This Is What Ten Years Looks Like

I have been married for ten years.  Did you get that?  Let me repeat.  I HAVE BEEN MARRIED FOR TEN YEARS.  You know how people talk about dog years?  Well, I like to say we count by Air Force years—that’s when every calendar year counts as ten years, so because of that, I want to say, happy 100th anniversary, Scott Johnson!  On this day, in 2003, you made me a kept woman, and I want to celebrate by taking a walk through the eleven Decembers we’ve been married.  And we’ll start here…

2003

I woke up the morning of my wedding completely at peace.  Honestly.  I’d written love letters to my husband since long before I knew he was going to be my husband, so when I chose him as the one, I was positively sure I was doing the right thing.  I didn’t have jitters or second thoughts, and the only reason I had cold feet was because it was freezing outside.  As the day progressed, rain turned to sleet turned to twelve inches of snow on top of frozen ice, and yet, somehow, we were able to fill a sanctuary with almost four hundred people.  I walked down the aisle to The Beatles’ “Blackbird” played by a string quartet, and when I got to the end, I let go of my dad’s arm and took Scott Johnson’s hand.  It took close to twenty minutes to drive two blocks to our reception, where we danced our first dance to “Fly Me to the Moon,” sung by an ancient man in a forest green crushed velvet tuxedo jacket.  Scott danced with my Grandma Hazel—the first dance in her Pentecostal life—and I threw my bouquet completely over the heads of all the single ladies waiting.  Magical.  The whole thing was just magical.

2004

We were weeks away from finding out where we would be stationed for our first assignment out of pilot training.  Knowing we would be moving to one of the coasts and therefore less likely be “home” for Christmas in the coming years, we made the rounds for all the Christmases—visiting all the grandparents and great-grandparents in OK and MO.  It would be our second and last Christmas as a family of two, as in this picture, Will had been cooking for about two weeks.

2005

I’m cheating with this picture.  It’s not December—it’s the end of November, just after Thanksgiving.  We don’t have any family pictures in December because Scott had started his stop and go schedule, which involved very short stops at home before he would go again for weeks at a time.  If I look tired, it’s because I was.  Will was not a fan of sleeping, and without someone else to take shifts most nights, I was…well, I was the mom of a three-month-old.  It was the first of a handful of holiday seasons that Scott celebrated over the phone (and later over Skype or FaceTime).

2006

Scott left for his first official deployment in the fall of 2006, so it was just me and the Will-man in December.  While the deployment was difficult, I’d found my rhythm as a part-time single mom, and we were lucky to be part of a flying squadron, which deployed as a whole, so I was never without the support of friends, whose husbands were also deployed.  I saved all our emails, and most of my deployment emails involved stories about Will not taking naps and updates about who got kicked off of Big Brother.  Scott said things like “i miss you crazy insano madness (that’s a lot).”

2007

Remember when Ugly Sweater parties were actually a thing?  Some of our best friends, the Wetzels, hosted this one, and we took on the eat, drink, and be merry challenge with gusto.  Scott fell asleep on the couch, and we wrote on his face with markers.  We slept on a futon in the loft and ate leftover chicken wings for breakfast.  So, basically, it was JUST like college, except we had kids who woke up needing to be fed and diapered.  I think we were all just giddy to have husbands around long enough to have a party.  At the end of this December, I told Scott it was now or never if we were going to add to the family, and his answer was resoundingly NOW.

2008

Ben was born three days before Thanksgiving, making him the youngest baby in the church when the Christmas Eve service rolled around.  This picture—THIS PICTURE—is all of the feelings.  There we are, all four of us, feeling like everything was perfect and right in the world.  We’d been tasked to be Mary and Joseph for obvious reasons, and Will suggested a re-write, so instead of riding a donkey, this Mary and Joseph had a pet sheep (a sheep who would strip his wool halfway through the service and run out to his Mimi who was sitting in the pews).  Fun fact: unbeknownst to me, I had MRSA coursing through my body, a little gift from Ben’s delivery, and two days later, I’d land in the emergency room to be lanced and drained.  HOWEVER, in this moment, I’m sitting next to my favorite wild sheep and staring at the child born unto us, and I couldn’t be any more in love with the look on Joseph’s face.

2009

In all of our pictures of December, there isn’t one with all of us, but this picture is perfect. Scott was around a *little* more this year, and we had a good thing going.  This was the year of toddler trenches—when some days, I just had to go upstairs and shut the door for fifteen minutes of silence, as soon as Scott walked in the door.  And when I was finished with my sanity breaks, I’d come downstairs, and the three of them would be stacking blocks or reading books or watching football, and I saw my future unfolding.  Scott was a good husband and a good daddy to these tiny people and a good man, and I felt like the queen of the castle.  A somewhat sleep-deprived queen of a relatively disorganized castle, but I wouldn’t have ruled any other way.

2010

Home for Christmas four years in a row!  How did we pull that off?  Oh, yeah, I remember now—Scott was preparing to leave for weapons school—a six-month program which involved a lot of anxiety for both of us.  I remember feeling disconnected for the first time in our marriage, like he was moving into territory without me for some reason.  I’d been doing so much “on my own” (I know this concept is preposterous given my wide circle of support, but it felt that way much of the time) for so many years, and something had shifted.  It was a fun holiday season, spent in OK with friends and family, but when we pulled back into Charleston, I had a six-month single-parenting stint on my horizon, during which I would have to pack our house for a yet-to-be-determined cross-country move, all while raising two children (and a dog who insisted on peeing at the top of the stairs every day).  I was right to be anxious, and so was he.

2011

What a weird year.  After Scott was gone for a very stressful, strained six months, we moved from SC to WA, and three months later, he deployed (again!) for the last three months of the year.  We’d run the gamut of emotions in those twelve months, asked a lot of hard questions, and gave a lot of ugly answers, and in the end, I think we were both feeling apprehensive about the future to say the least.  We were diligently communicating throughout the deployment, both desperate to continue with the momentum we’d gained before he left.  My friend, Renee, said of her husband (also a pilot) once, “When I give my husband the chance to be my hero, he does it.  Every time.”  That had been stuck in my gut this whole year, as we worked through a really trying time in our marriage.  I had to come to a place where I trusted Scott to be my hero again instead of approaching him from a place of bitterness and resentment and anger.  And that’s when he did this.  Unbeknownst to me, Scott organized a surprise “anniversary dinner” with all of my closest friends from OK.  What I thought was going to be a night out with one friend was actually THIS.  Not pictured: my dad and the boys who stopped by to say hi and I love you, Scott’s best friend, Jefferson, who read a letter on behalf of Scott and delivered flowers, and my mom and mother-in-law, two marble pillars, who held up the roof of our house for us during this year.

2012

What a difference a year makes.  And a change of scenery to beautiful WA.  And a time when Scott was “home” with just a few short trips for almost six months in a row.  We hit our stride again with an astoundingly quick recovery—it’s amazing how things come together when you’re actually together.  In Olympia, we found great children’s theater and Thai food and farm stands and chickens—we got chickens!—and a house in the hills where you can see the Olympics on sunny days.  We found a church and preschool all in one and hiking trails and a boy scout troop and horseback riding lessons and and a gymnastics gym and highways that will take us north to Canada or south to Voodoo Donuts in Portland.  And we were happy—really happy.  It was a year of reevaluating EVERYTHING.  And on Christmas morning, we woke up TOGETHER, looking a little less Hallmark and a lot more Cousin Eddie, and it was perfect.

2013

And we’ve made it to this December—our last December in WA, as we know we’ll be moving this summer.  Right now, the house is a mess of winter coats and decorations and stacks of dishes and school supplies, and tomorrow marks ten years of marriage.

Scott Johnson,

Before bed tonight, you told me you loved me and you were sorry that you fell asleep before I got home from running errands.  It’s okay—because when you’re sleeping, and I’m up being a night owl, sometimes I sit on the couch, listening to you puff in the other room and writing love letters for you to read in the morning.  I sit on the couch in my ugly pajamas, reminiscing on the life we’ve made together, a gurgling mess while I think about those two babies in the back of the house who are blessed to call you Daddy.  

So, on our anniversary—you’re going to go to work, and I’m going to buy groceries and run Ben to preschool and homeschool Will, and then we’re going to meet up at Ben’s Christmas program (6:30—don’t be late!), and we’ll have cookies and juice in the church atrium, where I’ll watch you help our boys and have polite conversation with the teachers and the other parents in that easy way that you do.  And then we will grab buy-one-get-one burritos at Chipotle on the way home, tuck our babes into bed, and grub down while we catch up on The Daily Show.  I will probably eat some chocolate or maybe a spoonful of peanut butter for dessert, and you can have an extra Cherry Coke if you want.  We can play Skip-bo when we’re done eating.  After all, we’re celebrating!  

And it will be the most perfect and romantic 100th anniversary we’ve ever had.  Here’s to 1000 more years.  The other night, I was reading our bedtime book with the boys, and I came across this passage that tells how I feel about the future:

“Nicholas, we have what we need.  Brave hearts.  And sharp minds,” Ombric reminded him.  “And as you might recall, we always abandon our plans and end up doing things we never imagined.”

That’s it.  I can’t imagine what’s in store.

xo

Leia

And the Award for Best Husband Goes to...

The then 2nd Lt. Scott and Mrs. Leia Johnson
My husband and I have been married for eight years.  Out of eight years, we have spent two of our anniversaries together.  Such is the life of the military family.  We aren’t big gift givers.  The thing we would always like most would be to go to dinner, maybe catch a local play, and then make a stop by Barnes and Noble for mochas and browsing for books without children.  

This year, he’s gone again, and I figured we’d have a “Happy Anniversary!” phone call as close to the actual day as possible.  He might send flowers, but I certainly wouldn’t expect them.  We would make mention of the day in small ways and continue to count the days until he gets home.  Simple enough.

I have this friend, Sarah, who has been in my life for a little over eight years.  We met on a medical mission trip to Peru, where we lived on a 800 square foot houseboat with 22 people for two weeks.  There were 21 beds.  So, Sarah and I, the smallest members of the team, got to share a two-inch thick, two-foot wide “mattress.”  We took ONE bath during the trip.  In the Amazon River.  At one point, the team lost us in Iquitos, a drug war hotspot, and we sat on the stairs of the Catholic church in the town square, hoping the team would find us before sundown when the rioting would start.  Eight years later, we are both married and have five children between us, and there isn’t a person on this earth I’d rather get lost with in the middle of a South American drug war.

She called me last week and said she needed a night out without kids.  Her youngest is eight months old, so we’d have to work around her nursing schedule, but you can get a lot of girl time in in three hours.  Our plan was to grab a drink at a restaurant by her house, and then move on to Paseo Grill--one of our favorite restaurants and one best attended without greasy-handed, sticky-faced toddlers.

I picked her up, and we headed to our beers at VZD’s, where we made up fake names for the night and started working on our stories.  You know--the fabulous lives of Kate Brady (Tom Brady’s sister-in-law) and Veronica.  I didn’t have a back story yet because we were interrupted by this creepy guy who wanted to tell us everything he had learned about the oil and gas industry during his recent internship at Chesapeake.  Also, he needed answers to his burning questions, most of which revolved around Jesus being a Pisces.  When I told him Jesus wasn’t born in December, it blew his mind.  Anyway, I digress.

I snapped a picture of us to post on Facebook, labeling it, “Look who I momnapped!”  I was so proud to have gotten her out of the house for a night on the town.  We were having a lovely night conversing with the local bar weirdo, and it was time to move on to Paseo Grill.  I could taste the fried green beans and mushroom soup, as we headed down Western.  When we arrived, I told the hostess, we’d be happy to sit at the bar, as there were only two of us, and we didn’t have a reservation.

Luckily, there was an open table, so she led as into the restaurant.  As we passed the bartender (a former student of mine), he smiled and waved, right as the back room of the restaurant erupted with a “SURPRISE!”

In the dim lights, I couldn’t tell at first what was going on.  But as my eyes adjusted, I realized all of the people in the back of the restaurant were my friends.  And my mom.  And Scott’s mom.  And then, I figured it out.  My friends, knowing I would be sad on my anniversary, had secretly gathered to celebrate it with me.  I moved to hug each person, and Sarah leaned in and whispered in my ear, “Scott did all this.  This is all Scott.”


Thank you, Jennifer, for documenting my graceless fall-apart:

We snapped this picture at the end of the night.  I could write a blog post about every single one of these ladies and the impact they've had on my life.  Pages and pages and pages.  I will also never make any of them mad because they know all my secrets.

The most obvious thing I can say is that I was stunned (like couldn’t move or talk and might have been twitching a little bit) at the thoughtfulness this involved.  Any person--and let’s be real, ladies--any MAN who would have the foresight, awareness, and consideration to organize something this massive (I will describe how the night got even better below) can only be described as being the best human being I know (which is exactly how I described him in my Facebook post because I knew that would be the fastest way to let him know his gift had been received).

But here’s the deal.  This wasn’t just any man.  This was a man who is currently deployed.  This is a man who by the end of this deployment will miss Halloween, his birthday, Thanksgiving, his youngest son’s birthday, his eighth wedding anniversary, Christmas, and New Year’s Day.  This is a man who is on a horrid sleeping schedule, who has to walk in the cold from his crappy dorm room just to go to the bathroom, who got kicked out of the chow hall for wearing the wrong socks, who has limited/unreliable internet access, who gets cut off during sparse phone calls, who has the weight of the world on his shoulders as he is fighting a war, and who still had the presence of mind to think about someone else.

Most of our communication these days happens on Facebook, and I didn’t think anything of it when I saw that he had become friends with several of my friends in the last couple of weeks.  I figured he just friended them after hearing my stories about going to dinner or drinks or movies or playdates with them for the last six weeks that we’ve been home.  So, it’s no surprise that he used Facebook to contact two of my closest friends, Sarah and Erika, to be his on-the-ground helpers.  Between the three of them, they made reservations, ordered flowers (more on that later), and contacted all the attendees.

A few minutes after I arrived, we were all seated--my mom, Scott’s mom, and seven of my closest friends.  My dad and the boys walked in to tell me “Happy Anniversary!” before skipping out for a boys night at Chick-Fil-A.

About ten minutes later, Jefferson showed up.  Let me tell you a little bit about Jefferson.  A million years ago, fate brought us together as driver’s ed partners.  Little did I know I would eventually marry his life-long best friend.  When I was pregnant with Ben, I waited to find out the gender until I could be at home with my family because Scott was deployed.  We scheduled the appointment with a family friend OB/GYN during a time when Scott could call for the results.  Jefferson was the only man other than my dad whom I asked to attend.  He’s the most gracious, loving stand-in a girl could ask for.

So, it was completely appropriate for him to show up with a bouquet of flowers and a letter from Scott, which he read while I nearly collapsed under the table.  We were a table of ten women, crying together.  At that point, someone had to explain what was going on to the tables around us, as we probably looked like a circus sideshow.

Last but not least, Sarah pulled out her phone for a collective reading of a message from Scott titled, “The Ten Things I Love Most About Leia.”  More crying ensued, and thankfully our appetizers arrived to give us something with which to soak up the tears.  The dinner was delectably perfect.

I said good-bye to Jefferson (whose wife deserves a shout-out for letting us borrow him while she was at home with their two-year-old and newborn!), our moms and the four pregnant/nursing people and enjoyed the rest of the night by crashing a Christmas party.  More fun times with fun people.

So.

Here’s what I’ve decided.  I am willing to forgive Scott and all of my friends for their deception.  There is no way to adequately describe how blessed I am to know such an incredible group of liars.

I have been racking my brain to figure out a way to organize an anniversary party for Scott on the other end, but seeing as how I don’t have a phone number to call to make a reservation in the chow hall, I guess I will just have to keep raising our babies and trying my best to (in his words) be “the most amazing woman, friend, mother, and wife a person could ever hope for.”  I’d say it’s a fair trade.

And now, because I never get tired of looking at these, here are a few of my favorite pictures from our wedding:

No idea what was happening here, but it's typical.

And here is the lovely Jefferson grabbing Scott's crotch.
In the only picture we have of the two of them.  Special.

People risked life and limb to get to our wedding during one of the worst ice storms in OK history.
I should have known then what kind of dedicated people I was dealing with.

We walked out to the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun." 

Mushy.

Even mushier.

Laughing about taking mushy pictures.

Happy anniversary, babe!  Ironically, he won't be able to read this post because the firewall blocks my blog where he is, but it's the thought that counts, right?  And happy anniversary to everyone else since we've made it a world-wide effort this year. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Standing in Line

My dad came home early today, so I could run a few errands without having to drag the boys out in the cold.  Earlier in the day when I’d taken the dog out, I was shocked at how it was quite literally freezing outside.  Thankful for his help and a quiet hour by myself, I set out to grab a couple of things at the store and make a stop by the post office.

It was 3:30 when I walked in to what seemed a prematurely long line.  Five days before Christmas, I would have expected the length, but nineteen days out, I was surprised to see the line snaking back and forth all the way to the front door.  Ordinarily, I would have run through the automated machine or just come back another time, but I’d put off mailing a Christmas package to my husband long enough.  Mail can take anywhere between ten days and a month to make it to him when he is deployed.

Begrudgingly, I asked the lady behind me to save my place while I grabbed a flat rate box to put my stack of “goodies from home” in.  In the few seconds it took me to grab a box and get back in line, the line lengthened by ten people.  I thought to myself how grateful I was to not have the boys with me.  That time of day, late afternoon, is when we typically have much-needed mommy-mandated down time because otherwise, either one of them is capable of self-destructing.  It’s never pretty when it happens in public.

I looked around to the front of the line to see if it was moving and realized there was a woman with a giant rolling bin of boxes at the front.  Three different postal workers were working on getting her checked out.  I mumbled something hateful under my breath and checked my watch.

The woman behind me had three children, a boy bundled from head-to-toe and carrying a plastic hanger from Walmart, a girl bundled into a stroller and snoozing peacefully, and a newborn bundled into a carrier.  The mom was red-faced and frazzled, her hair pulled up in a loose ponytail, her post-pregnancy belly still very prominent.  I found myself wanting to help her--carry the baby, entertain the four-year-old, build her a pile of blankets on the floor to take a nap.  Something.

Behind her was an older woman in a wheelchair.  She smelled of cigarettes and wore clothes too big for her small frame, a man’s stocking cap and puffy, kelly green mittens.  The man who dropped her off stood just outside the door, smoking a cigarette while snow flurried around him.

As I filled out the customs form, I overheard the conversation behind me.

“How old are they?” the old woman asked.

With an indecipherable accent, the woman answered, “He’s four, and she’s eighteen months.”  Lifting the blanket on the carrier to reveal a tiny pink hat, she continued, “This one’s just three weeks.”

The old woman laughed as if to herself, her eyes wide, “You’ve got your hands full.”

About that time, the little boy wandered over to a display of stationary and started tapping the wall quietly with his hanger.  His mom explained to all of us, “He’s a pirate today.  That’s his sword.”

I smiled to let her know I understood completely.  Pirates, superheroes--we’ve all been there.

I’d moved ten feet in as many minutes.  The woman with the giant rolling bin of boxes was still taking up the majority of the manpower behind the counter.  The remaining worker seemed to be in no hurry.  Several people walked in and turned right around to leave.  I contemplated cutting my losses and heading to the store before I had to pick my mom up from work.  But then, I thought about my husband having nothing to open on Christmas.  It’s not like anything in the package was all that special, but this is our fourth deployment.  I’ve come to learn that deployments have a way of making the little things matter so much more.  I would wait.

The line started moving more quickly, as several people rolled their eyes and mumbled things like, “Not worth my time...” and “I’ll come back later...” as they headed out the door.  I listened to the continuing conversation behind me.  The mom was from Sweden.  She had visited Florida as a child and jumped at the chance to move to the U. S. for college, where she met her husband.  His job had moved them to Oklahoma three years ago.  I listened carefully, while trying to not appear to be eavesdropping, as she described the cold as a blessing--how she missed home in Sweden so much when they had lived in Florida, a place without winter.  The older lady in the wheelchair nodded in agreement.  She had lived in Florida for two years but moved back to Oklahoma with her husband twenty years ago.  She threw a thumb toward the door to point out the man outside.  I wondered if he was still on the same cigarette, or if he was chain-smoking.

I reached the front and took my place next to the woman with the rolling bin.  She was smallish with a bobbed haircut and nice clothes, and I noticed her eye make-up was smeared.  For the first time, I was able to glance into the rolling bin at the stacks and stacks of boxes.  Each box was uniform in size--flat rate boxes like mine.  I read the side of one that was marked “4 of 25.”  As the postal worker checked my customs form and stamped it appropriately, I took it upon myself to read the name of the addressee.  All of these boxes, every single one of them, were marked to a “Chad.”  The address was an APO/AE, similar to the address on mine.  My eyes darted from box to box.  Twenty-five boxes to a deployed service member.  Chad.

The woman saw me staring at her mail and then noticed the copy of the completed customs form in my hand.  She smiled, and her eyes filled with tears.  “It’s my son.  He’s in Afghanistan.”

I nodded, “My husband.  He’s gone, too.”

I kept nodding.  I didn’t know what else to do to keep from crying.  She started talking hurriedly, wiping tears from her face, as she pulled out a picture of a child.  I do mean a child.  He was wearing Army fatigues and standing rigidly without a smile, but he was a child.

I kept nodding, and the moment was interrupted when the little girl who had been sleeping woke up and began to cry.  Her brother was not helping things as he started poking her with his hanger.  The older woman patted her lap and said loudly, “Oh, honey, hand me one of those babies.”

I stepped forward and took the carrier, while the mom said to the little boy in a hushed but firm voice, “Do not poke your sister, or I will take your sword away.”

The little girl continued to cry, her wails swelling enough to get the attention of everyone in the room.  Her mother worked to get the seatbelt unfastened, while the woman with all the packages knelt down next to the little boy and asked him his name.  Timidly, he answered her, his hanger sword limp at his side, “John.  I’m a pirate.”

The mom had calmed the little girl down, and the murmur of people talking to one another in line or on their phones resumed.  The moment was just that.  Nothing more.

The mom motioned for me to hand the carrier back to her, and I did and then asked, “Can I do anything to help you?”

“Oh, no.  We’re fine thanks,” she said automatically and then added, “Actually, would you mind grabbing our packages and taking them to the counter?  And maybe scoot the stroller, too?”

I did what she asked, as the woman with all the packages helped the woman in the wheelchair move forward without knocking into anything.  As they moved to the counter, the old woman removed her mittens and grabbed the mom’s jacket.  Quietly, she told her, “I lost my only child thirty-one years ago.  You never get over it.”

And then, we all did the only thing we could have done.  The mom with the three young children, the mom with the grown child a million miles away, the mom in the wheelchair, and me.  We cried.  Right there in the lobby of the post office.  We stared at each other and cried.

I caught as many tears as I could with the edge of my sleeve and started walking toward the exit.  Then, without being able to control it, I turned and said, “You have a Merry Christmas.”

The wind took my breath away as I moved outside, and as I passed the smoking man, he nodded hello.  I returned the nod and rushed to my car, to the warmth and comfort of a quiet place, and finished crying.  I couldn’t get home fast enough.  We had dinner to eat, baths to take, books to read.  And phone calls from Daddy to wait on.

The Five Steps of Deployment

Halloween is just around the corner, and it’s kind of a big deal in our house.  For a recap, you can read THIS.  

Earlier this week, my husband left town for a two-month Air Force-sponsored trip to the southwest Asia, so he won’t be joining in the festivities, but that will not stop us!  No, no.  In fact, we will be in OK for Halloween with family and friends, and I intend on stretching out the holiday as long as possible.  I am attending adult parties both Thursday and Friday night, a family party Saturday night, a neighborhood association gathering Sunday night, and then, of course, we will trick or treat on Monday since that’s when the actual holiday occurs.

I figure if we are all fratched out on sugar highs, we won’t even notice that we still have sixty days until Daddy comes home.  Let’s be real--I’ll throw a pack of Smarties and a Tootsie Pop at each of the boys, send them to bed, and then spend each night cuddled up with the Kit-Kats and Reese’s peanut butter cups while I watch late night reruns of Friends on TBS.  When the madness is over and all that is left in the pillow case are those weird peanut butter taffies and gross jawbreakers, I will throw away the candy waste and wake up the next morning with resolve to make the best of the next two months, and step one of deployment survival will be complete.

I should really start this survival guide by saying, this will be the shortest deployment we’ve experienced yet, so I feel a little like I’m cheating and acting like this is a bigger deal than it is.  In our little corner of the Air Force, deployments are typically four months long.  For clarification purposes, a deployment is an instance where he leaves and stages out of another country to support war efforts.  This should not be confused with “trips”--which can last anywhere from one week to one month; “temporary duty”--which can last any length of time, but usually involves training somewhere in the United States with more flexibility/possibility of seeing each other; or “remote assignment”--which would take him somewhere most likely for a year to a place where our family is not invited.

So, a deployment for us is usually four months, and our spouses go more frequently, as opposed to some of my friends’ spouses who go for longer but less frequently.  Deployment schedules vary drastically from branch to branch (and more specifically from air frame to air frame in our world), but the steps of deployment survival seem to be consistent across the board.

I have already detailed Step 1 above, but let’s give it a name:

EXCESS.  This stage involves acting in a way that is contrary to typical behavior and almost always involves too much of a good thing.  Even the most disciplined spouse may find herself looking for her dignity at the bottom of a bag of snack-sized Twix.  (I have several male friends whose wives are the active duty members, and I in no way mean to exclude them, but in reality, most spouses-at-home are women, so for the purpose of continuity, I will be using feminine pronouns from this point forward.) Other spouses (around the time the first tax-free check comes through) may experience sudden budget-blindness and justify the purchase of a new handbag.  Still others may wake up at a resort in St. Bart’s, surrounded by friends, with the fuzzy memory of how a last-minute girls trip happened so quickly.  (Thanks, LivingSocial!)  However this stage plays out, it’s important for us all to go through it because without living excessively and irresponsibly for a bit, we would never find the motivation to move on to stage 2:

GROWTH.  During the growth period, your average military spouse (to be referred to as AMS from this point forward) snaps out of her delusional thinking.  Clearly, no one really wants to gain three pounds a week in chocolate.  Expensive handbags are fantastic (until one of the kids decides to empty the contents of his cereal bowl in one of the inner pockets), and St. Bart’s can only last so long before the children start to wonder where their mother went.  So, AMS digs her heels in and formulates a plan.  It’s during this stage that the Christmas decorations get reorganized--who cares that it’s July?  It needed to be done!  AMS might take up a new hobby--cross-stitching, synchronized swimming, or archery.  She spends her evenings (that were spent emptying the DVR reserves during the Excess stage) sewing new curtains for the sunroom, writing a novel, and planning out a detailed list of activities for the kids including educational trips to the science museum four towns over, a weekend of apple-picking, and one trip to Disneyworld with the grandparents.  The junk drawer consists of a box of toothpicks and a few paperclips, organized nicely into trays.  The kids are on the best sleeping schedule of their lives.  AMS has never been so productive and efficient.  And then that fateful day comes that moves her into stage 3:

ANGER.  All is going smoothly in AMS’s world.  The linen closet is organized by color, and AMS has finished reading for all three of her monthly book clubs.  After sticking the last Tupperware container of pre-made dinners for the week in the freezer, she takes a glance at the calendar for next week.  And there it is.  A giant red circle she drew before her husband left over the day that marks the “halfway point” of the deployment.  Suddenly, AMS is angry.  She is is forlorn.  Her hand instinctively reaches behind the alphabetized spice rack for the Boy Scout caramel corn.  And the Cool Ranch Doritos.  And into the freezer for some Rocky Road ice cream.  IT.  IS.  ON.  Halfway?  HALFWAY!  We still have as much time left as has already passed?  What on God’s green earth am I going to do for the next half?  RE-organize the wrapping paper bins?  Start another blog?  Plan a trip to Great Wolf Lodge?  GOODGODINHEAVEN, this is never going to end.  With the light at the end of the tunnel dimming a bit, AMS settles in with her snacks, sets the DVD player to play When Harry Met Sally on repeat, and wakes up with her hair stuck to the couch by a glob of popcorn and ice cream.  AMS has reached stage 4:

DOLDRUMS.  In Norton Juster’s Phantom Tollbooth, a young boy named Milo finds himself in a place called the Doldrums.  He runs into some inhabitants, the Lethargians, and has this conversation:

"Well, if you can't laugh or think, what can you do?" asked Milo.

"Anything as long as it's nothing, and everything as long as it isn't anything," explained another. "There's lots to do; we have a very busy schedule-

"At 8 o'clock we get up, and then we spend

"From 8 to 9 daydreaming.

"From 9 to 9:30 we take our early midmorning nap.

"From 9:30 to 10:30 we dawdle and delay.

"From 10:30 to 11:30 we take our late early morning nap.

"From ll:00 to 12:00 we bide our time and then eat lunch.

"From l:00 to 2:00 we linger and loiter.

"From 2:00 to 2:30 we take our early afternoon nap.

"From 2:30 to 3:30 we put off for tomorrow what we could have done today.

"From 3:30 to 4:00 we take our early late afternoon nap.

"From 4:00 to 5:00 we loaf and lounge until dinner.

"From 6:00 to 7:00 we dillydally.

"From 7:00 to 8:00 we take our early evening nap, and then for an hour before we go to bed at 9:00 we waste time.

"As you can see, that leaves almost no time for brooding, lagging, plodding, or procrastinating, and if we stopped to think or laugh, we'd never get nothing done."

"You mean you'd never get anything done," corrected Milo.

"We don't want to get anything done," snapped another angrily; "we want to get nothing done, and we can do that without your help."

"You see," continued another in a more conciliatory tone, "it's really quite strenuous doing nothing all day, so once a week we take a holiday and go nowhere, which was just where we were going when you came along. Would you care to join us?"

"I might as well," thought Milo; "that's where I seem to be going anyway."

And this is where AMS finds herself.  The laundry can wait.  The dishes pile up.  There are so many other important things to do.  Like watch Lifetime movies about missing children and battered women.  Pinning recipes and quirky quotes to Pinterest.  And Stumbleupon--so many things to stumble upon!  And finding new Tumblrs about Ryan Gosling.  And the cast of Harry Potter.  The Little Caesar’s drive-through crew knows AMS by name--you really can’t beat Hot and Ready pizza when you’ve run out of pre-made lasagna and chicken pot pie.  She was going to make more casseroles, but there was a Twilight Zone marathon on Syfy!  At the end of each day, she checks off her mental to-do list.  Everyone survives without major injuries. Check.  Shower.  Yesterday counts--check! Bought dog food.  Oops--she’ll just give him some leftover pizza crusts until she can find time tomorrow to get out.  It is a haze of nothingness that lasts until she gets that phone call--the one from her deployed spouse.  During their fifteen minute phone call, after the voice announcing, “you have one minute and fifty-three seconds,” he tells her they have an estimated date for return.  She yawns, and answers, “Let me know when it’s a little firmer,” and then glances at the calendar. GOODGODINHEAVEN, it’s time for stage 5:

SPRINT.  Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!  That return date is a few short weeks away (maybe even days on a shorter deployment!).  Look at this house!  Who lives here--the cast of Animal House?  The laundry!  The dishes!  That smell!  We definitely have to do something about that smell before Husband gets home!  Luckily, the cleaning supplies are still in their orderly place.  AMS starts making lists for everyone in the house.  You!  Sort the laundry into darks and lights.  You!  Find all the rogue dishes throughout the house and bring them to the sink.  You!  Well, you just keep chewing on that pizza crust, and I promise I will get some food for you later today.  She makes a phone call to Friendwithnochildren asking if she could take them for an afternoon, so she can get a haircut and pedicure.  Husband has been gone for X days--the least she can do is pretend she hasn’t let her feet go the way of the Hobbit in his absence!  There is rushing and running and scrubbing and scouring and baking and freezing and maybe even a little exercising.  (The Doldrums are never easy on the waist.)  And before she knows it, the stacks are put away.  The smell is mostly gone.  The dog has food in his bowl.  And Husband is coming home.

If you look back over the stages, you will notice that if you add the first letter of each word together, you get “Egads!” an exclamation that originated in the late 17th century meaning, “Oh, God!” which is something that comes out of AMS’s mouth a million times during a deployment--for a myriad of reasons.  Wherever you are in the process, hang in there.  There IS light at the end of the tunnel--just put away some of the stacks of laundry, and you’ll be able to see it!