Normalcy...

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
Rabindranath Tagore


So I gave myself permission to write about anything and everything in my life… and all that has come to me has been Army related. Pretty typical.

I'm writing this at a little past 6 in the morning, with my child laying on her father's side of the bed. At some point in time she woke up, and instead of snoozing in the chair in her room while she went back to sleep (and yes, I still rock her to sleep), I just brought her in bed with us. It's a very common occurrence at my house, to have a warm and snuggly baby sleeping between us. Please, no parenting lectures about the dangers of bed sharing, or spoiling my child. I'm well aware of the dangers, bed share as safely as I can get it, and yes, she IS spoiled.

I have written all this to say this…

It's been a normal night.

During deployment, a woman far wiser than I in all things Army, said it could take months for us to get back into normalcy. I remember thinking, in all my pregnant, hormonal-driven mood swing glory; that it would not take me and the husband that long, that we would simply fall back into domestic bliss, with a happy, perfect, milestone-meeting baby, and a perfect house, and life would be just perfect.

I was an idiot.

There is no such thing as domestic bliss. There is such a thing as just managing to keep a lid on the chaos that is keeping a home. It is spending a weekend doing laundry to get caught up, and doing something like twelve loads, only to discover the socks under the bed and the clothes on the bottom of the closet add up to one more load. It is letting the dog eat the crumbs from feeding the baby because that is easier than sweeping the floor. It is easier because your milestone-meeting baby, crawled early, pulled herself up on furniture early, and walked at nine months. Housework is abandoned in favor of chasing that child around the house, and praying to God that whatever she has in her mouth will not kill her before you can get it out, untangling her from a crochet project you stupidly left out, and pulling her out from inside in the bathroom cabinet after she emptied it out in order to explore, with a travel size container of conditioner in her fist, now covered in baby drool.

And life is never perfect. Sure, there are those golden moments of perfection; snuggling in bed with both hubs and the baby, making that first big dinner in the new house, spending a rainy weekend afternoon laying on the floor playing with the baby. But the majority of life is one long slog through drama, trauma, and utter crap, to get to those golden moments. It is negotiating relationships with your fellow Army wives that often feels more like navigating a land-mine course blindfolded. It is dealing with the terminal illness, and eventual death, of a loved one.

The plain reality of it all is… I am not the same woman Carl left behind. I can not go back to that scared, defeated creature, who clung to a pillow at night, who refused to change the sheets he slept in for weeks, who had no clue what all was in store for her in the coming year. I have more gray in my hair, I have stretch marks, I have these tiny little crows feet around my eyes that drive me insane. And the changes go further than my skin. I am blisteringly unsympathetic, I have little patience, I have a self-assured streak that borders on arrogant.

Putting the us back together has been more of a challenge than I thought. Carl had to come home, and pull himself back out of the soldier. He still is that soldier, but he is also a husband, a father, a man, outside of being that soldier.

When he was finally coming home, I was so ready to take off the mantel of Everything This Family Needs, and give it to him, that I did not realize it would take time for him to be ready to take his portion of that mantel back, and that I wouldn't necessarily be ready to give the whole thing up.

Disconnecting from deployment took him longer than I realized, and in my patience to have him back, I poked and prodded and yelled and nagged and lectured. Only to realize the more I tried to pull him out of his Nothing Box, the harder he fought to stay in it. So I stood outside the box, impatiently tapping my foot and glaring at him, and called that "patiently waiting".

But while I was wanting/nagging him into picking up his fair share of the load… I was also unwilling to let him have it. So this strange dichotomy began to exist, between "He's Doing NOTHING", and "He wants to do everything, where will that leave ME?".

It has taken us roughly half his first year home to get back into our definition of normal. For me to let go of the Husband Jobs and let him do them, his own way, without me pointing out how I do it. For him to realize there are certain jobs that are Jenn-Specialities, and to let me do them without pointing out how he would do them. We have finally given up to each other, the things that we did that never belonged to us, and have better defined our roles, our places, in the family, and with each other.

I understand now why so many say that first deployment is the hardest, and will suck the most out of you. Despite what you are told, what you hear, you have so many expectations, so many things you just know will happen. The rose colored glasses come off pretty quick, and you are left with the reality of what is, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Already I know, next deployment will be different. I will know better what will happen before, during, and then after.

So… to that wise Woman… I owe her an apology. Christi, if you're reading this, you were right. It really was going to take a long time to get back to us. I am sorry I mentally heaved a sigh and while agreeing with you, at the same time I believed that we would just be different.

I am but the not-so-humble student and the women that have gone before me are far better teachers.

~Jennifer