Leaving on a Jet Plane

When I was a child, the Peter, Paul, and Mary version of this song would induce a very cathartic cry.  Dealing with the divorce and remarriage of my parents created a bit of grief that went unchecked for sometime. This song, among others, enabled me to reach parts of my sadness that I was unable to pin point or verbalize.  I used to imagine this song was about my mother leaving. Now, as an adult who has watched her husband fly away for long periods of separation more times that I can count, this song has become a theme of sorts during the beginning of deployments.

Now that I think about it, I have been on a plane with him once. Once, in the 8 years we have been together, we have flown together once. Our honeymoon. I vow to change this upon his return. I pray the next time his suitcase is in the hall mine will right next to it.

The biggest adjustment for me is the lack of communication. We are so used to being able to email, text, call, chat, or skype. The instant gratification of all of these modes of communication isn't appreciated fully until you no longer have the ability to reach your loved one. Yesterday, my cell phone notified me that I had a new text. It was a message from our provider stating that his phone number was not deactivated per our request. Although, I had spoken to him hours before and he told me after he hung up he was calling to deactivate the phone, that message was like a swift kick in the throat. There are umpteen times a day that I reach for my phone to text or call him or think "I need to tell him this." Mundane things about my day, random musings and observations about life, silly things our children did flow through my brain and stop because I can't share them with him.  No one else on this planet cares that Tiny Tot is eating carrots or that the Boy Wonder is growing up so fast I sometimes think I can actually SEE his pants getting shorter. I start Facebook statuses and erase them so many times because I realize I have become "that" mom. The oversharer. I have a twitter account for my Scentsy business but I often think "Thank goodness I don't use this for personal updates. I would tweet the most boring and obnoxious things."  He gets me. He gets my sense of humor. In his world, I am funny, witty, smart, and the most important phone call or text of the day. Without him, I'm the person that does the laundry, trains small ones to pee on the potty, chauffeur, and cook. Of course there is so much more to mothering than that but in the first few days, this is what it feels like.

As I write this I am acutely aware that deployment is different than death.  Please don't ever misread my sadness and think I am not insanely grateful that my husband is alive. I know there are people out there missing loved ones who will never reactivate their phones.  When I experience a loss of any kind, and I try to write about it, I always feel that I don't allow myself the ability to feel what I am feeling without somehow experiencing guilt. I get it. There will always be people out there with a crappier situation. I am going to truly try to just be honest with how I am feeling as I travel down this road.  I have two small children both of which adore their Daddy. They haven't lived with him for the entire year since 2010. It sucks. There isn't a way to sugar coat it. All the "just be thankful he is coming home" and "try to have fun and the time will pass" statements in the world won't change the fact that my 2 year old goes to the front door and calls out "Daddy!" It won't change the fact that I have an amazing marriage yet I have felt like I have been in prison for the past two years because the longest visit we have had has been 3 weeks.

I am going to be honest because I am tired of putting on the happy face. It is day 2 of official deployment and it sucks. Until you have walked a mile...glass houses and all that jazz.

"Now the time has come to leave you
One more time let me kiss you
Then close your eyes, and I'll be on my way.
Dream about the days to come
When I won't have to leave alone
About the times, I won't have to say..."

Sidewalk Chalk

I have been considering writing a post for quite some time now but keep stopping myself. Why? Well, honestly, perhaps a bit of ego. I go through periods of time when I read random blogs. These are people I do not know in real life but have followed on and off for years for various reasons.  Most of them have amazing stories of love and loss or great adventure.  I stopped myself from writing because I felt as if my story wasn't yet interesting enough to put into cyberspace.  Today, in a funk, I found myself scrolling through some of my favorite blogs.   Most of these are centered around very sad situations. It isn't as if I am fascinated by morbidity, it is quite the opposite. There are many things that draw me to these people's lives. First, many of them blogged before their life changing event. The mid 2000s sparked a new way to chronicle every day life: births of children, their upcoming wedding, holidays, and recipes.  What is fascinating to me is how normal their lives appeared and how clueless most of them were, as we all would be, before tragedy struck.  No, this alone does not give me any satisfaction.  After following their grief posts, you learn so much about the human condition. It is endearing to me to see these people pull out of grief and find happiness again.

So,  I was reading through some of the blogs when it occurred to me. They have a story because they all had a beginning. Back when their posts were about potty training or problems with their teen at school, it all was a beginning. It gave their later experiences context.  I am not blogging in anticipation of tragedy but I do feel that there is healing in writing. We have had a tumultuous couple years and now we are once again separated due to a deployment.

I won't be posting specific information about his deployment but mainly how the three of us left behind are coping.  Many days, I feel like it is a struggle just to go through the normal motions of daily activity. Sometimes, this alarms me. Am I depressed? Is this normal? Do other mothers feel this way ever?  I convinced myself a while back that I was just not doing this right and that all the other mothers I ran into had some secret that I didn't know.  They were always smiling, their kids perfectly coiffed, and I was still in my yoga pants (not used for yoga, I assure you).  Then it dawned on me, all mothers feel this way sometime. The difference? We have been trained, especially in the South, not to talk about it.  We don't admit when we feel less than or when little Johnny is driving us crazy. We were taught at a young age to be presentable in public (a lesson I started abandoning when my Crohn's came back with a vengeance and he was deployed the last time) and keep our skeletons in the closet with our spare hand bags.  Seriously, I decided to break this Southern Mama's code and just be honest.

There are days I dread going to pick up the kids from carpool because I haven't had a chance to put on makeup and I look like death. There are days when I have no idea what is for dinner and figure it out 5 minutes before I serve it.  There are days when watching TV on the couch is more appealing than cleaning or running errands while they are at school.  There are days when I want to throw something at the screen and make Jake or Mickey shut up and solve the problem already!!! There are days when I wonder why is this so hard? 

People have said to me over the past few months "Oh, you are Wonder Woman" or "Super Mom."  I have heard this many times in the last year. So much that it started to bother me. I recently had a relaxing debriefing, cause seriously I was doing all the talking and she was helping me process, in one of my dear friend's childhood bedroom.  I told her that I was disturbed by this label because I felt so far from a Super Mom. It made me wonder what type of false self was I advertising to the world via Facebook or other online outlets.  "How in the world do they think that when there are days I don't get dressed?"  She was wonderful and said that the fact that I parent two small boys and have been doing this on my own for more than a year already due to my husband's deployments in addition to having a debilitating disease AND my own business was enough, but that my children seem well adjusted, fed, and clean.  Hmm. I thought about this and it started to make sense.

I was suffering from Mommy Guilt. If you aren't a mother, you haven't experienced it. The closest thing I can compare it to is the neighbor lust some people experience called "Keeping up with the Joneses'"  Yeah, you read these mommy blogs of people who are absolutely in love with their angelic perfect children. They are always going on Nature walks to gather materials for the arts and crafts they are going to do to complete their section on nature. They are home schooled or either do extra school together after school. They love to cook together, they sew, their children look like they came out of a magazine. Then it dawns on me-they look that way because their mothers retouch the photos to give them the perfection we all see. They also present themselves as if we are watching them through a snow globe. Their world is filtered and idyllic. Forget the time Sally was helping in the kitchen and splattered batter all over the ceiling while William turned the stove on and melted the Tupperware all over the burner. That. Didn't. Happen. Because, they don't want you to think it happened.

Yes, those blogs can serve to inspire us to be better or give us great ideas for art projects to try with our children but most of the time they do the opposite to me. They make me feel like I am harming my children because we haven't recorded our first family album and we don't have 7 trips to Disney under our belt.

My friend made me think that sometimes getting them fed, bathed, read to, and put to bed IS enough. They have stability. It might not be a glamorous life. We might not do super duper exciting things but they are happy. As both came traipsing in the house covered head to toe in the sidewalk chalk, toy trucks and strewn through out the yard, I thought to myself,

"Today, was a good day."

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Things I learned:

1. Planning out a week's worth of meals and attempting to stick to a schedule DOES cut down on chaos at meal times.

2. Bento Box lunches make my children happy.

3. "I want BEER" means "I want my BEAR" in 2 year old speech.

4. A shower does make you feel like a brand new person.

5. Our 5 year old thinks 100% in absolutes. He makes me laugh, daily.