Family

We all have family. We have the family we were born to, the family we were raised with, the family we marry into, the family we make. And sometimes, we build family out of people we don't share DNA with.

I am blessed with a loving, caring, overbearing, overprotective family. I look like them, have their mannerisms, share their love of food. But for this past year, I have walked on a path of my own, one they could not follow on. Few in my family have stood as a military wife, and fewer still have lived through a deployment. When it came to dealing with the heartbreak, loneliness, the tears and fears that deployment became; when I had to face the monster named Iraq, my family loved me, supported me, and yet, they didn't quite get it.

I count myself blessed with the Army family I have. A group of women that I have argued with, cried on their shoulders, talked with, eaten countless plates of spaghetti with, has slowly evolved into the family I run to. In the dark of the night, when life was just awful, when no one understood what it was like to face an empty bed, an empty house, an empty life, I found myself surrounded by people who did.

There is no where else where I can simply walk into a room, have someone know I am suffering just by the slump in my shoulders, and know what the cause is. Over coffee and dessert we've commiserated, talked about babies, told stories, laughed and cried. I've even told the Buckle Panties Story to these women.

I have come to realize how heavy I have leaned on my Army family, looking back on this past year. It was my sisters-in-arms that held my hair back when the morning sickness kicked in, that wandered with me around WalMart at midnight when I was craving food and just couldn't figure out what I wanted, they dragged me through the halls of the hospital to get me up on my feet, to get labor going, it was their hands I held when I brought Layla into this world.

And now, in the flurry of homecoming, there is a bitter-sweet moment. As much I am so ready to restart the life with Carl I put on hold, and as much I just want him back. Soon those friends won't be here, the reality of Army life will kick in; someone will PCS, someone will follow their husbands to schools and training, we will all just disappear on the wind.

If it took all of them to get me through this past year of deployment, how will I get through the next year, which promises just as much upheaval and chaos, without them all??

~Jennifer