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.

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.)