What do you say to that?

Last evening my dh came home late from his economics class. This grad school program that he’s doing requires mainly weekend classes as well as online stuff. He was discouraged because they’d had a test and not only did he feel like he didn’t do well, he also felt like he had wasted hours and hours studying the wrong material. Inevitably our conversation turned to the future and this is what he said to me:

“I’m worried that they’re going to send me to a MiTT team and as I get blown up, my last thought is going to be how I wasted my time on this grad program instead of spending it with you guys.”

It takes a lot to make me speechless. I finally managed to say something about how you can’t go through life that way, and then I proceeded to try to be rational and help him talk through the pros and cons (would the masters truly be helpful in the future? Did he need it for promotion? Would he be able to finish it later if he stopped now? Would he regret not just getting it done?). But on the inside I felt like crying. I’ll be honest, I walk around most of the time pretending like the bad stuff happens to somebody else.

I miss him being around now, and let’s just say the “good family time” that this school was supposed to be turned out to be a myth. Being a single parent when your spouse is actually at home sucks. But I want what is best for his future, I’m so used to sacrificing what I want for the cause I didn’t know what to say. What are you supposed to say?

Feeling strangely fine

The after Christmas blues are an old friend of mine. Nothing big, just your run-of-the-mill doldrums. It goes right along with the fact that decorations that look so festive and bright all December long suddenly seem so tired after the 25th. I still keep mine up until New Year’s, mostly because I am lazy, but the thrill is gone. This year, however, I am ok.

It might be because we had a very low key holiday this year, staying in town instead of traveling to see family. We did go see dh’s family on Christmas day, but that was a short trip as they live just a few hours from us. I did the traditional call to my family, I called while everyone was at my mom’s and they passed the phone from person to person. I missed them then, but otherwise content would be the adjective I would choose. Maybe it’s because I had such a crazy few weeks in December I thought I was going to lose my mind and now I’m just glad it’s over. It could be because now we have 5 months until our move, and I’m really looking forward to moving on.

I just got an email from a friend whose dh was supposed to be in Iraq until January because of the extension. The email was a picture of her and her dh! “Some things changed since our Christmas letter,” she wrote. I thought about her a lot this year. The more I think about it, the more I think that I’m feeling good because not only was my dh home, I know that this next year we will be together as a family. That’s a rare guarantee for us. I have a lot to look forward to in 2008 and I’m so very thankful.

Lost in translation

My dh just came home at the beginning of August. This was not our first experience with deployment, but it was our first with a child. I was so worried that she was going to break her daddy’s heart by taking a long time to warm up to him. She was only 7 months when he left. Ironically, the dutchkid handled the adjustment of having daddy back home very well! It was me that had the trouble.

It has been a lot rougher going than I had anticipated. I think every military spouse has a little bit of a control freak thing going on, I most definitely do. That tendency is what gets you through being alone, what makes you independent enough to survive. It’s just hard to turn it off sometimes. I get ultra sensitive about any comment about the way I run things. You add to that my very opinionated dh, the new dimension of parenting, and you have a recipe for disaster.

We have a running joke between us about “the translator”. Words come out of my unsuspecting dh’s mouth and somehow midair they become the most hurtful barb known to womankind. I speak in some sort of foreign language — it sounds just like English, except for the words have different meanings. My dh has been known to stop, mid-argument to say, “Hold on, let me turn on my translator!”

It turns out translators get a little rusty after a year or so of not being used. I was a little worried mine was broken, but I am happy to report that they are both back online. Now if I could just learn the language…