Every One in A While….

Months ago, while digging myself out from a mountain of laundry and scrubbing my bath tub, I cracked a joke about the glamorous life of an Army wife. More often than not, my life is not glamorous. It is about diapers, ACUs, patches, boots, bottles, and trying to squeeze a shower in while everyone is happy and occupied.

But every once in awhile… I get to be that glamorous person I dream of. A year ago, the promise of the Welcome Home Ball was just that, a promise. Like so much of my life then, it seemed so far away as to be nothing but a distant dream. Before I could even turn around, life became a whirlwind of action, finding the perfect dress, getting everything ready… and before I could even blink, I was walking through the hotel for the social hour, standing in the reception line, and watching the grog ceremony.

From the moment Carl left, to the moment I stubbed my bare toes against his boots during the welcome home ceremony, my life was filled with difficulties and struggles. For each mountain I climbed, I found myself looking at an entire mountain range; I struggled with loneliness. I struggled with the change in my life. And homecoming was no glowing dream either, again I was upset by the struggle in the life I had formed for myself, by the struggle with being one and not two again, and the struggle to adapt to life as it is now.

When I leaned back from the mirror, my makeup finished, my hair done, I realized, that with each stroke of a makeup brush, with the heat of a curling iron, I had, if only for a moment, banished the struggles of life away. In that moment, when I walked across the hotel for social hour, when I walked down the reception line, everything was perfect.

I was the glamorous wife, I was not covered in a baby's spit-up, my manicure was not ruined by scrubbing a sink, the toilet or bottles, I had time to do my hair, shave my legs.

Like homecoming itself, which will always be a sparkling event, made more so by the emotions behind it, the ball will always be perfect. It went off perfect, we had fun, everyone looked perfect, and in the end, it will always be that sparkling evening, when, for once, I got to be more than just me.

~Jennifer