End of an Army Era

Today was my husband's last Army drill.

The official retirement date on his orders is the 15th, but today was supposed to be his retirement ceremony. That bit of formal recognition of 21 years of military service was canceled by the current pandemic along with everything else. It was supposed to happen between 11:30 and 12:30 central time, as our handy online calendar notified us this morning.

"Happy" Memorial Day

I have a friend for whom wishes of a "Happy Memorial Day" or a "Happy Veterans' Day" really grate on her nerves.  These are not bubbly greeting card holidays.  They are meant to be secular versions of true "holy days" used to contemplate sacrifices made on our behalf.  For many they are simply a chance to enjoy a little time off, but my son finds it amusing that people could overlook their intended meaning and usually takes a moment to try and suppress laughter while saying, "Hey, Mom!  'Happy' Memorial Day!"

I don't usually write posts on Memorial Day.  I felt obligated to do so when I was a blogger for Babble and their only resident military family voice, and this post on the subject still expresses how I feel most accurately.  But I decided I will take a moment today to acknowledge what things have changed, for better or worse, since I wrote that Memorial Day post back in 2010.

Tragedy Limits

I didn't know anything about the terrorist attacks in Paris until late last evening.  I was at work until almost 7:00 and not in touch with the news at all.  I caught something vague about the attacks on Facebook when I opened my laptop to plug it in to the TV so we could watch something on Netflix for movie night.  When I went to bed around 10:00 and checked my computer once more, that was when I realized the extent of what had happened.

I experienced that sad ache that occurs when seeing tragedy in the news.  I can't tell if we're feeling that with greater frequency anymore, or if I've simply been alive long enough that such stories are having a cumulative effect.  My first thought was for the people who are now dealing with unexpected loss, and next for people who needlessly died in fear.

I hate the senselessness of events like this one.  I am sad for victims of natural disasters who suffer great loss as well, but pointless stunts like this where people are the instigators of the suffering of others is also infuriating.  I'm sad, but I'm also angry.  I wish those feelings mixed together weren't so familiar.  I don't want to form opinions and make decisions based on fear or anger.  I remember after 9/11 wanting someone to hurt for what they did.  I don't want to feel that way again.  Revenge is never good policy.

As I was reading news reports coming into the BBC site, it suddenly hit me that my brother was supposed to be in Paris this weekend.

Do Something Real

This post may come off as a bit snarky.  It's not intended to be.  It's hard to explain some levels of annoyance without it sounding churlish, and I don't ever mean to mock someone who is being sincere in their expressions.  But you can't do better until you know better, and this is my space for sharing what I know, so here goes.

I am irritated with empty gestures on Veteran's Day.  The latest one is a "green light campaign" where people are supposed to screw in a green light bulb to let veterans know... I'm not sure what.  That they are thought of?  In what way?  Don't flags already do that?  Are we done spending money on yellow ribbon magnets and we need to spend money pointlessly on something else?

Three Plus Two

One of my original editors at Babble when I used to blog there (before the site was bought by Disney and turned into a useless collection of bland click bait) recently invited me to submit an essay for her current parenting site Mom.me.  She was looking for a parenting piece with a military theme for Memorial Day.  At the time we were in the middle of watching two kids for a friend of ours who was off doing two weeks of service with the National Guard.  I had started a blog post about it, so I just reworked that into an essay she could use.

If you'd like to read it, the piece is up on Mom.me already.

I've also recorded it for the local radio show Lake Effect for air on Memorial Day.  (I'll post a link when that becomes available.)  UPDATE:  My piece is at the 46:20 mark.

Mom.me was also kind enough to name me among their favorite military parenting bloggers.  It's a list I'm honored to be a part of.

Although, thankfully, my own personal experiences of late have been very dull on the military front and I hope it stays that way.  Ian recently finished his job as a military history teacher for ROTC at Marquette and is now with a unit that specializes in training other units in mechanical jobs, so it's not a group ever likely to get deployed.  Of course, when I ask him to say those words out loud to make me feel better, he can't quite do it.  He says our current situation with wars winding down and the Army weeding people out using things like renewed tattoo restrictions makes the odds of his being sent anywhere very low, but his actual position anywhere has no relation to what he can be asked to do.

It's been interesting looking at my life from a military mom perspective again, however tangential that status may seem now.  I'm amazed how even stressful events can fade given enough time and new distractions.  I was reviewing some of my old posts from during the last deployment and was surprised what I'd forgotten.*  For instance, Mona used to panic every time I dropped Aden off at school.  I had the very clear sense that from her point of view we had dropped her dad off somewhere and he never came back, and reducing her family down further to just her and pregnant me was unacceptable.  She did not let her sister go without a fight every morning.  Until I reread those words on my old blog I had forgotten the intensity of it.  It was a good reminder.

Week of Crazy

I've been really hoping to get to my last road trip post, but this week has been too weird.  Ian had to go do Army stuff out of state, and my parents unexpectedly had to push back the day they could come out and help so I had to scramble to figure out school pick-ups and meals and the like. 

It's all been fine.  I'm much better about asking for help than I used to be.  My kids were so young during the first deployment, and we were so new to the neighborhood, that we really didn't know other parents yet.  I've always had kind neighbors, but it's hard feeling like a burden.  Now I'm not too proud to put out a distress call and say, "Who can grab my kids from school and bring them to me at the violin store?  Who can drive them home from choir while I'm at rehearsal?  Who wants to help?" 

And people want to help.  Which shouldn't surprise me because I like to help.  I don't know why it seems so wrong to give others the chance to do something for me that I wouldn't mind doing for them.  In any case, I'm grateful to everyone who pitched in to keep our lives running along with Ian absent.  Looking forward to having him home soon.

But now I have to get moving again.  More later.  In the meantime, in honor of Ian's Army stuff here is a Mold-A-Rama tank sent to us by a generous reader:


Happy Daylight Savings Nonsense!

When Dad's Away the Musicals Play

Ian's off doing military classes out of state for a couple of weeks.

The downside of this is all the juggling I have to do.  When you design your life around two parents in the picture and you pluck one of them away (the stay-at-home one, no less) you have to rely on babysitters and people to cover you at work during school pickups and the like.  I'm suddenly doing all the laundry and all the cooking and all the cleaning and (nearly) all of the dog walking, etc.  But it's not bad.

The main thing I struggle with when we have these mini-deployment flashbacks is my stress level.  I get impatient with the kids when I have to do everything alone all the time, and I'm more prone to yell.  A few hours after I took Ian to the airport I snapped at Aden because she only has one chore--to empty the dishwasher--and she never remembers to do it.  Then I apologized because I'm supposed to be the grownup and yelling makes me feel stupid.  I resolved that damn it, I could make it two weeks without yelling, and I told Aden if she would try harder I would try harder, and so far so good.  What I've been doing is leaving her a note on her breakfast plate in the morning so she'll remember to empty the dishwasher before she eats (which she really needs to do because Mona's chore is to fill up the dishwasher again after meals).  The most recent note read:  "Knock knock.  Who's there?  The dishwasher.  The dishwasher who?  EMPTY ME!" So it makes her smile and I don't have to yell and life is better.  My hope is that she'll get into a habit of looking forward to finding the note, which may turn into a habit of simply remembering to empty the damn dishwasher.

That's been the height of the drama around here and that is nothing so I can't complain.  I like having more time at home, I'm getting things organized, and the kids are helpful but they miss Ian.  I miss Ian.  I have trouble sleeping when he's not home.

But there is an actual upside to Ian's absence when we must do without him.  We watch movies he would never be able to sit through.  Namely musicals.

Gearing Up

Tomorrow I'm running in Milwaukee's version of the Amazing Race--a scavenger hunt challenge like the one on TV but just around Milwaukee.  I am not really...what's the word?  Ready.

I was feeling fine until I got the final update from organizers giving us the address of the starting line.  There is an address, a map, and a photo of the building, and I still have no idea where it is.  Can you imagine when they are trying to obscure a location from me how I will fare?  Yeah.

My original thought when entering this race was that it would be fun to do with my husband.  We have complementary skill sets, so I always figured we'd be good at that kind of thing.  He never gets lost, understands bus routes, he's clever, and is familiar with parts of the city that I am not.  I am good at talking to strangers, like puzzles, and anyplace that might hire a string quartet for a wedding I've been inside of.  We have such a tag team approach to parenting that we don't get to do things together outside of the house as often as I'd like, so when I heard a local radio story several weeks back about the race I thought it would be like an all day date.  We checked our schedules, I got my assistant to cover for me at the store, and hired a babysitter.  We had no illusions about winning, it was just going to be a nice day out together, seeing our city and having fun.

But then the Army called.  The Army takes Ian away on my birthday.  The Army takes Ian away on our anniversary.  Apparently the Army has decided to come after just plain old fun days out now, because Ian is at Ft McCoy all weekend.

So!  I put out a call for alternates and got responses that ranged from "hell no" to "I'll be in Germany" to "I suppose if you absolutely can't find anyone...." and eventually my friend Linda said, "Why not?"

Linda is great.  She's the artistic director of the Milwaukee Mandolin Orchestra, and one of the funniest most interesting people I know.  We will have a great time.  We will lose!  But we will have a great time.  Her smart phone will be more of an asset to our team than I will, but that's okay.  I'll bring treats or something.

I actually had T-shirts made for us with both the violin store and mandolin orchestra logos on them, plus our names embroidered on the backs.  They look nice.  The name of our team is "Second Place" because that way no matter how we do we will be Second Place.  (And the worse we do the funnier that gets, so we're all set.) 

My biggest concern at the moment is my foot.  I seem to have plantar fasciitis and it's creating a lot of pain in my left heel.  I've been limping around a lot for months and it finally hit me a week ago that I was signed up for a RACE where I might need my FEET so I should maybe do something about it.  I've had this same foot pain before and it's one of those things where you fix it and then slowly revert to old habits and it returns.

My bad habit?  I'm attracted to crappy shoes.  I like those simple flat Keds-type sneakers with no arch support.  And they damage my feet, but I keep forgetting about that part.  So I picked up some decent running shoes and they are helping, but I'm tempted to go out and get a spare pair that are maybe a little tighter, except I know that's stupid to get new shoes and wear them in a race without breaking them in.  Hm.  (And you know why I eventually revert back to my bad habit?  Because running shoes are so impossibly ugly anymore I can't take it.  They look like strange cartoon space ships and make me feel stupid.)

The plan today is to charge my phone, gather things like bus tickets (yes we can use the bus) and a water bottle and whatever else might be useful into my backpack, and hope it doesn't rain too much tomorrow.  The weather is supposed to be nasty and cold, which means we will have on coats that cover up our cool new T-shirts, but we'll still have our Korinthian Violins caps, so that's something.

It will be fun!  Just hanging out with Linda will be fun even if we never find anything.  Wish us luck!

Fancy Accomplished! (Babble)

I went to the military ball and I did not wear yoga pants.  It took days of shopping and searching but I finally found a dress.

Two, actually.  In the Third Ward area of Milwaukee there are a few cute little dress shops, and in one boutique there was a single dress that fit me, but the pattern on the fabric wasn’t right for the occasion.  I’ve decided to go back and buy it anyway because now that I know just how hard it is for me to find a decent dress that fits I should grab it while I can so that way I will know I have two dresses to choose from in my closet if I need something.

Shopping in the boutiques was funny because my size 12 to 14 self was so big there, looking through the size 4 dresses, but the salesladies were all so sweet.  When I say there was one dress that fit me in that store, I mean it was the only thing labeled ‘large’ and it was of a stretchy, forgiving material that worked on me.  But the salesperson wanted me to have options so she handed me a couple of other cute things to try.  One was labeled a size six, and the other an eight.  I looked at her like she was delusional, and she said, “Oh, just try them anyway, you never know.”  But you know what I know?  I am not a six.  It was like trying to get one of Mona’s outfits on, which was kind of hilarious.  Either that salesgirl was paying me some kind of ‘but you look like you could wear a six!’ compliment, or she really couldn’t fathom a size six was small for some people.  Anyway, I’m going back for the one large dress when I have a minute.

The place where I got the dress I wore to the mil ball was called Lela.  The salesperson found several dresses for me to try, and the one I bought I wouldn’t have picked up on my own, but she thought it would work.  She didn’t even laugh at me when I accidentally put it on backwards the first time so she earned her commission.

Anyway, the dress is nice and simple, and cut in a way that I didn’t feel like I had to suck in my stomach.  The sleeves are comfortable enough that I could play viola in this dress if I ever needed to, and since there are no zippers or buttons up the back or sides it should still fit just fine if I’m able to keep losing weight.  I’m really happy to have found this dress!

(photo before the ball by Carol Kraco)
And doesn’t Ian look handsome in his uniform?  (The dog didn’t think so.  He just kept barking at Ian as if he’d never seen him before.  The dog is cute, but apparently not very bright.  Or maybe we’re missing something since we don’t view everything from ankle height.)

The mil ball itself was fine.  I haven’t been to one probably since Quinn was born, but they are all remarkably similar.  There are lots of people in uniform, dry chicken to eat, the symbolic empty table with a candle and a rose for soldiers who are missing, and speeches.  It was nice to meet the people Ian works with, but the room was very cold.  About a third of the women had put their coats on by the time dessert was served.
The main thing that was different this time was the perspective. 

The first military ball I attended with Ian was in 1991.  He was a cadet and I was the out of place girl on his arm in a recycled prom dress.  We were seated very far from anywhere and we could see the important people at the head table finishing their meals before we even got our salads.

Twenty years later we’re now at the head table, eating first and chatting with a General on one side and a Colonel on the other.  For Ian it’s a measure of his level of accomplishment, but for me it’s not that big a difference even though I appreciated not having to wait to eat.

The guest speaker was General Seward who was very nice and according to the program had a list of military awards and accolades as long as my arm.  (Although he informed me he also plays the bagpipes, but that wasn’t on the list.)  The Army is not my world so I’m not awed by rank and I can talk to anyone.  The General asked me about violin making and I answered the standard questions the way I usually do.  (When Ian and I go to military gatherings I end up talking a great deal because at least what I do is different.  When Ian comes with me to violin maker events, he does much of the talking because he’s the only soldier and people are fascinated.) 

After the General took his obligatory tour of the room he came back to our table and declared me the most interesting person at the event.  I was probably the only person who wasn’t scared to talk to him which would skew his perception, but who knows?  Ian still thinks I’m interesting after more than twenty years together, so maybe I could flatter myself into believing it’s true.

It was nice having a night out with just Ian, and it was good to go out in clothes that didn’t have wood shavings on them for a change.  But I have to say, the best part of the day was a few hours before we left for the ball.  Ian had to sew a couple of things onto his uniform, and I decided to paint all my nails.  So we hung out on the bed together while we attended to our little tasks and watched sitcoms on my laptop.  We tend to divide and conquer in order to get things done because it’s more efficient and there is so much to do, and as a result we seldom really have time to just be together doing not much of anything.  It was nice.  (Because after more than twenty years, a bunch of military balls, and three children later, I know I still find my husband the most interesting person in the room.)
(One more photo by Carol)

Fancy (Babble)

I am not a fancy person.  I like certain things to be nice and I appreciate attractive surroundings, but when it comes to my own appearance I have a limited range of sartorial choices that make me comfortable.  I’m a jeans and t-shirt kind of person.  I like to have pockets, I like my wrists unencumbered by cuffs or bracelets, I like things that are simple, and I like clothes that don’t inhibit the activities I enjoy like building violins, baking, or getting on the floor to play a game with my kids.

When I try to wear decent clothes I’m self-conscious.  I keep checking and double checking everything if the way the clothes rest on my body doesn’t feel familiar.  I’ve tried to accessorize with a pretty scarf or shawl but I keep moving it or pulling at it or shifting it around and it’s not worth the distraction.

I don’t iron or dry clean.  I don’t wear makeup.  I don’t even have pierced ears.
I admire people who look put together.  I find fashion interesting, and I have opinions and preferences, but most of it stops before it reaches my own personal self.  I’m not elegant.  To pull that off you have to make it seem effortless, or at least natural, and that’s just not me.


Luckily, being a self-employed adult in charge of my own itinerary, I make lifestyle choices where jeans and a t-shirt works most of the time.  I only really need to dress up to play concerts, so I have a collection of black clothes that are comfortable to perform in and look nice enough on stage.

But every once in awhile something comes up and I realize what a hopeless shambles my wardrobe really is.  Between changes in my weight and my indifference to clothes shopping there is nothing decent in my closet if I need to look nice.

And this weekend I’m accompanying Ian to a military ball.  Ha.

Not that anyone there will care how I look as long as I make some vague effort to appear respectable, but I’d like to feel pretty.  I’d like to make Ian proud as he wears his dress blues with his medals pinned on his chest.  I’d like to have one, decent, dare I say elegant, dress to wear.

I imagine shopping for clothes if you have a body that fits into things could be fun.  But I am too big on top for most of what’s out there, and there are few things more demoralizing than trying on one thing after another that won’t zip or that makes your butt look bad or your legs too weird or your whole body just seem wrong.  I spent an entire morning with a patient friend trying on dresses at the mall and by the end of it I felt as if all my efforts to lose weight have been pointless and I should just eat cheesecake, wear sweatpants, and never look in the mirror again.

The last time I needed a fancy dress at a time when nothing fit was for a cousin’s wedding several years ago.  I had just had a miscarriage and I was supposed to play solo viola for the ceremony.  (I was still bleeding during the event, and Aden and Mona were flower girls, and that whole day was a dizzying cacophony of emotions for me.)  I actually wound up sewing myself something a few days before the wedding.  I didn’t use a pattern, I just found some pretty material and made it up.  I have no idea if it looked okay, but I was not in a mental state to completely care.  (I hope I looked okay.  If I’m feeling brave later I may dig through a photo album and see.)

I don’t have the time or energy to try that this time.  I’m at the mercy of what stores have to offer.  My fall back plan will be something from the ever present collection of black things.

Speaking of concert wear, this past weekend my girls had a violin recital.  They did beautifully.  I was nervous for Mona after last year, but she simply got up in front of the room, cranked out Ode To Joy the best she’d ever done it, and smiled sweetly as she took her seat again.  Aden did a lovely job as well, and Quinn was about as good as you could ask a five year old to be at an hour long violin recital.  It was a really good day.

The only hitch was about half an hour before we were supposed to leave and I told Mona it was time to put on something nice.  She balked.

Both of my girls were big into fancy dresses when they were little.  They wore Easter and Christmas dresses all year round, always looking as if it were picture day as they set off for school.  A few years ago Aden started gravitating away from dresses, but still has a few for special occasions, and she had no trouble finding a nice one for the recital.
But not Mona.  Mona had on leggings and a long sleeved shirt and wanted to know why it wasn’t good enough.

I explained that the clothes you choose to wear say something as clearly as if you were holding a sign.  A police uniform means something different from painting clothes means something different from a wedding gown.  I told her by dressing nicely for the recital it was a way of acknowledging all the hard work everyone had done to prepare for it by showing it was special.  If she dressed like it was any other day, it was like saying the recital wasn’t important.  She needed to wear something fancy.

She fussed and she fumed, but she understood my explanation.  She started digging through her closet.  The main thing we discovered is that Mona has grown since the last time she had to wear something dressy, and nothing zipped or buttoned.  She looked stricken as one outfit after another was set aside for Goodwill, but eventually we found something new that had been a gift from a friend but not worn yet, and it was perfect.  Mona looked pleased despite herself.  It was a nice dress, comfortable, with pretty colors.  I let her wear it right over her regular outfit so underneath she would just feel like herself.
As I knelt down on the floor behind her, carefully doing up the buttons, Mona said to me quietly, “I don’t like to be fancy.”

You and me both, sweetheart.  You and me both.

Of Memories And Editing (Babble)

I’ve been using most of my writing time lately to edit the manuscript I’m putting together.  I’m compiling my husband’s and my email correspondence during his first deployment back in  2006 and 2007.  A friend on the receiving end of both of our mass emails at the time said the juxtaposition of our stories would make a really interesting book.  On the chance other people think so too, I’m giving it a go.

It’s fascinating to put yourself mentally back in a place you used to be.  I’m shocked at just how much I’d forgotten, or possibly blocked out.

When Ian was deployed the first time we only had six days notice before he had to leave.  I was two months pregnant.  The girls were two and four.  I had so many responsibilities with work and teaching and performing that my life was not set up to work as a single parent and I was sent scrambling to figure out what to do.  It was a long fifteen months.
Ian’s stories are fascinating.  He was on a general’s staff dealing with information that gave him an overview of all of Iraq.  I’d forgotten just how upsetting some of his accounts were.  While sorting through and editing some of his own emails Ian actually became somewhat anxious and unhappy again.  I told him I would do the rest of it.  I shouldn’t have asked him to relive the war for my project, but I did need his help identifying what information may not be suitable for print because I don’t know what the army would approve of or not.  Now I only share with him the parts of the book about silly and funny things the kids did, which strangely mirrors the way I communicated with Ian back at the time.

I’m surprised, reading back, at just how difficult Mona was.  I remember her as being challenging, and I can still recount certain vivid moments and character traits, but she has mellowed so much that I’ve long since let most of those feelings of frustration go.  It’s strange to imagine her again as she used to be.  She didn’t really connect through talking for a long time, preferring to go through phases of only making puppy noises or quoting certain cartoons.  I had completely forgotten just how many lamps she broke.

I forgot just how much time both Aden and I spent crying.

Even if the book goes nowhere, I’m glad to be getting that crucial period of time in our family’s history down in some form for my kids to see later.  Only Aden may have vague memories of that first deployment, but it shaped so much of how we function as a family.
I wish so much I could convince my dad to write down what he remembers of his family history growing up, but he just kind of dismisses the idea when my brothers and I ask.  There have been small attempts to wrangle information out of him here or there, but nothing I could easily recount to my own kids if they asked.  My mom has created beautiful art books about my grandparents and great-grandparents, but I want to know her own story most of all.

One of the things we may sacrifice a bit as parents is a sense of our own story having much meaning after a while.  My life prior to my kids doesn’t seem as important somehow.  I enjoy focusing on my kids and the future.  But when I think how much I want to know my own parents as the people they were before I came along, I realize how much my own history may mean to my kids one day.  I don’t know what kind of time I’ll ever have to document much of my past for them, but at least this period of war and the blur of small children will be something they may find interesting.

I think especially when you have your own kids it makes you stop and reevaluate your parents not as parents but as people in a way few events do.  My children may be curious in the future how I juggled all of them with their dad away, and the ways in which their dad did his best to stay involved despite the distance and circumstances.

The one thing they may not see in the edited collection of emails is just how often their dad and I said we loved one another.  Most of my editing is removing emails that don’t advance any sort of narrative, and after the third little note that just says, “I love you” I’m sure readers would get the point.  It’s funny, though, editing out so much love and leaving in the trauma, because it’s the opposite of how I try to live my actual life.

In any case, this process of immersing myself in my own past for a bit has made me both laugh and cry, as well as make me thankful for my family all over again.  We’re in a better place today than we were five years ago.  Many things are easier, I’m doing more of the things that interest me, Ian is home, kids are growing up….  The one thing that hasn’t changed, though, is Quinn would be just as happy spending all of his time in my lap today as he was as a baby.  And his laugh still makes me melt.

(Kids of the past:)

Fine (Babble)

Ian’s at Ft Knox this week.  He has a week of Army training to do, then he’ll be home for a bit, then two more weeks of training somewhere else.  How are we doing?  Fine.

We’re coming up next month on the one year anniversary of Ian’s return home from Iraq.  The nicest part about reaching that milestone is that we get to start repeating things, by which I mean as we cycle through the normal parts the year our memories will include Ian again.  Currently when we do something, like celebrate the 4th of July, we look back to last year and remember that Ian wasn’t with us.  Last 4th of July was an exhausting mess.
Mona wiped out on her scooter and scratched up her face, Quinn had a major meltdown, and I was at my wit’s end for most of the day. 

This year with Ian home again it was wonderful.  With kids it’s particularly helpful to remind them of how we did things the last time–what our holiday traditions are, how we prepare for school starting up again, anything that repeats needs review.  For a year now that review has been a reminder of their dad’s absence during his deployment.  Now we get to move on to something better.


For myself there has been a vague sense of panic anytime Ian has had to leave this past year.  Nothing terrible, but not comfortable.  It brought back too many memories of a difficult time.  I think I’m over that.

I’ve had to arrange for a sitter to watch the kids for a couple of days while I go to work, but if that falls through they can all just come with me.  It’s not ideal to have them all at the violin store, but I know how to handle it and still get my work done.

And the truth is, far from feeling anxious that Ian is away, I’m kind of enjoying it.  I miss him of course–life is always better with Ian here–but I can do some things better when he’s not around.  I’m not in the house as much since I returned to work, and I like to get things cleaned and organized.  I can’t really do that the same way when Ian is home.  When I feel productive in that way and I’m bustling about whipping things into shape it can make Ian feel a bit guilty or criticized since it seems like a reflection on his own abilities to run the house.  I don’t mean it that way, I just have a different preference for how I like things to be, so I wait for him to leave to accomplish certain tasks.

It’s nice to have some long stretches of time in the house again.  I’m excited to be getting to certain projects, mostly things that bug me but that I’m too tired to do when I get home from work.  For instance, today I finally organized the linen closet.  The other thing that’s nice about doing something like that with Ian gone is I don’t have to feel like I should consult him about it.  I can just do it my way and it’s faster.  (If he doesn’t like what I did he can change it when he gets back, but in the meantime I like it, and I think he’ll like it too.)

I love spending so much time with all the kids again, and they seem happy to just be kicking around the house with me.  It’s familiar and it’s pleasant, and this time it’s minus the old stress.  It’s nice.

I feel as if I’m past the trauma of the deployment.  It’s not easier running things alone, but it’s just for a week, so it’s no big deal.  I didn’t realize I missed being the one who is in charge of the meals and the upkeep of the house so much.  I’m even trying to buckle down and edit my first novel and send out query letters so that I might finally find an agent and do more serious writing.  It’s hard to make myself do that when Ian is home because I’d rather hang out with him.  If deployment teaches you anything it’s that time with the people you love should not be taken for granted, so just doing nothing in the same room with Ian has more appeal than leaving his side to do my own things sometimes.  If I can’t be spending time with Ian right now, I may as well be productive.  It makes all the difference with Ian away not to be worried about his safety.  I’m home.  We’re happy.  He’ll be back soon enough and can be happy with us.

Once upon a time the idea of a week alone with the kids would have sounded complicated and stressful.  But I’m good.  I know how to do this and it’s not bad.  I know what worse looks like.  This?  This isn’t just getting by.  This is fine.

(Our neighbor, Julie, with Mona, Aden, Ian and Quinn, welcoming Ian home from his first deployment back in 2007.)

Survival Mode Deja Vu (Babble)

Ian has drill this weekend. His current Army unit is only about 90 minutes away and he’ll be home tonight, so this is nothing.  It’s just one weekend on our own and we’ll see Ian at night.  But it’s funny how certain states of mind can feel like reflexes.  I woke up in the bed alone and immediately had a twinge of that sense of survival mode I get during a deployment.  That sense of I’m on my own with all the kids, there are things to get done, and I’m the only one who will do any of it.  I’m a more no-nonsense kind of me when Ian is away.

The upside to this state is I take ownership of things I may have let slide, like housework.  Instead of simply passing through rooms I look at them critically.  They become all mine and I take control of them in a way I don’t when Ian is home.  I’ve been tackling each room one at a time in preparation for hosting Aden’s book club on Sunday and I like how nice things are looking.  As much as it is a hassle to have the kids here at work with me (I’m writing during a down moment at the violin store) I love having them around.  Mona is playing on the computer, and Quinn is doing Sudoku puzzles.  (By “doing” I mean I let him have the book of puzzles out of my purse and told him the kid version of the game is to fill in all the digits just by box.  That’s enough at four to figure out which numbers are missing and write them down without actually doing the puzzle, but I have a feeling he may want to step up to the real rules soon.)

The downside is my fuse is shorter.  I snapped at Aden this morning and I feel bad about it.  She is so capable and so scattered it drives me crazy.  We’ve been trying to drill into her the necessity of doing things in the right order.  She can work on the puppet she’s making or dance around the living room or watch TV only AFTER she’s done her homework or switched her laundry or packed her lunch.  She knows what she’s supposed to do, but between point A and point B she spots something shiny and then I have to start nagging.  This morning she had hours to get ready for the drive to the big choir event she has going on today, but as we were heading out the door she wanted to start searching for some toy puppy.  I told her it was too late, she should have thought of that earlier.  She got pouty and started stomping out to the car.  I lost it and gave her a loud lecture about how I wasn’t going to be punished for her lack of planning.

Aden goes into her own version of survival mode when I yell.  She gets very still and waits for the storm to pass.  She doesn’t fight back.  And I try to rein myself in and remember I’m the grownup and feel terrible.  I apologized on the road and told her I meant the words I was saying, but I shouldn’t have said them in such a scary manner.  She just nodded silently and went back to looking out the window.  We were back to our regular selves by the time I dropped her off at the gymnasium where the big choir event is happening.  We hugged.  I handed her off to the volunteer who was checking lists and handing out T-shirts.  I looked back before Mona and Quinn and I left the building and had already lost sight of Aden in the crowd of kids.  Even though Aden is nine it’s hard for me to leave her somewhere.  She’s still my baby.  It’s hard to walk away from your baby even for all the right reasons.

When Ian’s gone there is just a lot more to do, but I realize my reaction to that stress is disproportionate.  Yes, I had to find a ride home for Aden so she can do her choir thing today.  I’m sad I can’t go to her concert this afternoon because I need to be here at work, and that there is no one else to go hear her sing.  It’s complicated having Quinn and Mona at the violin store all day even though they are good and know how to entertain themselves and stay out from underfoot.  I don’t know what to do for dinner.  I’m not sure my plans for book club tomorrow will work out.  But it’s not a big deal.  Or at least, it shouldn’t be.  It’s just a weekend.  But there’s that small twinge of panic deep down left over from other times I’ve been on my own.  I know Ian is just in Madison and not Iraq.  I know that.  But part of me always worries when he’s gone that he’ll never make it back.  It’s not rational, but fear seldom is.

And now that I’ve thought about it a little bit and can see things more clearly I think I can face the rest of this weekend.  More than that, I’m going to enjoy it.  Survival mode keeps you alive but is not a good way to live.  I’d better get back to work.  These violins aren’t going to fix themselves.  (Wouldn’t that be nice?)  We’re open until 5:00 if you need anything.

END OF THE DAY UPDATE:  Today was a pretty awesome day, actually.  I had lots of nice customers in my store and got some repairs done.  Mona and Quinn were adorable and no trouble at all.  They handed out popcorn and crayon enhanced pictures of violins to anyone who wanted them and they drew many chalk rainbows on the sidewalk out front despite the cold.  Aden had a wonderful day at choir and came home happy and huggy.  We ordered Chinese food.  Ian came back from a successful day with the Army and put the kids to bed while I ran out to pick up some groceries.  Life is good.  No complaints here.

Extra Thankful (Babble)

It hit me the other night as I was trying (unsuccessfully) to get to sleep that this was about the time I was originally expecting Ian home from his deployment.  Army time doesn’t seem to work like civilian time, so to avoid frustration whenever Ian used to go off to drill for a day and tell me he’d be home at a certain time I would always add two hours and that was usually closer to the truth.  If he was away for a matter of weeks I would add two days.  For a full deployment I add two months.  I’d rather be pleasantly surprised by having Ian back early than feeling resentful and anxious because he’s late.  So last year when he left in September I planned on him being gone a year from that point, plus two months to be safe, which put his return around Thanksgiving.

That time line was originally closer to what was scheduled to happen, but then the mass troop withdrawals from Iraq kicked in and Ian ended up coming home earlier than expected.  Back in August.  Which means we’ve had more than 100 additional days with Ian that I hadn’t planned on.  I’ve gotten so used to having him home that I took for granted that he’s here.  The concept that we could have lived these past few months with him still deployed kind of shook me up.

I keep thinking about all the additional things Ian would have missed if he were just coming home now.  He would not have seen my grandma one more time before she died.  He would not have met my cousin’s new baby.  He would not have been here for the first day of school, or the girls’ choir concerts, or parent-teacher conferences, or Quinn learning to read.  He would have missed Trick-or-Treat which means seeing the kids’ costumes only on this blog instead of watching Mona the Dalmatian bounding ahead in search of candy and carrying Quinn in his blue jay outfit when he was too tired to walk (or fly).   Plus I would still be frazzled, my store would still be messy, the gutters would be overflowing with leaves, and the kids would not have been able to do swimming lessons.  It would be life during deployment, which is incredibly stressful.  I think I’d already blocked out how hard it was because I want that time to be firmly in the past.  The idea that by my own calendar I could still be living it kind of hit me in the gut.

I was feeling a little down about this Thanksgiving.  We were going to host dinner at our house for friends and my parents, but the friends were able to visit family, and my dad’s health has been giving us all a scare recently so he understandably doesn’t want to travel.  With more notice I would have liked to extend an invitation to maybe another family in the area who has someone deployed and could use a hassle free Thanksgiving meal, but at this late date people seem to know what they’re doing.   So it’s just our own little family.

That sounded a bit lonely to me at first, but after counting up all the extra days with Ian that I have to be thankful for, I can see this holiday for what it really is.  It’s a chance to spend a nice day with my husband and all my children in our home.  We will have pumpkin pie for breakfast, I’m going to teach Aden how to make twice baked potatoes, we will have cranberries in the traditional shape of a can because it makes us laugh, and I will cook the green bean casserole that I’m the only one who eats but we have to have because otherwise it’s not really Thanksgiving.  I can’t wait!

It’s so easy to focus on what you lack instead of what you’ve got.  Especially with the passing of my grandma I’m more keenly aware of how many other people in my life I miss but seldom see.  I want more time and I want less distance.  Sad roads to go down are easy to find.

But I got extra time with Ian.  I’d forgotten about it.  The same way we tend to forget that every day is extra time.  Thanksgiving with my husband and kids isn’t lonely.  It’s the best thing there is.  And this year I am extra thankful.  I hope all of you have a wonderful holiday!

UPDATE:  Turns out a friend of mine named Robyn (who also builds violins) and her husband didn’t have a big plan for Thanksgiving, and they agreed to come join us for dinner.  It was great, and it felt right because at its heart I believe the holiday is really about sharing.  We got to teach them Spite and Malice, and they taught us Kings in the Corner, which was also a lot of fun.  Plus we got to play viola duets for a little while, and how cool is that to have each of us playing on instruments we made ourselves?  We’ve decided we should try our hands at composing to complete the loop and not need anyone else in the process.  Anyway, it was an awesome Thanksgiving.  Mona made an amazing paper turkey as a centerpiece, the food came out fine, we turned on the disco ball for awhile, Quinn hid plastic frogs for people to find….  Definitely one of the best Thanksgivings ever.  Hope the same was true for all of you!

A Veteran's Day Note (Babble)

I’ve written about my ambivalence for military themed holidays and flag waving before.  I worry about anything that glorifies war while at the same time I think we need to remember and recognize those among us who are willing to make great sacrifices to defend our constitution.  I still feel bewildered sometimes as to how I ended up entangled with any kind of military life.  But I love my husband and he is a soldier so the story is as simple as that.

But this is the story I think of every Veteran’s Day:

(And I apologize now for not knowing off the top of my head who the writer is, but if I find my copy of the original article at any point I will amend this post.)  My dad clips articles for us and mails them out in large packets all the time, and I can tell when he finds one particularly important because it’s a xerox, which means my brothers both received copies of it, too.  Many years ago he sent me a xeroxed article that I saved and still have somewhere buried in a filing cabinet.  It was an essay from the New York Times about Veteran’s Day. 

The author was old enough that his father had fought in World War I.  His father never talked about it, but the author felt great reverence for his service in the Great War, and swelled with pride for his country and his father every Veteran’s Day, back when it was still known as Armistice Day.  He filled in the vacuum of his father’s silence with noble things in his mind.  Until one day, late in his father’s life, the old man finally muttered something about how much he hated Armistice Day.  Because for symbolic purposes leaders on high waited to end the war on the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.  The old soldier said he watched men die in those last few hours of the war.  Lives lost for nothing grander than creating a moment that looked good on paper to people who were too far removed from the suffering to care.  That’s what he thought of on Armistice Day.


My husband is a good man.  There is no one else I’d rather be married to and I’m proud of the way he served in Iraq.  There are many heroic people in uniform who should be acknowledged today, and shown appreciation for what they do for the rest of us.

But we need to try harder to make their jobs unnecessary.  War is a horror.  It may sometimes be necessary, but it should never be welcomed.  I think the reason these wars we are engaged in have gone on so long is that ordinary people are disconnected from them.  My own children forget the wars are still going on because their own dad is finally home and it no longer touches their lives.  I listened to the line repeated so often about, “We must fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here,” and shuddered.  What right do we have to destroy the lives of ordinary people forced to live where we choose to fight a war?

So, yes, please honor those who are deserving today, because their sacrifices are beyond measure.  But don’t mingle that pride with any misplaced affection for the wars themselves.  I’ve met people who do, and they make me feel less safe.  My husband joined the military to help prevent war.  My greatest hope is that he succeeds and works himself right out of a job.

Pain Is Not a Competition (Babble)

All pain is relative.  We each of us live in our own skin and view the world through a lens crafted from our own experience.  Sometimes we are able to empathize, and sometimes we aren’t.  Some days I successfully put myself in another person’s shoes before voicing an opinion, and other days I fail.

My first experience with violin making was a brief amount of time at a school in Pennsylvania.  My bench shared a wall with the bench of my friend Matt.  I loved hanging out with Matt.  He was easy to talk to and he made me laugh.  One day I came in to school with four stitches in my thumb after a carving accident at home.  I had never had stitches before and was feeling quite traumatized.  I sat down at my bench and regaled Matt with the whole gruesome story of Ian having to drive me to a doctor and the icky feeling of the stitches tugging at my skin and how we went to the movies afterward to distract me from the pain. 

I blathered on and on telling my tale of grievous injury with Matt just looking at me, when finally, to my horror, I remembered that Matt had been in a terrible car accident just a couple of weeks before and had more than 80 stitches up one of his legs.  I was deeply embarrassed and apologized, but Matt just shook his head and said, “It’s all relative.  For you those stitches are a big deal.”  And then he went on to tell me that right after his accident he’d been bemoaning his fate to the new guy at the school, and it turned out the new guy had been in an accident the year before where he was declared dead on the scene and he got to meet the patient waiting for his heart.  The new guy by comparison was feeling pretty humbled by the fact that the man he shared his hospital room with had lost his wife and child when they were all hit by a drunk driver and he would never walk again.  My four stitches were starting to look like a gift.

So I know better than to try to one up someone in the pain and frustration department.  Everyone has stitches that are a big deal in their own context, and also I’m smart enough to know how ridiculously good I have it.  My struggles are all of an elite variety that don’t involve starvation or crippling poverty or chronic pain, but they are still my struggles, even if they are only four stitches long.  I try to keep things in perspective, but we are each entitled to our feelings even though there is always someone with a worse story.
That said, I feel like I’ve done a poor job lately of sympathizing with my husband’s struggles at home.  I want to be supportive but sometimes just find myself simply irritated.  I get frustrated and then I feel guilty for feeling that way.  It’s hard.

The bulk of Ian’s challenges, I think, comes down to the fact that he is now in a role where he doesn’t feel appreciated.  Parenting is like that.  The three year old will behave obnoxiously to him one day (because he’s tired or hungry or both and three year olds are cute but frequently unreasonable and occasionally awful), and Ian knows not to take it personally, but he can’t help it.  It must be very hard to go from a position of power and authority in a place like Iraq to being dad at home mopping up the messes of three kids all day.  Not that the war was easier, I’m not saying that, but to go from ordering people to do things and having those people respect those orders and follow them, to requesting very simple and reasonable things of children and have them essentially ignore you is maddening.

Our kids are good kids, but kids push limits, and they can be lazy and careless and obstinate.  They don’t know how to appreciate what they have most of the time because they don’t have much to compare it to.  I’m glad they don’t live in fear and that they don’t know hunger and that their lives are comfortable enough that they can indulge their creativity.  The downside of that is they don’t realize how special their situation is.  I tell them when I think they’ve crossed a line into being unappreciative or greedy and they are quick to apologize.  They are still learning where the lines are but that takes time and experience, and that’s okay.  Childhood should be a time to enjoy the good in the world.

However, poor Ian has days where he’s drowning in laundry and one of the girls can only complain that a specific shirt isn’t clean yet, or he finds their bikes lying in the middle of the sidewalk again regardless of any reminders or threats about that, or Quinn wants his mommy and there is nothing else that will appease him and I’m just not available.  I’ve tried to get the kids into a habit of always thanking anyone who prepares them a meal because I think that’s important to acknowledge, but there are too many things that go into parenting and keeping house that seldom if ever get notice or praise that it does feel thankless much of the time.  The clean bathroom has to be its own reward, as does the organized closet, the stocked pantry or the raked lawn.  If you stick around in the Army long enough someone will eventually hand you a medal.  There are no medals for ordinary life.  I remember the first time my dad read us the story of the Prodigal Son, and I asked him why the bad kid essentially got a party and the good son got nothing.  Dad told me that supposedly goodness is its own reward.  I think sometimes the good kid still deserves a party, but I can see why he gets overlooked.

In any case, where I fall short is that Ian will be having a hard time–an understandably hard time at that–and I can’t help but think about how much better he has it than I did while he was deployed.  If he complains to me when I come home from work about how he didn’t have an adult to talk to all day, I want to say, “But you only had to make it to the end of the day and here I am!  I didn’t have anybody here for years!”  Or if it seems like a lot to do his half of caring for the kids and the house I shake my head and think about how I had to do everything, plus I sold a house and bought another and moved us and ran the violin store with the kids in tow, etc. etc. etc.  I feel like he has four stitches and I have a thousand.  And I take a deep breath and remind myself those stitches are still real and they count and that it’s not a competition.

But I finally lost it a bit the other day when Ian was complaining about having a hard time with Quinn.  It had put him in a foul mood and I felt as if I was being put into the position of having to cater to two fussy egos and I just didn’t have the patience for it.  Against my own better judgement I said, “Well, then just be glad you didn’t have to deal with Mona at age three.”  I felt instant regret because there are so many things wrong with that.  The first is the one-upsmanship sound of it that is just not cool.  The second is that he missed most of Mona being three, both the good and the difficult, and I’m sure that pains him.  He doesn’t need reminders of the sacrifices he’s made.  The third is it reeks of the resentment I sometimes feel that my struggles were a result of his choice to be in the Army.  It’s hard to feel that being a supportive spouse makes me complicit in my own abandonment.

Ian’s reaction was to say, “So I feel like crap and I should be glad to feel like crap.”  And I wanted to say, “Yes,” but I said nothing.  It’s hard for me to make Ian understand that at his worst, Quinn is a million times easier than his sister was.  Mona’s tantrums were epic, and I was trapped.  That first deployment I had no close friends, no family around, I had to drag the kids with me on every errand, and poor Mona was stuck with a mother all day every day who was pregnant (or eventually tethered to a newborn) and exhausted all the time. 

When I hear people click their tongues at parents with a child who is having a meltdown in public as if the offending parents just aren’t conscientious enough to remove the problem child from the scene, I think about Mona screaming her head off one particular night in Target.  It was past her bedtime and she was beyond tired but we’d run out of diapers and I didn’t have any choice but to complete that errand.  She wanted me to carry her, I was 8 months pregnant and could not lift her, and she screamed for nearly half an hour in the store.  She would lie down, I physically could not move her, and somehow I coaxed her across the store where we waited in line for ten minutes with her wailing like a desperate animal.  A neighbor at that point at least offered to walk Aden home, but Aden was not a problem so I declined that help.  It was embarrassing and horrible and heartbreaking.  Quinn snubbing Ian on the playground and then telling his dad not to talk to him in the car just does not compare in my mind.  (But those four stitches still hurt….)

We had this terse discussion on the short drive from our home to the violin store, and by the time we got there and I was sitting at my bench I just burst into tears.  I told him he really didn’t understand how traumatic it had been to be scared for him all the time and to be responsible for everyone and to get no breaks and no sleep and no help.  When I think back to that first deployment I’m amazed I got through it.  I remember when Quinn was about a month old and I had mastitis, and I was up all night shivering under my blankets with the baby next to me and the girls asleep in the next room wondering how I was supposed to make them breakfast and get Aden dressed for school again, and I cried because the only person I wanted to talk to was the one person I wasn’t supposed to bother. 

It would have been dangerous for Ian to be distracted by problems he couldn’t fix, so I told him things were fine and he had no idea how hard it really was.  Ian put his arms around me (in the way I used to imagine he would do when he was gone) and said I always seem to handle everything so well he forgets sometimes how deeply some of these experiences have affected me.  (And then a customer arrived with a bow for me to rehair and I had to excuse myself to wash my face and somehow pretend I hadn’t just been balling my eyes out when he walked in.  Because I have great timing like that.)

So it’s a complicated balance between accepting pain for what it is and keeping things in perspective.  I want my husband to feel comfortable enough to complain about the frustrations that come with parenting without worrying that I’ll always have the worse story up my sleeve.  I know plenty of people with worse stories than my own, but my frustrations and pain are real, too.  All pain is relative.  Compassion shouldn’t be.

Transition (Babble)

Ian’s been home from Iraq for about a month and a half now.  The time feels longer.  I can remember clearly enough how things were two months ago, but the anxious feeling that accompanied his being deployed has grown very distant.  When things are how they are supposed to be they tend to click into place and work as if nothing has ever been any other way.  I like that feeling.  Unfortunately reality is such that this kind of transition is not as easy as that.  It’s confusing when emotions click into place and habits don’t.  The disconnection between what used to be and what still is can be difficult to reconcile.

Now, I am quite certain that we have been, and are, adjusting better than many.  It’s sort of like when I read about marriage being so hard for a lot of couples, and I believe them and sympathize, but I can’t relate directly.  Ian and I don’t have a volatile relationship.  We’ve always been supportive of one another and we’re both pretty calm people.  We have moments like any couple trying to coordinate different lives together where we aren’t on the same page, but at least we’re usually using the same book.  I know many families welcoming soldiers home have it much harder than I do, where financial situations are tight or there are medical issues to struggle with or the amount of change that took place in that period of absence was life altering and the resulting homecoming is incredibly stressful.  I’m thankful our lives aren’t that challenging.  Our struggles to reintegrate Ian into our home again are minor.  But they are there.


The most awkward adjustment is still that we’re in a new house.  It was the right move to make and a big improvement that one day even Aden (forever loyal to her past) may admit to be true, but for the kids and I to have had a jump on making it home is still hard.  Not just for Ian, but for me as well.  I set up everything alone and got used to where it all is.  Ian uses things differently, and to have him change anything feels like it shouldn’t be annoying, but it still hits me that way.  We had to have a discussion about the pots all being in a jumble because we each had a different idea of which things went on what shelf.  He doesn’t like where I put the accessories for the mixer.  I’m not sure where to put the vacuum now that he’s using his little office space so it just spends a few days in each room as if cleaning the floors is imminent.  The first year in a new house is like a grand experiment anyway, figuring out how everything works with the changing seasons, but that sense is heightened with Ian’s late arrival on the scene because it was like reseting our experience.

And then there are old problems that I forgot about while he was away.  Little things that we don’t agree on that vanished while he was in Iraq.  Like the dishtowel dilemma.  I put up a small hook in the kitchen just to hold a dishtowel to dry my hands after I use the sink.  He’s always wetting the dishtowel for something and hangs it back up to dry.  Every time I go to dry my hands the dishtowel is all soaked, I grumble to myself and replace it and then toss the wet one in the back hall to go down to the wash.  This drives Ian crazy because he’s taken over the laundry since coming home, so he’s the only one who actually walks in that back hallway and doesn’t appreciate the ever growing pile of wet dishtowels back there.  It’s a charming little cycle we have going.  Of course I’d rather have Ian home and doing laundry than spending time by myself with a dry dishtowel, but it doesn’t make the dopey little problem less irritating.  And then I get to have a flash of guilt for not being anything but grateful that my husband is back safely from the war and I should let him hang wet dishtowels everywhere if it makes him happy.  (But boy that would be annoying.)

Then there is the fact that life doesn’t usually take a break just because you may need some extra time for adjustment.  We have a friend who served in Iraq before Ian did, and when Ian got home from his first deployment our friend told us that the best thing he could recommend was to do what he did and just take a month off and travel as a good way of making the transition back into American life.  Sounds fabulous. This man is a marvelous person whom I admire greatly, but as you probably figured out he has no kids.  I remember standing there listening to the suggestion that Ian leave us again after fifteen months away, our children ages 5, 3 and 9 months making noise around us, and squeezing his hand tighter and tighter as I panicked that he might decide a little travel was, in fact, just what he needed.  Ian knew better than to even entertain the thought, but it was hard to argue that a break really would be ideal.  The hard truth is that there are still frustrating elements to running our business and bills to sort out and dentist appointments to arrange and a thousand little trouble spots that go with having kids and a house and cars and everything else our lives involve, none of which care if we need time for transition or not.  Ian’s had to kind of just hit the ground running, and I’m doing my best to assist but some troubles can’t be helped.

Ian’s written already about how the first month home was for him, but he didn’t describe too much of how things have been going with the kids.  I think he’s handled jumping back into the parenting role better than anyone could ask.  He was very good about stepping back from any kind of disciplinary role for the first few weeks.  The kids needed time to get used to the general sound and sense of having him around first, and I believe it’s helped.  But pretty much from the first week he had long stretches alone with them while I would run errands or go to work, and he was his funny, reliable self and had no trouble being dad again.  He’s much more willing to give them time at the park or to set up play dates than I’m usually prepared to do, and they’re very happy with that.

Aden loves having her dad back.  She was worried for him while he was in Iraq.  She’ll hug me at random moments and whisper to me that she’s glad her daddy is home.  Her biggest adjustment is having to suffer through the same lectures twice if she does something we don’t like, and sometimes her dad will offer up treats or exact a punishment in a way that I wouldn’t and she finds it a tad confusing, but that’s just the reality of having more than one parent.

Mona seems to have made the smoothest adjustment, but mostly because she exists in her own little world to start with.  She was old enough during this deployment to remember her dad in his absence, but too young for me to want to explain to her that her dad might be in danger while he was gone.  Dad was gone, now he’s back, and there you go.  I asked her recently what she thought of all of that, and she said, “Well…. The bad thing about having daddy away was that we miss him and you get more grumpy, but the good thing about him being away is he’s doing a good job with Army work and I have more time with you.”  Mona tends to be more intuitive than verbal, but sometimes she finds exactly the right words.

With Quinn it’s been very interesting.  Ian’s approach to Quinn has been not to stand between us.  He figures if Quinn wants mommy, he gets mommy.  It was hard, at first, for Quinn to have another guy in the house competing for my affection.  Once the three of us were hanging out on our bed chatting about something one afternoon, and when Ian draped his arm over my leg, Quinn literally reached over and moved it off.  He was visibly uncomfortable with any kissing or hugging between us, so we tried to be sensitive to that.
I did my best to prepare Quinn for weeks before Ian’s return that when daddy came home that there wasn’t going to be room for three of us in the big bed.  Quinn had been sleeping in Aden’s bed, sometimes Mona’s, and even occasionally in his very own bunk bed, but still from time to time curled up with me.  I just wanted him to understand that the choice to sleep with me was going to get more difficult with daddy home.  Ian’s first night home we hadn’t planned for Quinn to be in our bed, but as we were all turning in my little boy came marching into our room  hugging his stripey blanket.  I reminded him that, “Don’t you remember, sweetie, that you need to go sleep in a different bed now that daddy’s home?  Can you go sleep with Aden tonight?” and I could feel my heart break as his eyes filled with tears and he silently ran off to his sisters’ room.  I couldn’t believe that he did what I asked, even though it hurt his feelings.  I looked at Ian helplessly, and he shrugged and said, “I understand.  Go get him.”  So I found Quinn quietly weeping at the end of Aden’s bed, and told him we would make room.  He hugged me hard as I carried him back down the hall and fell asleep with his head pressed up against my neck.  We spent a long, uncomfortable night trying to make that work, but Quinn needed it. 

Since then we’ve explained that if he falls asleep in our bed we’re going to move him to his own bed before the morning, and that’s been fine.  He’s used to his dad being around now, and since he knows that my hugging Ian does not result in fewer hugs for him, he’s not as possessive.  I’ve been extremely impressed with Ian’s patience in the whole matter.  He’s an amazing husband and dad.

But I think the hardest thing to explain to anyone about Ian’s return is that there are things I miss about when he was gone.  I certainly prefer him home, but I will admit to missing the complete control that comes with being the only adult in the house.  I’m not going to say it was better, but I did things in a way I liked and I got used to it.  I liked staying up late to get through serial dramas on DVD.  I can’t really do that now.  I’ve been going through past seasons of Madmen on Netflix which doesn’t interest Ian at all, so I watch them in little bits while I do certain chores while he’s not in the same room.  I miss my private movie marathons, but they were something to do to make up for Ian not being around, so it doesn’t feel right to do them that way anymore. 

I miss my kids on the days I’m at work.  I don’t miss having them with me at work (although that still happens sometimes after school), but I liked being with them so much.  They were all mine.  I know it made me crazy some days, but overall I enjoy their company, and I’ve been going through a weird kind of withdrawal.  On the rare days I get to pick up Quinn from half day kindergarten I hug him so hard I fear I’ll break him sometimes.  And as much as I’m glad I don’t feel like a burden to my friends and neighbors now that Ian’s back, I miss seeing them.  I don’t get to talk to them as often now, because for some reason it’s easier to make time for people in a crisis but not just for pleasure.  I need to find a way to fix that one.

It’s hard to admit to having liked anything about the deployment enough to miss.  It reminds me a little about how when we grieve we don’t want to acknowledge any pleasant moments mixed into that time because it feels like a betrayal.  I remember the first time I miscarried how I felt like I would never stop crying, but then I had brave little Aden with me, trying so hard to make me happy, and how could I not be looking into that beautiful face?  The juxtaposition of that kind of sadness and joy was painful but ultimately soothing in its own way.  When Ian was gone it was scary and exhausting and frustrating.  It was also challenging, sometimes liberating, and often sweet.  I’ve had trouble letting go of some of my habits and routines that don’t fit with having my husband home, but not terribly.

All of life is a transition, from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, from being the child to being the parent, even just from weekdays to weekends.  This particular transition just happens to get more attention than average and comes with government supplied pamphlets if I need them.  But I don’t need them.  At some point the kinks we are experiencing will have to go under new headings, like growing pains or midlife crisis or just plain old family dynamics.  We won’t know the day that the return from deployment transition is done because life just keeps rolling on.  As long as we keep rolling together I’m happy, no matter how jumbled the pots may get.

Major Guest Blogger (Babble)

I am so fortunate to have spent over half my life with my husband, Ian.  I’ve written about him before in an introduction, a post about how we met, and another about our wedding.  He followed how we were doing here at home by reading this blog while he was stationed in Iraq for the past year, and now that he’s home he’s agreed to do guest post.  So here we go:

Er…uh…(shuffle feet)…is this thing on?
The first thing to know is that coming home is not one transition. It’s
about a dozen, and arriving home is actually one of the last ones. There
are the transitions from doing the job to turning in equipment and
preparing to leave, the transition to a transient existence during
movement back to the United States, the transition from the
Expeditionary Army with loaded weapons and real missions to the the
Garrison Army with funny black berets and lousy food and off-post
WalMarts, the transition back to a bureaucratic world of budgets and
important papers and Veterans Administration benefits, and finally the
transition from a unit -a temporary family- back to the world of
individuals and the real family I chose.

And then, finally, the transition to a lonely observer in a family that
seems weirdly familiar but pecks at each other in all new ways. The kids’
awe at my return lasted almost to the exit gate of the Army base. Then I
was no longer a novelty but a familiar friend-of-the-family for about an
hour. Then I was not-quite-Dad (perhaps Dad-but-like-he’s-sick) for a
couple days, present but not terribly useful, which I encouraged. Now
we’ve moved to somewhat-lazy-Dad-who-passes-the-buck-to-Mom-a-lot.
Finally, next week when school starts, the clouds will part and
independent, strong Dad will finally return and shine down upon the
Earth.

And most of those phases are deliberate. To prevent frustration. To
kids, a big man frustrated is frightening…and I play for the full
dramatic effect (yes, it’s one of my many flaws). It’s like being the
slowest kid in class all over again, the frustration of watching
everyone else in the house breeze along knowing things you are fighting
to just learn, and the kids don’t need that. The Army likes to assign
you a mentor and time for a transition. The family tries, but a
six-year-old just isn’t a great mentor about the new laundry system.
Older kids – lots of new rules and behaviors that I don’t know. How can
I control or discipline the kids fairly when I don’t know the rules?
When do they go to bed? What’s the routine? What do they eat? What
aren’t they allowed to eat? Who leaves the doors unlocked? Who sneaks
out the unlocked doors? Who showers and who bathes? Where are their
clothes? Where are their toothbrushes? Where are their shoes? Why don’t
they wear socks? Do they have socks? Where are their socks? Why doesn’t
Aden put her bike away? Who are their friends now? Who is allowed to
cross the street? Who do I need to watch most…and why?

New house – Kory knows where everything’s right place is, but I’m not
psychic and so forever looking in the wrong place for silly everyday
stuff like trash bags and towels. It took a week to find my old wallet
with my hardware store card. My old car keys -with my grocery store card
on it- are still missing (and I still miss them). Which new key opens
which door? What are the little tricks to each old door in the house?
Where does the floor squeak at night? Where are the light switches in
each room?

Why is there a drawer of weird light bulbs in the dining room china
cabinet? And which bulbs are for which lights? Why are they all
incandescent – what happened to my compact fluorescents? Why are there
two mysterious ‘utility’ drawers in the kitchen, with identical tools in
them? Why is Kory mopping the kitchen all the time? Am I supposed to do
that, too? What dishes aren’t dishwasher safe, and how can I tell? How
the hell do you program the washing machine? Am I supposed to be mowing
the lawn now? What maps and equipment belong in each car? How do you
open the garage door?

Who are all these new friends and neighbors? Who does Kory really like,
and who are we merely polite to? Who does Kory owe favors to? Who’s
garage door opener is that on the kitchen counter?

And we haven’t even touched on upcoming school, swimming safety and swim
lessons, meals and cooking, handling household bills, dentists, work,
car repairs, energy conservation, hobbies, holiday planning, exercise,
the weird list of projects (Why does she want me to move that pile of
rocks? They look heavy) and a thousand other important issues.
And over all of those thousand details is the most frustrating one for
everyone else at home: I simply don’t know what their priorities or
schedules are. Should I be mowing the lawn or feeding the kids lunch?
Should I be writing this blog post, or picking up the dratted crab
apples, or cleaning the kitchen, or moving those heavy rocks? I can do
them all, but which should be first? It takes weeks to learn the
*context* to everything again.

And finally, don’t forget that once I do learn everything, our family
might renegotiate it a bit. So there’s mild tension brewing. Much more
than you’d expect from normally dull issues like: Where should the
vacuum cleaner be stored? What meals should we plan? Can the treadmill
block this window in this room? Can these toys move to that room? When
should our exercise times be? We’re discussing change to The Way Things
Should Be to several family members…but I have definite opinions too.
So that’s what Transition Back To American Life is like – after many
changes even before coming home, it’s a balance between the frustration
of learning a thousand things you think you should already know, the
frustration of relearning the context of your spouse and family’s
priorities, and the frustration of learning it all -despite the best
efforts of my fabulous family and friends- mostly alone. But as I
approach the end of the transition, I have these amazing kids who can
read and draw and ride bikes and swim and want me to go with them, and a
spouse who still claims to like me enough to let me continue sleeping
with her…but she’ll like me even more once I get those heavy rocks
moved. So get to it, Hercules.

Kory has been amazing, giving me plenty of time to get adjusted. Trying
to get the family on more regular sleep cycles. Feeding everyone.
Keeping the household clean and running while I lumber along trying to
learn how. Telling me it’s okay to back off and rest. She understands
that it’s hard to learn. It’s hard for everyone else, too, to adjust to
this familiar man suddenly in the house.

Being in Iraq, and the transition to/from home life is neither easier
nor harder than being a parent. They are different, and most comparisons
are false. For example, the Army makes sure soldiers get plenty of
regular sleep, food, exercise, and other ways to counter stress (better
than parents), but very few parents get blown up by roadside bombs or
mortared in their bunks (better than the Army). Sure, I lost weight in
Iraq, and did good work fighting corruption…but I was also under a lot
of stress and in cramped quarters with other stressed out people, and we
had terrible food and lived in an atmosphere among the Iraqis of
complete uncertainty and hopelessness. It wasn’t harder than waking up a
2-year-old in midwinter to bundle him up and pick up older kids at
school at 5 below zero, but it wasn’t easier either.

Homecoming (Babble)

What a great week!  Lots of stress woven through bits of it and happiness to the point of feeling drained sometimes, but overall some amazing memories were made this week in our family.

Contrary to the look of final homecoming in these photos, that was actually the prelude to one last little goodbye.  Ian’s trip home took about a week.  For some reason the Army found it cheapest to get him back here by flying him from Mosul to Kuwait, then to Ireland, New Jersey, Atlanta, Minnesota, and finally LaCrosse, Wisconsin, where he was transported to Ft McCoy to turn in his weapon and receive some awards over the course of a few days.  My plan was to drive out to Minneapolis with the kids to spend a few days with my cousin and her family, greet Ian at the airport in LaCrosse on the way, and pick him up at Ft McCoy on the way back when he was ready.

The problem is that planning anything around the Army is complicated because there are no firm dates or times and things are up in the air until the last minute.  I got a call from Ian early on Sunday morning telling me that he was in New Jersey, and he promised to call me again from Atlanta.  When he did, he informed me sadly that he wouldn’t be in LaCrosse until almost eleven at night, and that would be too hard to do with all the kids and still get to my cousin’s house.  He happened to say something offhand about Minneapolis, and I said, “Wait, what?  You have another stop in Minnesota?”  I looked at my watch and realized if we didn’t really stop anywhere on the way we might just be able to catch him at the airport there.  I’d had the car packed since breakfast so I hung up the phone, told all the kids to use the bathroom and grab their shoes and we took off in our big black rental SUV thing.  We grabbed some lunch from a drive through, did one stop a few hours in to use a rest room, but otherwise just raced across Wisconsin.


I have to say I lucked out in the ‘traveling with children lottery,’ because my kids are great on long car trips.  They were no trouble in any way.  They napped a little, they pointed out cows, they played little games together.  My brothers and I were nowhere near that nice to each other in the car growing up.  I seem to recall my dad yelling at us to look out our respective windows a great deal.  Anyway, between their excellent behavior and the rental car’s satellite radio, it was a great drive.  Rural Wisconsin is beautiful, and the weather was gorgeous.  (I know there are more dramatic landscapes in the world, that Banff is stunning, and you can’t get your mind around the Grand Canyon even as you stand on the edge of it, vistas in Italy will make you melt, and I’ve driven through tea plantations in India that are lovely beyond words….  But Wisconsin farmland with its rolling hills and acres of corn is beautiful in an accessible and cozy way that is unlike anything else, and the kids were thrilled to see it and so was I.)

(Not the best photo since I just randomly clicked my camera without looking during a flat area, but still pretty.)

We experienced a rare moment of perfect timing.  All we had to go on was that Ian was flying into Minneapolis on Delta sometime around 7:15 pm.   We left Milwaukee at 2:00, parked at the airport at 7:20, found a desk with the word ‘Delta’ over it and got someone to figure out Ian’s gate and print us up a visitor’s pass. As we walked the last 20 paces or so to the gate, Ian called me on my cell phone to say he was about to step off his plane.  The kids and I waited maybe half a minute before we spotted him.  We got to spend a little over an hour together and eat a little dinner in the food court as a family before he had to get on the plane to LaCrosse.  I still can’t believe that all worked out.  I know he was pleased to see us at such an unlikely time.

I do have to say that people in military uniforms are more exposed than other people in an airport.  It was nice of strangers who took the time to stop and thank Ian for his service, but after awhile I kind of wished they would do it a little more quickly because our time was so limited.   I’m sure Ian would have liked that hour we had together to have been more private, but he was gracious to everyone who stopped to admire our little reunion.  He represents his uniform well.

Even though I must have warned the kids about two dozen times that we weren’t going to get to keep daddy just yet, they were still surprised when they had to say goodbye to him again and put him on another plane.  But this time we knew it was just for a few days.  That combined with his being here and not headed off to a war zone made this separation much easier than any of the past ones.

Once Ian was safely on the plane we went off in search of our rental car.  Maybe I was just too worn out at that point to appreciate whatever logic there is to the parking structure at the Minneapolis/St Paul Airport, but I found it to be the most confusing place I’ve ever left a car.  Luckily I knew I was somewhere on the ground level and at the end of a row which narrowed it down, and the kids and I walked around while I kept pushing the lock and unlock buttons on the key until we heard the car beeping.  It was in a direction I never would have thought to walk, so I’m glad the rental car came with such a feature or we might still be there.

The next few days we spent with my cousin, Ann, and her family.  (They are the same people who came all the way out to Milwaukee in February to help me move.)  I could not have asked for a better distraction.  If we had waited at home while Ian was at Ft McCoy I would have been climbing the walls.  The past couple of weeks have been really stressful in anticipation of him coming home.  The kids were acting out a little, I was not sleeping…. 

It’s hard to explain to people, because it seems like knowing our family would be reunited again should be all good–and it is good–but good is not the same thing as easy.  Ian told me from the soldiers’ perspective that leaving for the first deployment is stressful, and leaving for additional deployments isn’t as bad, but every return home is difficult.  He said many soldiers assume the physical symptoms they have before they return are due to the change of routine and diet that come with travel, but that often times it has more to do with stress.  There are a lot of unknowns about what ‘home’ is anymore, and that’s hard to deal with.

Staying at my cousin’s house removed me from the responsibilities and worries that come with being at home.  We could just relax, drink lemonade, and eat sandwiches made from tomatoes and basil from their garden.  Can you believe the view from their backyard?

My kids spent every minute possible in the swimming pool.  At one point we took all the kids out to a playground just for variety’s sake, and after a few minutes of watching them half-heartedly playing to please me we said it was time to go back to the house and they lit up and ran to the car.  They played Marco-Polo, they came up with a water dance show that required many rehearsals, and there was a lot of ‘look at me, Mom!’ stuff. 

It was one of those experiences where you didn’t realize how much you needed something until you got it.  Those few days of pleasant conversation and company and playtime for the kids in a peaceful setting were exactly what we needed.  I will always be grateful for that bit of time we spent in Minneapolis.  When we finally got the call from Ian that he was done with out-processing and we could come pick him up, the kids protested until I verbally shook them out of their idyllic daze to remind them that we were leaving to get daddy and bring him home with us.  To stay.  To keep.  That got them into the car.

The drive to Ft McCoy was beautiful, but the last leg of it got confusing.  The GPS took us through winding roads up in the hills above lots of farmland, and then five minutes from our destination kept telling me to turn where there was no road.  I passed the spot it wanted me to turn twice before I finally crept up on it very slowly and realized there was a grown over gravel path at that spot in the woods.  I pulled the car over and walked down the path far enough to see a gate with a stop sign on it, and past that was a real road.  Neat.

I decided that was not the best direction to take with three small kids in a car I was not familiar with in a spot where my cell phone wasn’t getting any signal.  I asked the GPS to find and alternative route, and almost half an hour later we finally pulled up to the main gate of Ft McCoy.

I discovered that my military spouse ID was expired (who knew such a thing expired?) but they let us in to pick up Ian anyway.  On his phone he talked us past the PX and lots of barracks and desert colored military vehicles until eventually we saw him waving near the road.  Christmas morning is a good analogy for how excited my kids were when they spotted him.  None of them could sit still.  I got to meet one of the soldiers he worked with (she seemed very nice, and you’d never guess she was the best person you could ask for manning the gun turret on a truck) then we loaded up all of his Army boxes and headed toward home.

It’s a little surreal.  He’s really home.  In some ways it was like he never left, because certain habits instantly fall back into place, but other things will take time.  I picked up food at the grocery store this morning and it took much longer than normal because while we were away they rearranged the whole place.  Cereal is where the greeting cards used to be, where pasta was is now a giant section labeled simply ‘Hispanic,’ and things like crackers are broken up into categories I couldn’t quite follow.  Most of what was on my list I stumbled into by chance.  While I was waiting at the checkout it hit me that if I found the new layout of the grocery store disorienting, how odd is it for Ian to come home to a whole different house?  It’s like a huge scavenger hunt for all your own things.  He laughed in the kitchen at one point because he started to empty the dishwasher and realized he didn’t know where anything was supposed to go, so he just stopped.  It will take time for Ian to get to know not just what the rhythm of our days are like here, but even just where the outlets are and in what drawer we store the light bulbs.

In the meantime it will be days before we finish sorting through all of the giant Army boxes of gear and military items that need to find a place in this house.  Ian’s going to be camped out in the living room for awhile, sorting through piles of paper and camoflage patterned clothing.  Not to mention all the boxes of mystery cords and books and computer items that have been waiting for him in the basement since the winter months.  I told him to take it slowly, we’d tackle it all together, and he can stop and take a nap whenever he likes.

It’s only been a couple of days, but in terms of the adjustment process, so far, so good.  I told him he needs to give the kids a chance to get used to the sound of him, and over time he can assume more of the old role he used to play in terms of exerting some authority.  Right now he’s just available to them if they want him, and he helps me when I need it, but we’re taking a slow approach with his involvement in our routine.  There is no pattern of him being in this home, and he has no experience with the kids being the ages they are now.  We haven’t had any problems yet, but I’m doing my best to head any off before they can develop.  At the moment I’m just proud of myself that he hasn’t had any allergic reactions to anything in the house.  (I remembered!) 

There’s more to tell, but it will have to wait.  Everyone is sleeping but me and it’s time for me to join them.  There are few things greater than the joy of knowing everyone who is supposed to be here is under the same roof.  We’re a whole family again.  It’s one of those things that makes me want to smile and cry at the same time.  There is no one on earth more fortunate than I am right now.  Life is grand.