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.

Double Dad Day

I got to spend Father's Day with both my husband and my dad this year.  I don't know if that's ever happened before.  My dad's been staying with us for the past couple of weeks while my mom has been on a trip.  He worries that he's a burden since he needs help getting around and we have to keep track of his medication, etc., but he's not a burden; he's my dad.

I feel bad that I haven't been able to get him out to a bookstore yet like he wanted, but the only day I had free from work the weather made it too complicated.  (Dealing with a walker and an umbrella while trying to cope with parking on the East Side was more than I felt I could handle.)  Other than that it's been a good visit with lots of Scrabble playing.

The highlight for me was having both Ian and dad at my concert on Sunday.  I play so many concerts I know my dad would enjoy that he can't be here for, and from my end there's nothing like having someone you love in the audience.  This weekend the Milwaukee Mandolin Orchestra had a Father's Day concert in a beautiful church up near the university.  The building had real Tiffany stained glass windows and the acoustics were amazing--no need for mics which was great.

The first half of the concert was our artistic director, Rene Izquierdo, on solo guitar, which is always wonderful, and the second half was the orchestra.  We did a nice assortment of tunes, from Classical pieces to Irish songs to Tin Pan Alley standbys....  It wasn't perfect, but parts of it were better than we've ever sounded, and I was so happy my dad could be there.

When I went to meet him at the end of our performance he told me he was so proud, and he got a little weepy, which meant it took a lot to keep myself from getting weepy.  It was about as good a Father's Day moment as one could ask for.

But what I think of as an important Father's Day moment for Ian actually happened a couple of months ago.

A Really Good Father (Babble)

My husband, Ian, is a really good father.

(Ian with the kids heading off to school earlier this fall)

When I think about how last year at this time he was still in Iraq it’s hard to believe.  The deployments were so difficult that I’ve been happy to let them get left behind in memory and replaced with better things happening now.  I don’t like to go back to that place where we lived without him and holidays like Father’s Day made us painfully aware of his absence.  It was hard not to see all the good things as simply things he was missing.  But this Father’s Day has me focusing instead on the ways in which being a good father doesn’t come easy, and how extraordinarily well my husband fills that role.

People often tell me I’m a good mother, and I appreciate the compliment, but honestly my kids make that easy.  I’m not saying they are perfect or that parenting doesn’t have it’s hopelessly difficult moments, but overall my kids are very good kids.  They are kind and intelligent and curious.  They don’t follow all the rules as well as they should, but the ones they break aren’t the end of the world.  It would be great if they put their laundry down the chute without being nagged or didn’t bring food into the family room, and lately Aden is developing a moody attitude that is a disconcerting preview into what her teenage years will be, but none of my kids are mean to me or disrespectful.  They are considerate in public, well-behaved in restaurants, and generally nice to be with.  Who wouldn’t look like a good mom toting them around?


On top of that I am fortunate that my kids don’t currently suffer from any debilitating disorders which would demand more of me as a parent.  We don’t struggle with challenges like autism, their bodies and minds function well, and I am not required to extend myself to care for them beyond pretty normal parameters.  If I were a superstitious person I would be frantically knocking on wood all around me right now, because I know how precarious good fortune can be.  We are all one proverbial (or literal) lightning strike away from everything changing, so I appreciate what I have while I have it, and what I have is great.

But I don’t know how good a mom I would be if things were different.  I remember as a kid saying to my mom once that I was glad I was being raised in a family that didn’t preach racism or hateful things, but that I wondered if I would still know that was wrong if I were raised in a different kind of family.  I didn’t know how many of what I considered to be my better characteristics were innate, or if they were based on my pleasant environment.  I felt untested.

My mom told me she’d often wondered the same thing about herself, since her parents were wonderful people and she’d had such a nice life.  But my father, on the other hand, came from a more complicated home, and in many ways had rebelled against his upbringing and chosen a demeanor and direction that he felt had little to do with how he was raised.  Therefore, my mom argued, I could at least be assured that my genetic makeup came from stock that was half tested.

The biggest parenting trials I’ve had to face were during my husband’s deployments.  I survived them, and overall I did okay, but I know now when under great stress how much more prone I am to yell or lose my temper.  There were so many times that I felt as if I were flailing about and not doing enough of what I needed to be doing as a mother.  Some days I rose to the challenge, and other days I felt like an utter failure.

Now I have better balance.  My situation is currently as close to perfect as one could reasonably ask for and still have it be real.  We have health insurance, our small business is doing fine, we have the freedom to make choices that interest us, but we also have ants in the kitchen, my husband and I don’t get enough time together as a couple, Quinn can’t snap his own pants….  That’s just life.  Everything that actually matters is great, so if I can’t be a good mom under these conditions than something is wrong with me.  My kids love me and they show it and it is easy to love them back.

But Ian faces different challenges than I do.  And I admire his parenting because I don’t know if I could do it as well he does under the same circumstances.  Because despite sharing the same marriage and living in the same house and having made these kids together, he sees our marriage from his own angle, he sees our house differently than I do, and those kids are not the same people with him that they are with me.

If you asked me to make a list of what I love about my marriage, depending on how long you let me make that list, I would probably include how wonderful it is that Ian does all of the laundry.  I don’t think ‘getting’ to do all the laundry would make Ian’s list.  So just because we are both in this marriage does not mean we are experiencing it the same way.  (Actually, I’d be scared to have Ian make a list because I’m quite sure I’m getting the better end of this deal, so let’s move on, shall we?)

It’s the same with parenting the kids.  Luckily we figured this one out early, because baby Aden responded to me differently from her father from the start, and we learned that making any statements about “Aden does this” or “Aden does that” did not always translate from one parent to the other.  I wasn’t just Mommy, I was a source of food, so of course she was a different baby with me.  Daddy has always been the master of getting kids to sleep.  My kids to this day don’t want to sleep when I’m around (because I’m just that damned exciting I guess) but will all be soundly asleep promptly at the official bedtime when dad is the only one at home.  I’m good to read with.  Daddy’s more patient about playing board games.  Tears from Aden or Quinn work on Mommy but not on Daddy.  (Tears from Mona work on anyone because they are rare.)

Ian and I have different expectations about how much the kids should be able to do for themselves, in what ways they should help out, and what are reasonable things to ask for.  Since they most often interact with us alternately it doesn’t really cause problems.  Ian is the stay at home parent so when I show up he gets a break.  The only times we experience really weird annoying behavior from the kids is when we are both right there, and I think they just don’t know what the expectations are in that case.  The possibility of contradictions can arise, and kids don’t like confusion.

So I watch Ian’s challenges as a dad from a distance sometimes.  I check in with him on the phone from work and get updates at dinner or the end of the day.  He handles everything well, but differently than I would do.  That was a hard adjustment for me when he came back from Iraq, to let some of that control go, even as it gave me more freedom.  Ian’s adjustment to life on the kids’ schedule as opposed to in a war zone is still hard for me to fathom.

For the most part things have gone well with the girls since he came home.  Aden and Mona unabashedly adore their dad.  They missed him and were excited to have the parent back who lets them eat raw cookie dough.  Dad was the preferred parent at the after school pickup because he nearly always let them have fun on the playground before taking them home.  (If I pick them up they know I always have somewhere else to be right after, so they never even ask if there is time to play.)  When dad is around we use the grill, so they associate dad with s’mores.  Dad doesn’t hover.  Dad can solve computer problems.  Dad can fix bikes, arrange play dates, and is way more likely to let them experiment with food or get out all the paints.  The girls love their dad.  They may interact with him differently than they do with me, but they love him and trust him and it’s all good.

But Quinn is still adjusting to having his dad home.  I’ve written a few times about how hard it’s been waiting for Quinn to warm up to his father, but the boy is as stubborn as he is smart, and he’s not made this simple.  I don’t believe he necessarily remembers his dad being away at this point, but I know he remembers having me all to himself all the time.  Roughly a third of Quinn’s life has been spent with his dad away with the Army, so of course their relationship has suffered setbacks.  We’ve been as accommodating to Quinn as has seemed reasonable, but there are times it’s frustrating.  The boy is only four but he’s still entitled to his feelings, and we’re struggling with shaping his behavior despite what those feelings are.

When I pick up Quinn from school he smiles and jumps up and down with joy.  He makes it easy to feel like a good mom in those moments.  When Ian picks up Quinn from school, for the longest time he usually gave his dad the cold shoulder, and at worst threw a fit.  Ian handles it with grace, and tries not to take it personally.  But how unrewarding is that?  To do all the work of parenting, to deal with all the chores and all the mess and all the errands and indignities, and not get the love and snuggles in return to compensate looks incredibly painful to me.  I would not handle it as well.

We spent the entire school year trying to improve Quinn’s behavior at the half-day pickup.  We tried little things like having dad bring him a pop tart on the days he did the pickup, and making my pickup days as dull as possible.  But Quinn made a decision that he was not going to be happy to see his dad and he stuck with it.  Month after month after month.  And his dad took it in stride as best he could.

A few weeks before the end of school we had a painful experience at the half-day pickup when I went to get Quinn, and Ian was supposed to meet us at the violin store after he ran some errands.  Quinn came out of the building in the line of little K3’s and K4’s (there is nothing cuter than the half-day pickup) and when he spotted me he did a little happy dance.  I saw him mouthing the word “Mom!” over and over.  He smiled and fidgeted and could not wait to be released from the line.  When the teacher finally shook his hand and dismissed him, he ran to me, arms wide, yelling, “MOOOOOoooooommm!” and I scooped him up and hugged him and he hugged me back.  Pure bliss.  Then we spotted Ian coming across the playground.  He’d finished his errand early and tried to beat me to the school, and ended up seeing Quinn’s response to my picking him up.  He laughed a little and said, “Wow!  What a totally different reaction.”  As bad as that was for Ian it was like a knife to my own heart as well.

Ian deserves the same kind of love and sweetness.  I’m impressed beyond words that he can function without it.  I would be resentful.  Of course I look like a good parent when my kid wants to hug me and never let me go.  The truly good parent is the one who can keep it together when a kid makes love hard.  But Ian is amazing.  He is a truly good parent.

(Ian ready to catch his boy if he falls, whether Quinn knows it or not)

Luckily things are slowly but surely improving.  Ian’s patience for playing endless games of Sorry or Trouble has made their afternoons alone together nicer.  He makes his son grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch and Quinn appreciates it.  There is not much enthusiasm on Quinn’s part, but his resistance is crumbling.  He’s not trying to avoid his dad the way he used to.  Sometimes they get along very well, as if Quinn has forgotten his resolve to keep daddy at bay.  Those days are little by little becoming more frequent.
We’re getting there.  One board game at a time.  And I honestly think we will look back years from now and Quinn won’t believe us that he was anything but crazy about his dad.  Because how could he not be?  I married the best guy I know.

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.

The Good Old Days (Babble)

Years ago, before running our own business, before graduating from violin making school, before children, before 9/11 and thoughts of deployment, Ian and I used to take walks together on the east side of town.  I loved those walks.  We could go anywhere and not have to be back in time for anything or anyone.  We were poor but not in debt, uninsured but healthy, and we would hold hands and talk as we strolled around Milwaukee.

Talking with Ian has always been interesting.  Even after twenty years our conversations surprise me.  I feel on a very basic level Ian and I agree on important things, and our core philosophy about life and our place in it is similar, but the details closer to the surface aren’t the same at all.  We are distinctly different people, and even though we may be able to finish each other’s sentences in regular conversation and can make decisions for one another with confidence much of the time, I am still getting to know him.  He has degrees in economic geography and engineering, and I’m Ms Music and project building person.  We come at problems from very different places.  His ideas and perspective give me much to think about when we’re apart.  He helps me challenge my own thoughts and see things from other angles.


I’m often surprised about where each of us falls on certain issues.  When I recount conversations I’ve had about the war in Iraq to him he usually responds with his own take that is far less diplomatic.  When I encounter people who express discomfort with the whole idea that my husband is in the Army and tell me they hate the war, I generally tell them it’s not a conflict I agree with either, but that simply wishing it away isn’t a solution and that Ian is exactly the kind of soldier we would want there trying to fix things.  Ian’s response is something closer to, “I don’t think you’re mad enough about it.  From what I saw, it was an even bigger waste than you think.”  Ian’s take on things is always informed and seldom what people expect.  I never worry that talking with Ian will be boring.

On one of those walks a lifetime ago in the mid-1990’s, I remember him speculating about the economy and saying to me, “Right now, these are the good old days everyone will look back on later.”  That really stuck with me, and I think of it every time I’m confronted with more news about the recession.  We have been very fortunate that our own small business is doing fine, but I know we are not typical and that fortune can turn on a dime and have nothing to do with how hard you are willing to work or what is fair.

Today when I look back on us holding hands on the east side, it’s a sweet memory, but empty.  I’m in a very glass half full kind of place at the moment.  I’ve never liked the question about the glass being half full or half empty, because in my mind the answer is entirely dependent on what came before.  If the glass started out empty and now has something in it, then it’s half full.  If you started with a full glass, and there is only half left, then it’s on it’s way to being empty.  Ian and I alone were a pretty nice glass, but we’ve since added the experience of building a home together, and I don’t even want to imagine life without my children.  I loved my life back then, but it is so much fuller now I wouldn’t want to go back.

I am acutely aware that right now, these are the good old days.  We are a family with all its parts in place.  We are healthy and busy and together.  I enjoy my work, I love being home, my husband and I are partners in building this life and there is no one I’d rather do that with.  And all my children are here.  When we lie in bed in the morning and listen to them play together, to the amusing symphony of squeaks and thumps and clattering noises that are their improvised games, I am sometimes overwhelmed by the beauty that is this place in time.

The good old days aren’t the big events.  They are the fabric of the ordinary.  The same way my wedding was wonderful but not the best day of my marriage, the birth of each of my children was not the best day of my life with each of them.  It was amazing and life changing, but my best day with Aden or Mona or Quinn is today, because it includes everything they are.  If I get to have tomorrow with them, that will become the best day.  I hope for a certain amount of adventure still to come in my life, but I am glad the baseline of what my life is like is all I really need.  The waking up sleepy kids up in the morning, the breakfast dishes, the nagging everyone about their shoes, the discussions about house projects or bills, wiping down the counters, the bedtime routine….  Just hearing the people I love best in the world moving around the house.  This is it.  I’m not waiting for something else, I’m enjoying this moment, this time, this place.  This place is magic.

Someday having all of us gathered in our home will take a concerted effort, but right now it is our natural state, and it’s wonderful.  My glass is completely full.  These are the days I will look back on and know that I was once the luckiest person in the world.  It doesn’t get better than this and I know it.

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.

A Question for Readers (Babble)

My husband, an excellent writer and now home from Iraq for one week, has agreed to write a guest post for this blog.

So, my question is:  Would you rather he just write about whatever he feels like, or are there more specific things anyone would like to know?  I can’t guarantee he will answer all questions seriously, but it might help him to know what interests people before he starts writing.

Any thoughts?

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.

Who Needs Words? (Babble)

Dear Ian, (Babble)

We’re excited to hear that you are wrapping up the last of your responsibilities in Iraq. 
Not long until you’re home!  Here are a few things to ponder on the flight to the United States:

Omega Burger closed down.

I threw out any of your clothes that had holes including that one nasty pair of sneakers.

The top dozen slots of our Netflix queue is just episodes of Mad Men.

That empty retail space near the violin store was briefly some kind of gym and now it’s empty again.

The birch tree you didn’t know we had has been removed.

Be prepared to address many computer issues when you arrive.

All the kids can use the microwave themselves, but still need to ask how much time to heat things for (unless it’s ravioli–they have that down).

Aden eats grape jelly, Mona eats strawberry.


Aden likes onions on her hamburgers, Mona likes pickles, Quinn would rather die than have either of those things with his meal but he does like salad.

The violin store is pretty messy, and there is a big stack of mystery papers on your desk there waiting for you.  Also that pole next to our building that I don’t know what it was is now gone.

The play structure in Humboldt Park was torn down awhile back, and they just started building the replacement.  Aden is upset because it will be different.

I will be asking you to move rocks in the backyard.  (But you’ll get two kisses for every rock and there are a million rocks, so it should work out in your favor at some point.)

The little girl ringing our doorbell repeatedly is named Karla.

The radio was stolen out of our car again.  (Ha!  April fools!  I didn’t have you around on the first of April so I’m getting caught up on that now.)

I have no idea where your keys or library card are.  (That’s not an April fools joke.  Sorry!)

Mona has four loose teeth.

Quinn has forgotten all his geography information but can talk about planets and write his own name.

Remember to turn right instead of left at our intersection.  The blue and white house may look like home, but the new neighbors will be very surprised if you show up there.  We’re across the street at the house with the lawn that needs mowing.

We’ll need to shop for a lawnmower.

Neighborhood Recess is every Thursday at 5:00.  Wear good running shoes.

I’m claiming the side of the bed near the windows.

All those giant army boxes you shipped home are stacked in your little study room.  (Good luck getting into your little study room.)

There is supposed to be a new garage out back when you get here.  (Right now it’s a muddy mess that I like to think of as ‘the moat.’  That’s nice too, but I’m still keeping my fingers crossed for a garage.)

The kids want you to select the new Rock of the Week.

Aden doesn’t need a booster seat now, but she still likes to use one.

The grill has sat untouched since you left.  We all want you to grill stuff.

Don’t let the kids use the sidewalk chalk on the bricks outside the violin store because apparently that counts as grafitti and our landlord will get fined.

The squirrels are more entertaining on this side of the street.

Aden desperately wants to go to Incrediroll.

Tony and Megan have a baby girl with lots of names but they call her Katie for short.
Smokey Joe, Mrs. Coleman, and our mailman have all died.

Quinn’s favorite color is still purple, but Aden’s is now blue, and Mona is conflicted about the whole concept.

I apologize that the change from the glove box feels funny.

We have a garbage disposal now, so you don’t have to flinch when I toss egg shells into the sink anymore.

We may be picking you up in a brainless rental van.

We love you more than you remember.  We’ve missed you like crazy.  The kids are bigger than when you left so be prepared for some power hugs.

I love you.  I’m proud of you.  See you soon.

Kory

Fears (Babble)

I’m having trouble sleeping, even though Quinn is lying here next to me in bed.  Normally his soft breathing and his little arm across me as he sleeps makes the nights without Ian here better, but not tonight.  For some reason I’m having more trouble than usual quieting my fears enough to shut my eyes.  Rather than ignore them tonight I feel like laying them out like change on a table, and sorting through them for a little while.  Maybe listing them will make them look ordinary and dull and then I’ll sleep.

The obvious fear that everyone can understand is that I worry my husband will be killed in Iraq.

But since I live with that fear over an extended period, it grows and fractures and that particular fear gets broken down into parts.  I fear the initial shock of the idea of soldiers coming to my door to tell me.  If I let my mind linger there too long I wonder if I would be polite and let them in, or in such denial and distress that I bar the door and hide inside.  I don’t want to think about the funeral I’d have to be responsible for.  I recoil at the thought of what it would do to my kids.

But there are other fears about what could happen to Ian that scare me about as much.  I worry about him becoming a different person because of this experience–a person who scares me or that I couldn’t live with anymore,  I fear what would happen to him if he were responsible for the death of someone else, or if someone under his command were hurt or killed because of decisions he made or failed to make.   What if the person who comes back to me from the war is someone who hates himself now?  At what point do the unspoken vows to my children override the vows we made to each other at our wedding if his mental state makes him unsafe to our family?


I fear injuries that change everything.  Brain damage that robs me of the man I loved but will continue to care for for the rest of my life.  I fear missing limbs and destroyed skin and blindness.  I fear PTSD.

I fear that decisions that I had to make on my own while he’s been gone will have been wrong.  That he’ll be disappointed in me somehow, or that I’ve neglected important things that make his life harder when he comes home and he resents me for it.  I fear that adjusting to this life after the war will be dull.  I fear that after having so much responsibility and respect, that the drudgery of caring for small children will be frustrating and leave Ian feeling undervalued.

Okay, it feels good to lay those out.  Fears always look larger when trapped inside my head, and now I can be more rational.  Ian came back from the last deployment still the guy I knew.  He still sounded like my same Ian last I talked to him, so I’m crossing my fingers that the next few weeks don’t throw any dangerous surprises his way.  I don’t really think he’ll be disappointed in me for anything, but his opinion matters and I haven’t lived with him in what seems like forever so I don’t know if the husband in my imagination is accurate anymore, and it makes me uncertain.

The thing I remind myself about the fears of injury and death is that it’s not all that different from regular life.  I’m haunted by stories I hear on the news from time to time about soldiers who return safely from Iraq or Afghanistan only to be killed in a car accident on the way home, or something similar.  I remember very clearly a cold morning in February when I was still commuting 40 miles every day to violin making school hearing a news report of a man who had been killed in his car on I43.  He was in between two trucks, and when the one in front of him stopped the one behind him didn’t and he was crushed.  For some reason my first thought was that there was food in his refrigerator that he had expected to eat and never would.  There were a million details of his life waiting for him at home and he would never go back there.  None of us knows when our last day will be.

When Ian was deployed the first time and we had only six days to prepare, one of the things we had to do was sit down and go through all his important papers including his will.   He skimmed it for me and said, “It says here if I die then everything goes to you….” etc.  I didn’t pay too much attention until I heard the words, “And if you die while I’m gone….” and my jaw dropped because it had never crossed my mind that I could die while he was at war.  All I could think was, “What do you mean if I die?!  I can’t die!  I have to take care of these kids!”  But it was a good reality check.  I could be driving along between two trucks and never get to eat that lunch waiting for me in my fridge.

So my circumstance may seem extreme to someone else just living a regular life, but it’s not that much different really.  All of us are here temporarily and none of us knows how long we have.  It’s important to connect with the people we care about as often as we are able and to appreciate the time we have and use it well.

A quote that occurs to me often is, “It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch.”  It’s easy to focus on the fear.  That’s primal.  What takes courage is to get past that and to focus on the love.   I can’t stop the fact that things will end, but the days I’m most proud of myself are the ones where I really stop and enjoy how glorious the love I have is.  Even if it’s just for a moment, like when my kids are showing me a caterpillar and the pure delight on their faces makes any of the mundane things I’m preoccupied with most of the time disappear.  I make a point every day to hold each of my kids and consciously appreciate how glad I am they are in the world.  Even when they are driving me crazy.

Quinn is nuzzling up next to me.  He’s able to pat around and find my arm to wrap around himself even in his sleep.  I’m the luckiest person I know.  I’m tired of fear.  I’m tired period.  I’m ready to close my laptop now.  I think I’m okay to sleep.

Contact (Babble)

Someone asked in a comment thread something I get asked in person all the time:  How much contact do I have with my husband during his deployment?

The answer is not much, but way more than people had before email.   My grandmother actually gave birth to her second child while my grandfather was off in the Navy during World War Two, and there was no way to tell him he had a son.  She wondered for very long periods of time if her husband was okay.  That sounds unbearable.  By comparison, the longest stretch I’ve gone without hearing from Ian is maybe a month.  I’m able to scan things to show him if I have questions about bills or taxes.  He sends me brief notes on important days like anniversaries.  A couple of times we’ve been able to talk to each other on Skype, which is interesting because we’ve gotten to see the room where he lives and works, but the time difference is a problem.  Iraq is nine hours ahead of Wisconsin, so he’s usually going to sleep as we’re getting up, and there is no good time to talk.


I feel badly that I haven’t sent him as many packages as I should.  I sent one big one before his leave and one after.  I usually send DVDs of the kids, photos, artwork the kids made, a local paper of some sort, cookies, a letter, and anything else lying around that would remind him of home.  The hard part about putting together a package (besides making sure any food won’t melt or rot in the 135 degree heat over the two week journey) is sending things that are meaningful without being too precious.  Ian worries about leaving things behind when he comes home.  I assure him the photos are replaceable, the kids are always cranking out artwork, and none of us would mind if he passed on little gifts to people there. 

He’s sent a couple of things to us, including a toy camel, some pretty chai sets that the girls adore, a small vase….  My favorite things are the rare letter, and the last deployment he sent me a simple necklace with a pearl on it that I wear quite often.  I don’t write him as much as I should, but he does follow this blog, and I do email notes reminding him he’s missed and we love him.  I figure with limited time on my hands my priorities have to be with my kids and our life here.  He’s an adult and I trust him to take care of himself and to remember we love him even if we don’t get to tell him every day.  If I have a choice between playing a game with the kids or writing to their dad, I hope he understands that I need to focus on the kids.

The hardest thing about communicating with my husband while he’s overseas isn’t the how, it’s the what.  We can stay in pretty good contact using a combination of letters and email and Skype and occasional phone calls, but time apart makes what to say harder to come by.  It’s often easier to find things to talk about with someone I saw yesterday than it is to someone I see rarely.  That seems counter-intuitive, since there would be more to catch up on with someone you haven’t talked to in a long time, but you lose common ground.  The flow of conversation is harder to establish when there is too much to tell.

With Ian it gets very frustrating because we are used to talking to each other easily, but after so many months apart once we say, “I love you, I miss you,” several times, it’s hard to think of anything to add.   He doesn’t have a current idea of what our lives are like at this point–small changes add up and turn into big changes.  Anyone with little children knows how much is different in just a few months, let alone a year.  We’ve moved, the kids are older, there are new people in our lives he doesn’t know….  I’m sure I’ve changed in ways I don’t even realize.  And the thing is if I try to describe things really well, in some ways I think it only highlights for Ian how disconnected he is from us now, rather than helping him feel included.  No one wants to have home explained to them.  In the meantime I can’t relate to what his days are like at all.  Most of what he describes I either don’t understand or don’t want to know because it scares me.  He doesn’t want to add to my stress, but everything about him being in Iraq causes me stress, so what can he say?  Not being able to find things to talk about makes us both feel bad, so just because we can talk doesn’t mean it’s always a good idea.

We’re also both limited by what we are allowed to say or simply shouldn’t.  From his end, my husband is an officer, and privileged to sensitive information.  He can tell us a little bit about what he’s doing, but sometimes in emails he has to change names of places and people.  Email is convenient but not private.  We have to assume whatever we write may be seen by others.   That could include the people he’s fighting, so for safety reasons he can never tell me when he’s coming or going. 

On my end, it’s unfair to burden him with any problems he can’t fix.  It’s a nice idea to keep him informed of important details, but I can’t tell him about a trip to the emergency room, for instance, until it’s resolved.  I can’t tell him anything with loose ends because it’s cruel.  I don’t want him distracted because he has dangerous work to do.  Complaining to him about my problems would be selfish, but I don’t want to lie to him either.  If I told him everything was perfect he would worry because he would know that wasn’t true.  So I keep him informed after the fact.  Quinn was sick but now he’s fine, the insurance thing at work was messy but now it’s taken care of, selling the old house was tricky but now it’s done.  When I talk to Ian on the phone there is a time delay not just in the sounds we’re hearing, but in the topics we can discuss.  It’s awkward, but it’s what we’ve got.

Our circumstance may or may not be typical.  He tells me for most soldiers it depends on time and opportunity.  He knows other people who contact home every day because they have the free time to do it.  Ian tends to be extremely busy with no days off.  (People always seem surprised when I say he doesn’t have days off, and I remind them it’s a war.)  It’s usually inconvenient times like midnight or very early morning or dinnertime here when he would be available to chat, and most of the time that doesn’t work out well.
 
Recently we had a discussion where he asked if I could please find a way for him to talk to the kids one on one when he calls.  I’m used to having all the kids with me all the time, so when he calls I tend to put him on speaker phone and then it gets to be a mess.  I explained to the kids that we’d have to take turns and be in different rooms, and they agreed, and the last call went much better.

In terms of making decisions, my husband trusts me to make choices that are good for our family and our future.  That’s part of why he loves me to start with.  When it comes to our home or the kids’ school or major purchases, he knows I’m not going to get us into debt or do something ridiculous.  The craziest thing I did was move, and it was the right thing.  It was hard to do without him, but I’m glad I did it.  I can take care of everything with him gone, I just prefer to do it with him.   Some things he definitely does better than I do (he doesn’t cry about computer problems, for example), but I know for a fact he doesn’t really want to pick out rugs or futon covers.  We make a good team.  I’m just looking forward to the team all being in the same time zone again.

(A picture Ian took of us almost exactly one year ago when I was first putting together this blog and Babble needed photos.)

(This is a photo of us exactly one year later taken by Aden’s friend Karla.  My baby isn’t a baby anymore, Aden seems more grown up, and Mona’s clothes don’t stay on very well.  But it’s still us.  I think Ian will know us when we finally meet him at the airport and decide we’re worth coming home with.)

Support a Troop Day (Babble)

This is nothing but a blatant request for comments today.  My husband has had a rough go of it lately and could use a little boost.  He’s been feeling a bit forgotten and unappreciated.  He sounds worn out to me.  He checks in on my blog as often as he is able, and I think some random words of cheer his direction would be a welcome treat.  Think of it as ‘Holding Down the Fort De-Lurker Day.’  If you are reading this, even just a ‘Hi Ian!’ would be appreciated.  If you aren’t comfortable thanking someone for Army service, thank him for being a great dad.  All of us could use a day where we are singled out for doing the important things we do, and I’ve decided today is his.  Easiest way to support a troop you will come across.  Please help.  Thank you.

The Home Stretch (Babble)

If we are lucky, it looks as if Ian may come home before the summer is over.  We’re not allowed to know exactly when because that counts as troop movements and for their safety that’s classified, but for the first time I have a vague idea, so we’re in the home stretch.  I know summer is just starting, and for other people looking at a couple of months to care for kids and house and business without their spouse sounds like a long time, but at this point for me it looks like nothing.  So I’m already getting antsy and starting to let my guard down, which is dangerous.

When you know you have to get through a long ordeal, you can steel yourself to it.  You can take care of what you need to take care of, and worry about how it feels later, when there’s time, and it’s safe to do so.  I’ve had little breakdowns here or there during this particular deployment, but for the most part I think I’ve done a good job of keeping everything running and the kids happy.  I was all set to keep it up through Thanksgiving.

But then I learned I might have my old life back before Labor Day and some of my defenses, some of which I didn’t even realize I’d built up, began to crumble a bit.
Just imagining being able to share the workload of our daily family life with my husband again has made me realize how tired I am.  I realize I miss feeling desirable and pretty because I’ve had to shut those needs down for so long.  I miss not keeping track of all the bills and all the appointments and all the everything alone all the time.  I miss being able to say, “Go ask your dad.”  The thought of having my husband back and in our lives again is akin to winning the lottery.  There is no other thing I can think of that I want more right now.  But who can live with that kind of anticipation stretched out over an entire summer?  There’s delayed gratification (which, frankly, I’ve never been a fan of) and there’s torture.


I’m assessing the toll this journey has taken prematurely.  I can’t help myself.  I can see the finish line and I shouldn’t start poking at the blisters on my feet until I finish the race.  I often think about how hard it was to appreciate my grandma’s stories of living in Milwaukee while my grandpa was away in the Navy, because we already knew the end of the story.  We already knew grandpa came home, so the frightening suspense she lived with for years was lost on us.  There is an underlying terror to my daily life that goes with knowing my husband is in a war zone that most of the time I’m able to keep at arm’s length in order to function.  But I don’t know the end of this story yet, so it’s still a scary one for me.

It doesn’t help that the things my husband says to reassure me, aren’t reassuring.  The life he’s living is so far removed from anything I can relate to that he doesn’t realize how the snippets from his life sound out of context.  He’s done remarkable work, and I’m very proud of him.  The amount of corruption he’s uncovered and the areas he’s been able to cut costs has more than paid back the taxpayers for the service he’s been hired for.  (Then there’s odd stuff he gets into that’s kind of funny.  Well, Ian makes it funny, even while in a war zone.  I’ve watched that clip dozens of times just to hear his voice.)  That’s all good. 

But accomplishing those things and exposing problems makes him a target, and when I tell him that makes me nervous he says things like, “Don’t worry, I’m always the most heavily armed person in the room.”  I know from where he’s standing in his combat boots on Iraqi soil that seems like a sensible thing to say.  Listening to it here in Milwaukee where the biggest danger we face is Mona’s clothing choices, it doesn’t do anything to calm my nerves. 

It also highlights dramatically that in certain ways I don’t know my husband at all.  I can’t picture the life he’s led for the past year, I don’t know the people he works with, I don’t know the rhythm of his days or the food he’s eating or where he does mundane things like wash his laundry.  His life looks nothing like the life we’ve built together.  And yet somehow we’re still a family and this will all work out, even though I have trouble wrapping my brain around the fact that this pistol-toting uniform guy is somehow still Ian.  That that IS Ian.  It’s surreal and unnerving.

I also find myself worrying already about the possibility of yet another deployment.  I know that probably sounds absurd since he’s not even back from this one yet. but I can’t escape it.  When I tell people about when he’s coming back, they all ask, “Is that when he’s coming back for good?”  It’s an interesting expression “for good.”  My brain tends to run with it in odd directions and I think yes, it is good, and he will do good things here, so his being here is for good. 

This was kind of how we thought of our pet rabbits.  We always talked about how they weren’t good bunnies, they were good at being bunnies, which are two very different things.  I tell people that he’ll be done with this tour, but that “home for good” depends entirely on the state of the world and whether we are done fighting wars.  It’s not the giddy all positive response I think people want from me, but only the President can really answer the question of whether or not when my husband comes home how long he gets to stay here.  I don’t actually know.

In the meantime I’m trying to pace myself.  We have more than enough to keep us busy this summer, and as long as I concentrate on sweeping up the sand the kids track into the house and doing the laundry and keeping my business running, I shouldn’t have too much time to wish my husband would walk in the door.  Soon.  But not today.

Daddy Sounds (Babble)

The nice parts of having my husband home on leave from Iraq are easy to imagine for most people.  We’re happy to spend time together, things are easier with two parents around, etc. and so on.  It was a treat to have him here for Friday Night Movie Night.  I can run errands easily for a change.  Good, predictable things.

Then there are odd adjustments that take me by surprise.  The main one I’ve noticed this time is having to get used to the sounds of a grown man in the house.  We’re not accustomed to that anymore, and it doesn’t help that all the sounds in the current house are exaggerated at the moment since it is getting progressively emptier as the move continues.  Daddy sounds are bigger, and decisive in a heavier way, and everything echoes in our house right now.  It’s interesting how adding Ian’s footfalls to the rhythm of our days is so noticeable.

The trickiest thing is Ian’s attempts at keeping the kids in line.  He can say the same thing I would in the same tone of voice and at the same volume, but it just sounds more threatening coming from a man.  He raised his voice at Mona the first day back because she appeared to be ignoring something I’d said, and she burst into tears.  She hid behind me for about fifteen minutes, telling me that she was too scared to go near her dad.  He felt terrible, and we agreed that during this trip he should forego any disciplining of the kids at all.  Mona’s long over it, but it took lots of assurance from her dad that he wouldn’t yell anymore before she would trust him again.  Not that what he’d done had even crossed the line into yelling, but to her it felt like it.  Men just typically sound different, and to kids in particular different can be scary.

The kids need time to get used to the general sense of having daddy around so they’ll have a baseline to work from.  Eventually they will associate the sounds of daddy with feeling protected again.  Unfortunately, just as they get comfortable now, Ian will have to go back to Iraq.  Then we will adjust to him being gone all over.   But I will file this experience away as one more thing to keep in mind when this deployment finally ends.  (After having had just a few days together again, that can’t come soon enough for me.)

Spring (Babble)

Ian arrived home on leave along with the warm weather.  Life is feeling pretty great.

The thing about spring in the Midwest is that it feels like a miracle.  Winter can have some nice moments; falling snow is beautiful, sledding is fun, the glee with which Mona makes snow angels alone makes it worth living here.  But winter in Milwaukee is long, and most of the fun requires you not have to get anywhere in particular.  Bundling everyone up loses its charm months into getting everyone out the door for school on time.  Winter means obstacles in the landscape.  Snow plows create barriers along the edges of the streets.  Some days it’s a struggle to take out the trash.  Waiting for the kids outside of the school at the pickup sometimes feels like torture.

But the first really warm day makes you feel alive in a way you nearly forgot you could.  I stepped outside without a jacket and the world was welcoming.  Spring feels both new and familiar at the same time.  It’s like being released from captivity, and you’re happy to just be.  I stood outside my violin store yesterday and enjoyed the sense that the world was large, and not just the size of whatever room I was in.  My kids keep pointing out that there are buds on everything, and plants are pushing up through the ground everywhere you look.   We watched a worm for half an hour on our sidewalk and followed ladybugs around the playground.  To step outside and have the breeze touch your face as if it’s friendly and not an assault makes you see everything differently.

I wish it weren’t true that you need contrast to really appreciate some things in life, but I learn that again every spring.  There is a muddy, ugly transition period through most of March, where somehow everything thaws but it’s still cold.  All the trash that had been trapped in snowbanks is littered all over the neighborhood, and the salt residue from the streets makes everything dingy.  But just when you start to lose hope while trudging along from one errand to another, the temperature gets warm.  Everyone wants to be outside and all the yards get attention and the trash disappears.  The birds are back and there is music all around us.

That’s what it’s like having Ian home.  We don’t get to keep him for very long, but to be reminded even for just a little while of what our lives as a complete family are supposed to feel like is wonderful.  There is a muddy transition period that isn’t easy, but being in his arms again is warm.  The only good part about being separated for so long is getting to appreciate how lucky we are anew when we’re back together.   Even if this particular part of spring will only last a couple of weeks, we know to appreciate it that much more.

Safe and Strong (Babble)

My husband doesn’t complain as often as he should.  He tends to keep things to himself and small irritations fester into deeper frustrations, and I end up telling him later he should have just spoken up and I could have helped.

So I was taken off guard early in his last deployment when he made a clear point of telling me he didn’t like people asking him to “Stay Safe.”  He had discussed it with other soldiers, and they all agreed it bothered them.  They found it insulting.  He said it was as if their talents and training and skill counted for nothing and we had no faith in them to do their jobs.  Now, all of us–his mother, my mother, our friends, myself–we all expressed in our emails or letters that we hoped he would ‘stay safe,’ and at first I was miffed at him for finding fault with such a universally heartfelt sentiment.  He was at war, and we worried about his safety.  I don’t care how much talent or training or skill he has, war is dangerous and I want him home in one piece.  We all wanted him to ‘stay safe’ and asking us not to express that seemed unfair.

First the two of us had to get past the point that he was doing what I asked, and telling me when he was bothered by something.  Eventually I agreed that if it bothered him that much I was glad he told me.  I promised him we wouldn’t say it anymore, but that he should understand the spirit in which it was meant in case others continued to do it.  No one was doubting his abilities, we were just scared in general.  He accepted that, and I’ve never asked him to ‘stay safe’ ever again.

I think about that often, because it’s the most common thing people still say to me when they hear my husband is deployed–that they hope he stays safe.  The problem may be that most of us have a view of war that is constructed in our imaginations from what we’ve read or seen on the news or gleaned from popular culture.  In my mind, war is synonymous with chaos.  I don’t understand it, so it is random and terrifying.  I suppose with study and training it would seem less so, but it’s not easy for me to picture how. 

The closest analogy I can come up with in my area of training would musical improvisation.  For people who don’t play music and don’t have an understanding of basic theory principles, the idea of making up music on the spot must seem akin to magic.  But with training you come to know the rules and patterns and it’s not the crazy free for all some people seem to think it is.  There is order, and skilled people work within a framework that is not hard to navigate once you know what to focus on.  Soldiers see a framework that many of us do not.  My husband would know what to do in a circumstance where I would be lost, and that’s thanks to his talents and training and skill.  For me to imply in any way that he can’t conduct himself well in the war negates all his years of hard work to prepare for that circumstance.  I know how annoying I find it when people think creating music just happens because you’re born with some gift, and don’t acknowledge the great effort and preparation behind it.  (A pitiful analogy, but it’s all I’ve got.)  So I think I get it.  It reminds me a little of how one of my brothers doesn’t want to be wished ‘good luck.’  He always corrects me and says, “No, good skill.”

The problem is Ian’s job literally comes down to life and death, and there is an element of luck or chance to everything we do that is beyond our control or level of skill.  We have no power there, so we throw wishes and good thoughts that way to help manage our fears.  I can’t help Ian stay safe, so I hope for it instead.  We send him cookies, we remind him he’s loved, and that’s about all we can do from here.

On my end, the word I struggle with sometimes is ‘Strong.’   People want Ian to be safe and for me to remain strong.  I don’t resent it in any way, but I don’t know what it means.  I can only do what I do, and there aren’t many choices.  I suppose it means not falling apart, but I’m also human.  I arranged to have someone babysit my kids on a Saturday about a month after Ian left so I could work at the violin store without having everyone along for a change.  I got the kids ready, swung by the post office, dropped something off at the video store, took the kids to the sitter’s, and on the short drive from there to the violin store I burst into tears.  It took me completely by surprise.  I wasn’t sure what was happening, but then it occured to me that it was the first time I’d been completely alone in weeks.  I hadn’t cried since saying goodbye to Ian at the airport, and I guess I needed to.  In that moment was I failing to be strong?  I have no idea.

I’m pretty good about not losing it in front of my kids because I don’t want to upset them, but that’s not much different from simply being a plain old responsible adult.  I can only remember a few instances in my life where I let myself completely fall to pieces, but even in those instances it didn’t matter.  When my dad was badly injured on a trip to India, I remember freaking out and hyperventalating on a train platform because I was so upset and worried, but he was in the more than capable hands of my brothers and their friends, so I had the luxury of being useless at that moment.  Once we were on the train to Mumbai, I gave myself the job of keeping dad company all night long as he faded in and out of painful consciousness.  I held it together because I was needed.  I don’t know if ‘strong’ applies anywhere in there, just as I don’t know where or if it applies now. 

Most days are just days.  There is grocery shopping to do, schoolwork to help with, and laundry to fold.  Those things have to get done rain or shine, sick or well, strong or weak.  But now when I complete ordinary tasks I’m considered ‘strong,’ which seems to me to be way more credit than I deserve.  I’m just doing the best I can any given day like almost anyone else.  Most of the world has it much harder than I do.  I’m healthy, I do work I enjoy, I get to see my children smile every day, and we have a comfortable roof over our heads.  If I can’t draw sufficient strength from that to survive each day then I’m not even trying.

But words can be funny things.  They have power when we choose to give them power.  If in this new context we live in, the word ‘safe’ rubs my hsuband the wrong way, then it is easy enough to avoid it.  If when Ian’s gone, washing dishes somehow makes me seem strong, then I’ll pretend I’m wearing a cape.  Maybe for variety this week I’ll hope to keep myself safe and tell Ian to be strong.  Couldn’t hurt.