{old-- Spring 2011}

"Life is not the way it's supposed to be. It's just the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference."-Virginia Satir

Jamie threw a party a few weeks ago, which was a blast. We ate delicious food, drank delicious (well, creative at least) drinks, danced until we thought we might be sick, and played games until the morning began its slow creep. I was one of the troopers who stayed awake until the very end, playing Donkey Kong Country 2 on the Super Nintendo. As my sweet friends slept in awkward positions on various living room furniture, I was having a conversation with a friend about the deployment. It was your normal, we’re-saying-a lot-but-what-this-boils-down-to-is-this-SUCKS kind of conversation only Army wives can participate in. At one point, her clear green eyes got wide and she turned to fully face me, “People aren’t supposed to be away from the people that love them.  This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. This is not normal.” For some reason, that simple statement has stayed with me. I’ve carried it to the Commissary, its made late afternoon runs with me on the track, and when I rinse the conditioner out of my hair, it’s peering back at me on the shower tile. 

 

Absolutely nothing about this is normal. A daddy being away from his new baby for the first year of that infant’s life? For one year, a wife not feeling her husband’s calloused hands cup her face when he kisses her? A family who should write a personal Thank-You note to Mark Zuckerberg because Facebook is the only form of communication they’ll have for 12 months? It’s disturbing that my friends and I have quietly resigned from “usual” life, and accepted this as our reality because we have no other choice. 

 

I love my friends here dearly, they have been one of the biggest reasons I am getting through this deployment. But it seems we are all just waiting. 

We grin, we run, we sip, we twirl, we hug, we laugh, and we live. But at the end of each day, we crawl into our empty beds, tentatively stretching out one foot to make sure the other side of the bed is still vacant, sigh deeply, and wait for the next day to come.   

This is our normal, and it is so abnormal.