I’m in TJ Maxx and somehow I find myself talking to a stranger about the Navy and I become exasperated.
I’m so tired of hearing people say to me “I don’t know how you do it–I could NEVER do it”—referring to the fact that my husband is in the military. I can’t help but feel really annoyed. I know there is a complement in there but it still bugs me. To me, it’s saying “Wow I feel sorry for you because your life is so hard”. And, again, I know the intent is not to make me feel bad but it does. My family might have different challenges than you but we all have challenges.
Yes, I have experienced deployments with small children. This gave me the opportunity to flipping dig deep! Want to know what you are made of? Get rid of your safety net. That’s what deployments do. You are on your own and you have to figure it out. Sometimes you are in a brand new place too. And it’s hard. You don’t always have the luxury of someone to bail you out, relieve you, or back you up. What are you going to do? Fall apart? Maybe. But don’t we all from time to time? You pick yourself back up and keep trucking through. I got resiliency training from those deployments.
Yes, I have moved a fair amount. It has averaged every 3 years more or less. Dislike your neighbors? Awesome, you get to move soon. Don’t like your city? Ditto. Have too much stuff? Well moving is a great motivator to purge. Always wanted to try a new area of the country? Or even world? Want to make new friends? Want to start over? Want to create new habits? Want to try a new job? Well we get to do that.
No my parents don’t live down the street, nor do any relatives live nearby, or my childhood best friend. There are cars, planes, phones, new friends to make (and that doesn’t mean they replace the old ones), and now I get the opportunity to DIG DEEP (see above).
I have health insurance, my husband has job security, and I have friends EVERYWHERE. For real. I mean I really do have friends all over the country and the world.
Yes, I have to say good-bye to really good friends. I also get to say hello to really good friends when our paths cross again, and again, because they always do.
I don’t want to live forever in my hometown. I don’t want the same house for years and years. I like making new friends, seeing new places. No, I don’t like it when my husband leaves. But I bet you don’t like things you have to deal with too. It’s life.
I don’t want to pick on your life. So if you see me please don’t say “I don’t know how you do it” because I’ll have to say the same thing back to you.
Tribute WTC Visitor Center and Memorial in NYC~www.Boston.com
I forget so many things about my life. I forget past memories, I forget to be grateful, I forget to put on deodorant, I forget where I put my car keys, I forget that my kids don’t have the same fully functioning brain as an adult so I forget to be patient.
I totally forgot about being screamed at by men in uniform with really big guns pointed at my feet. And I forgot about how we paid for part of our minivan in 2001.
And then I remembered. Yesterday was the anniversary of 9-11 and I forgot that too until last night. I watched a documentary about what enfolded that day and was mesmerized. I was completely 100% there again on that day 13 years ago. It was like a portal opened to my past and I remembered.
I remember that I was the Office Manager, Human Resources Manager, Executive Assistant and about 12 other things for a small construction company in South Texas. A lot of Texan Men and me. And if you don’t realize how crazy that is you don’t know me and you don’t know Texas. On the day of, when the planes were hitting and everyone was in shock, we were suppose to keep working. We weren’t to stop and drop like we wanted to. It was like working underwater–difficult, unnatural, void of sound, dark, cold. I was asked if I needed to go home because my husband was in the military. Part of me wanted to say yes, the other part felt that one had nothing to do with what was happening on the East Coast. Or did it? I had no idea. What was going to happen? What was happening?
My boss gave me an impossible list of errands to do that day–and when I finished I could go home. My husband was stationed at a military base in Corpus Christi and we had one car at the time. This meant I had to go pick him up when I was done working. I remember walking through a sports store looking for steel tipped work boots for my bosses. What was I doing? Who cared about all these things when it felt like the world was stopping. After 4 hours of this I was finally finished and able to go get my husband. It was 2:35. I remember. I waited for almost 3 hours to get onto the base that day. The line of cars stretched forever. Every single car had to be searched. Bomb dogs. Men with guns. And the screaming.
You see for the search to be effective, I guess, I had to open the trunk, I had to pop the hood, I had to slide the seats forward, I had to operate all the buttons and gizmos on my car in front of the armed guards to make sure I wasn’t hiding anything. Perhaps it was like drinking a cup with possible poison–if I drank it first than it must be ok? Perhaps also suicide bombers weren’t too common yet?However, in the 100 degree Texas heat on asphalt after 3 hours in the wake of the day’s events I became flustered when he started ordering me to do all these things. I couldn’t get the hood to pop. There were men surrounding me and my car, a large bomb dog, and lots of stress. The more I hesitated the more agitated the guard became and that’s when he started screaming at me with his gun pointed at the ground in front of me. And then it wasn’t just the East Coast anymore. The country had changed all the way down to the tip of Texas. We were all on high alert.
The military was grounded. No leave. No foreign travel. This was significant to us because on September 20th, 9 days later, my husband and I were taking our delayed honeymoon to Italy. We were leaving on a military flight out of Dover AFB. Dover became the morgue for the Twin Towers. We never made it to Italy. The money we saved for the trip went as a down payment for our new minivan. I joked later, much much later, that I should have bought an Italian Flag and draped it over the dashboard or something.
My life was indirectly affected as a result of the military changes that took place over the course of the next decade. And we still haven’t made it to Italy yet.
So today, a day after the anniversary, I remember to be grateful for my husband. He works at the Pentagon now. Time shifts quickly. Thirteen years ago he could have been there. He could have been on a plane. He could have been on a business trip in NYC, DC, or PA. He could have been one of the many who gave their lives fighting against this whole terrible mess which keeps manifesting into new names and faces. I watched the documentary last night in horror unable to comprehend all the firemen I saw suiting up to go into the towers–wondering if this was the last they would be seen. So many sacrifices.
Thirteen years and 1 day later I remember a lot more than I realized.
Today I went to the OBGYN for my annual exam with my 7 year old son. It was a dream come true.
sar·casm
noun \ˈsär-ˌka-zəm\
: the use of words that mean the opposite of what you really want to say especially in order to insult someone, to show irritation, or to be funny
He’s home sick today. There has been a total of 7 days of school. He has been there for 4 1/2 of them. Sigh.
My little guy is actually good as gold when he is home sick. Today he was my little buddy escorting me about town and a lovely companion. Although while he waited for me in the nurses’s station during my exam he picked up all sorts of female medical terms that I would have preferred to avoided.
So Home Goods was practically NEXT DOOR to the doctor’s office. I mean I almost had to walk through it just to get back in the car. Naturally, I dragged my semi-sick seven year old inside for a quick looksie. I actually think it was his idea. He WANTED to go in and see the Halloween decorations. While inside not looking at Halloween decorations we discussed his bedroom decor which led to this post. He wants to know if we could fit a giant robot in his room, a canopy to keep his room shady (?) and if we could paint the walls red. Maybe?
OMG it’s Labor Day. How did this happen?? Summer! Don’t Go!!!! And tomorrow is the first day of a new school for my boys. And sports. And extracurricular clubs. And homework. And bedtimes. And the often feared S-C-H-E-D-U-L-E. In short, many changes this way come, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It just feels like it.
What is it about change that creates such anxiety?
I read somewhere that our brains our wired to resist change–to follow familiar paths where we know there is no “danger”–something that goes back to our cave man days. So when something new comes up, your brain fires up warnings, saying, “911!” Your glands respond by preparing you to fight, flee or freeze. Now you’re all charged up with adrenaline so you’re physically able to fight or flee if you need to. You are ready to deal with a life-threatening event. Of course 999/100 times it’s not a life threatening event it’s just something “new”. But your body doesn’t know that so your head still throbs and your hands still get clammy. Or maybe you want to hide under the bed like my 9 year old wants to do about tomorrow. I’m trying to tell him that it’s ok to feel nervous and we have to push ourselves over the humps and eventually all the “new” will feel familiar. What I’m not telling him is that I feel the same way. I can talk a big game about creating new neural pathways in our brain–blah, blah, blah but I feel anxious regardless.
As I type this my kids are fighting. Maybe school tomorrow isn’t such a bad thing?! Ok, now I think they are hitting each other. Definitely a good thing about school starting. Wow! My brain adapts fast to change!
This is what I really want to post. If you have kids bringing home art, or something they wrote, or maybe something random that you have and want to display—Look!
Kiko Glass Frame by Nkuku. $30. www.notonthehighstreet.com. If you order more than one they become less expensive.
I’m not super enthusiastic about the prices so I’ve been hunting. Apparently there is a lot of tape being made just like this–and all expensive–coming from European websites. But then I found this:
It’s on Amazon Prime for $10.32! SOLD! You can find it here.
I keep getting sucked back into the same original website–because next I saw this:
I was listening to Les Miserables last night while looking at a magazine spread of Ralph Lauren interiors.
That is obviously what inspired the dream I had.
I dreamed a dream of Ralph Lauren
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that he would decorate my house
I dreamed that he would be not expensive
Then I was young and so naive
So dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no mortgage to be paid
No song unsung
No college tuition
But the budget talk comes at night
With my husband’s voice soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
And they turn your dream towards Target
And still I dream he’ll come to me
That I will live the years with velvet
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather
I had a dream my life would be
So different from this budget I’m living
So different now from what it seemed
Now Ralph Lauren’s fee’s have killed The dream I dreamed
All interiors, needless to say, are by Ralph Lauren.
And if you didn’t get this post try listening to this
