Traveling Together

It was my anniversary on Monday. I had been planning on a funny/ironic “marriage by the numbers” post. For example, we’ve only spent three of our six anniversaries together. Or we’ve actually been a couple for almost 15 years. But then there was this number: four. As in the four states we drove across with a three-year-old and a five-month-old on our anniversary.

When you’re an Air Force family, most of your “vacation” time is spent visiting family. It’s not always strictly vacation. A lot of times you end up drying dishes, cleaning things, and sometimes helping your father-in-law reseat wrought iron railings. It’s not terribly glamorous. When that family is 14 hours away, it’s even less glamorous.

Pretty quickly you’re faced with a choice to overcome the lack of glamour and the incredibly long car trip and spend time with that family so your kids know where they came from or stay home. Josh and I both come from families who felt it was more important to connect with our roots, so it’s no surprise that we packed the kids into the car and drove a total of 16 hours straight through the long night and the 80 minutes of continuous baby wailing and the toddler tantrums. And as it turned out, we faced one more choice of spending an extra day in West Virginia with Josh’s 93-year-old grandmother and driving home on our anniversary. It might not be the choice that everyone one would make, especially not when you’ve spent so few of your previous anniversaries together.

Another thing you learn as an Air Force family is that the fact of being together is more important than where you are or when you are. When we found out that Josh would be deployed for our first anniversary, he took me to a five-star restaurant—one where men have to wear a coat or they won’t seat you—before he left. On our second anniversary when we were together, I asked him to take my gigantically pregnant self to Friendly’s for a sundae.

I hate that we’ve had so much time apart over the years of our relationship—five years of long distance, four deployments, a six month training, almost countless trips and trainings. But the silver lining to all of that is that I’ve learned that dates are not sacred. For it to be our anniversary, we don’t have to be at a five-star restaurant (though it’s nice). We don’t even have to be together physically (though that’s nice too). We just have to be together in our hearts. Because of that, it’s almost no big deal if we “celebrate” or not.

All of that to say that getting all of us home across those four states after ten days of traveling to visit family felt like an accomplishment. Not just the accomplishment of a day, but one of six years of taking it a day at a time, overcoming so many obstacles—some of them heart rending, laughing when we wanted to cry, laughing so hard we did cry, and coming out stronger and stronger because of it.

There are lots of nice things that I can say about my husband. But the compliment I want to pay him right now is that even after all those miles, I’d get back in the car with him and our children any day—no matter how many states we have to cross.

Catching Up

So… The blog is getting a bit dusty. In my legitimate defense, I have been a bit busy moving halfway across the country. But it’s definitely time for some quick catch up. This is what you’ve missed in the past almost two months.

Just to make life exciting before a big move, just after H’s birthday we started to notice she was having trouble hearing. At first it seemed like a three-year-old game, but after a couple of weeks we started to notice that she really wasn’t hearing us. For example, my husband came in the front door and she never heard him. Normally at the first sound of doorknob turning she’d take off like a shot to greet him.

I hounded the audiologist’s receptionist into an appointment one week before the packers were to arrive. On that Monday we found out that her ear drums were not actually moving. At all. The ear infection that she’d gotten at the beginning of May had never cleared out of her ears. Everything sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher to her, “Womp womp womp…”

I had been resisting tubes for basically her whole life. She didn’t get many ear infections when she nursed full time but as she nursed less and less, she got more and more infections. Her inability to hear, however, made it an easy decision. This is where I plug the AI Dupont Children’s Hospital in Wilmington, DE. God forbid you ever need to take your child to the hospital, but if you do, you should go there. They are amazing, wonderful, competent people.

We got an appointment to see the ENT the NEXT DAY. They confirmed that tubes were needed and scheduled the surgery for the NEXT DAY to accommodate the fact that we were about to move. The surgery took about 15 minutes and H came through with flying colors. Everyone was incredibly kind and sweet. They even squeezed in a follow up for the next week before we left town.

 

A few days later the packers showed up. Or packer, really. We got one guy. He packed our entire house in two days. To put this in perspective for those not familiar with military moves, you normally get three or four packers and it takes them two days to pack all your stuff into boxes. It was crazy. He was a machine. As it turned out he packed some things better than others, but we’ll get to that.

Other than the horrendous gas mileage I got driving through the mountains of West Virginia and Kentucky with a car top carrier and 600 extra pounds of our stuff in the car, the drive cross country was quite uneventful. It was especially uneventful through Indiana—where there was no place to stop. I think there was one Wendy’s and a sketchy Subway in the whole state. If you’re driving out to see us, you’ve been warned. Eat in Kentucky.

H snoozing on her air mattress in the hotel on our way cross country.

Josh accidentally set up the directions to take us in the back gate of Scott. I have to say I was a little apprehensive when we got off the highway and drove through a solid 15-20 minutes of corn before we got to the base. There is a lot of corn here. And soy beans. H announces, “Corn! Look, Mommy, corn!” every time we drive anywhere.

The TLF (temporary lodging facilities) were actually quite nice. I think they are converted old base housing. They are three or four bedroom town houses. The size was amazing. The air conditioning was not. It was 68 degrees downstairs and 75-78 degrees upstairs. We literally spent two weeks wrapped in blankets and sweaters and socks any time we were downstairs just so we wouldn’t swelter upstairs. We also had an invasion of ants, and our hall bath leaked through the ceiling into the kitchen. My mantra was, “This is not my house.”

You can imagine my relief to move in to our very own house. Thanks to a mutual friend we met a great family that lives right behind us who have girls the same age. H got to spend the afternoon in their kiddie pool while the grownups (thank you Mimi and Aunt Kaitie!!!) checked off boxes, directed traffic, and frantically unpacked. The movers agreed to take away any boxes we emptied before they left and we were able to give at least half of them back.

The good news was that no boxes went missing. We were incredibly spoiled on our last move when we went door to door and had a fantastic driver. Nothing was broken or even scratched. Perfect. This time our stuff had to go to storage for about three weeks. The guy who boxed stuff up did a pretty good job. The guys who loaded the truck completely sucked. I have a hallway bench with both doors broken off despite the fact it came off the truck wrapped in a blanket that was secured with tape. The center leg of my couch was broken off. And they took apart my full length mirror and futon and then didn’t pack the screws. Yup. They didn’t pack the screws. We still have a lovely pile of futon parts stacked in our play room because there’s no way to put them together. I managed to find hex bolts the right size for my mirror, which are not as pretty as the decorative screws that used to go there, but we still have to try adding some washers if I want to see myself and not the ceiling. If anyone out there has any thoughts on where I can get pretty replacement screws for a stand mirror, please leave a comment. It was a gift from my grandparents when I turned 12, so I’m rather peeved that they lost the screws. They also moved my double bookcase with the removable shelves inside. When it came off the truck I thankfully had all the shelves, but I was nine plastic shelf brackets short. Thank goodness for Lowes. I was able to find replacements. The bookcase is Ikea and getting spare parts out of them is like prying apart a nun’s knees.

As we opened boxes I became extremely glad that I insisted on taking all the crystal and china with us in the car. My waffle iron was shattered. And so was every single ceramic Halloween decoration I had gotten as wedding shower gifts. They just weren’t wrapped well enough, which is what happens when you have one guy pack your house in two days. Of course with things like that it’s not so much the cost of the items as the fact that they’re associated with a very specific person and memory that you really can’t replace.

Since then we’ve just been unpacking and getting lost around town. The area is actually great. There’s a lot to offer locally and a mind boggling amount of stuff in St. Louis. We’ve already impulse purchased Redskins tickets for September when they’re in town. I’ve never been to a pro-football game before.

As I type this I am surrounded by piles of office/spare bedroom paraphernalia that is still not put away. But the computer is up, the Internet is working, and I’m back at the keyboard.

It's That Time Again

The two most common questions you get as a military spouse, at any sort of military event, are, “When did you get here?” and “Do you have orders yet?” If you’re not coming in, you’re going out. We all seem to want to position people according to how long we’re likely to know them. It’s a rotating cast, and we all cycle in and out as the Air Force sees fit.

After a few false starts and several months, we finally got our own orders. We will be headed to the center of the country for a while to the great state of Illinois. I’ve driven through Illinois exactly once. Other than that, its entirely new territory for this East Coast girl. Just tonight, while enjoying manicures with some of the other spouses, I was asked many times if we’d heard where we’d be going, when we were leaving, if we were happy with the assignment, and where we were going to live.

In and of itself, really it’s no different from anyone else who is moving. It’s just that when you’re Air Force every relationship at every base has an expiration date because everyone will eventually leave. You arrive and know no one. You answer a lot of, “How long have you been here?” questions. By the time you leave, you’re either leaving every person you know or if you’re the last to go, you leave a place that has become once again strange.

We haven’t moved too many times yet. This is Josh’s third base; only my second. This is also my second military move. I have been living the nomad’s life though since college when I moved every single year, then the big move to grad school in Texas, and again to meet up with Josh in South Carolina. In the time I’ve been out of high school, I’ve moved eight times.

Of all the weird things about military life, moving is the thing I mind the least. If nothing else, it has cemented the idea that home is where the heart is. It also shows you how quickly, firmly, and sometimes irrevocably people can band around each other to form new families. My family has always been a close and insular bunch. It’s been both humbling and heartwarming to see the ways in which military families help each other. Meals brought to virtual strangers, last minute babysitting, jumping car batteries, killing spiders, getting mail, driving to airports—all the things that in normal life would be handled mostly by your family are seamlessly picked up by your military family. From my limited perspective as a pilot’s wife, I feel like this connection is even more pronounced in that community because we are so often single moms. Whichever husband is home sometimes becomes the fixit guy for the whole street.

While we know where we’re going and approximately when we need to be there, we still don’t know where we’re living (wait lists!) or when the movers will actually arrive (TMO-the moving people!). Clearly, as the seasoned pro I am, I am *not* at all freaked out about this. The only thing we have set up for sure is H’s preschool. We may end up in temporary housing, but at least she’ll be at school three days a week while we do it!

And yet, I’m excited about this new phase. Not only is it an entirely new state, but it’s a staff job. Josh will, in theory, have a normal working schedule that does not include random trips to parts unknown at the last moment. I could sign up for a class in the evenings and reliably count on him to watch the kiddo. He might actually get to trick or treat with us. He can take vacation at the holidays without relying on a lottery system. This is new and exciting territory that I believe some call “normal.” Add to this the fact that we have close friends five hours north in Chicago and rumors of a grocery store that delivers on base, and I’m all set.

Soon I’ll be with a new set of spouses answering the question, “So, how long have you been here?” All part of the cycle.