or random strangers that we ask along the way. But for the most part, I’m not a picture person in general. We don’t have photos of our family up in the house. I forget to even take pictures a lot, my children will hopefully have amazing memories of their childhood, because I just haven’t documented all that much of it. That’s probably for the best, really. We’ve never had pre-deployment photos, or reunion photographers. There’s a couple shots from the 3rd reunion a friend took without us knowing, and I love them. But I’ve never gone out of my way to have them taken. Part of me is just lazy. I have all the lame reasons, like I don’t like the way I look or I’ll do it when I lose 5lbs, when my face clears up, when my hair is less ragey…. but there’s a part of me is mostly being a little silly. Maybe a lot silly. Before Canadian soldiers leave for deployment, they have a photo taken of them. Most call it their ‘death photo‘, though many have tried to redeem the photos themselves, the name sticks. I’ve never seen Dh’s. He’s never…
When I was 18 we were sitting in this park by Dh’s parent’s house. I was a couple months into my first year in college and Dh was leaving in the morning for St. Jean, Quebec where he would start Basic Training for the Canadian Army. The drama. Oh, friends, the drama of the 2 of us, me blubbering, sitting on the blanket at our makeshift picnic at the park, terrified to be without him, completely lacking in independence or maturity. A mess. I was a mess. There’s a picture, I can’t find it. That’s probably for the best. The next morning his parents dropped him off at the recruiting center and he took a bus to the airport and off he went. His mom had his room turned into a craft room before that plane landed. Without cellphones we racked up ludicrous collect call long distance bills. He made just over $500 paycheck. Most of it paid for the phone bill. Then he couldn’t use the phone and I thought that might be the worst thing that could ever, possibly happen. Ever. Oh. To be 18 again. When he left, it was no surprise. He’s the 5th generation in his family to enlist. He wanted to be a police officer he thought. That meant go to college or join the army to earn the life experience needed to apply, so he joined the army because he didn’t want to go back to school. 3 years. He signed that initial 3 year contract. He told me when it was up, he’s apply to the police and if he was still too young at 21, he’d sign another 3 years and…
