at night here. He looks just like an Afghani Abraham Lincoln. I call
him Ibrahim Lincoln. Another random musing? It must be time for this
week's Update!
So, this week would have been my son's first birthday. Due to
circumstances more or less beyond my control, it only was that
theoretically. Instead it was just a kind of a sad week, spent missing
home, missing my wife, missing a life-status that has passed/never
happened. And it made me think that one of the things that I haven't
really written about, not in any concrete way, is how much we are all
missing or wives and families.
Being in the Navy, in the Armed Services, means that there will be
times when you are away from your family, that's just a part of the
deal when you sign on. And it isn't anything new or more difficult
than anyone else deals with. But there is a specific kind of pay that
they give you when you're on deployment, a Family Separation
Allowance, that lets you know that they know that this is a hard thing
that no one likes.
Family is an important part of the military experience. In a lot of
ways, they encourage you to get married, have kids, buy a house,
settle down. These are all important steps, because the more settled a
Soldier/Sailor/Marine is in his/her private life, the more invested
s/he will be in the military process. It is good for people, good for
careers, good for the military.
But then there is this flip-side, this being away, being apart.
Missing you kid's first steps, missing so many birthdays and holidays
and being unable to help in every little thing that happens. My friend
Cahill has two kids at home. He has a daughter who is 3 and a son who
is 1. He missed both of their birthdays this year. We all missed
Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and now Easter. We all missed our
wives birthdays, our anniversaries, our parents' and siblings'
birthdays. We are all giving up that part of our lives, for this year,
this time.
And that's acceptable, we all accept it. But we don't really talk
about it with each other, and we don't really talk about it with you.
We say: "Let's go home. Let's be done now." We say, "Man, it is going
to be good to be home." We imagine the circumstances and tell
mini-stories in our minds about when we first see our wives and kids
again. (We plan our first meals, when we get back. We try to remember
what our houses smell like.)
It is a constant, nagging longing that is always at the back of our
minds. We chuckle and tease each other, we are quiet and filled with
work, but we're always thinking about our wives and families back
home. That's the collective.
To make it personal, I'll talk about Margaret. Well, first I'll talk
about something she would be annoyed by, then I'll use that to talk
about her. I like to tell stories. I tell them to myself if there is
no one around to listen. A lot of the time I will tell stories about
what would have happened to me if X, Y or Z thing hadn't. I attempt to
tell a story wherein the rotten thing I actually did, I didn't. What
would happen then? Who would I be? What would my life look like? And I
try to be as accurate as I can. (I do this all the time, but being
here, more or less alienated most of the time, means I have lots of
time to spin my tales.) I try to make sure that the things that I
re-do are really the way they would be. And what I always end up with
is a life that, while possibly a little bit better, doesn't have
Margaret in it. And that's not acceptable. So then I have to rejigger
the whole story, start again from another point. But if I am being
realistic, then I have to accept that the circumstances that led to
our being a couple, and then married and happy, were pretty
far-fetched and relied on an awful lot of long-shot, crazy decision
making.
I think that there is an inevitability to she and I. I think that, in
spite of all of this time apart. I think it in spite of everything
else in the world indicating otherwise. I know that without her, I'd
still be that guy who lies about people's lives in order to avoid 4
hours of work. I know that without her I would probably be a very
different person, going about a very different life. I know that
because I've spent the past 5+ months without her. And I see the
changes in myself. I can see the things about me that have remained
and the things about me that try to resurge without her.
I listen to her, in our phone conversations, figuring out how to live
with me gone. Figuring out how I do the things I do at home. (So many
times she has told me that things I did when I was home that she
thought were insane idiosyncrasies, now make sense as she has to do
them for herself. That's not to say that she is not still convinced
that I am full of insane idiosyncrasies, just to say that some of them
are now revealed as practical measures.) I listen to her starting her
business. Making strong decisions and being this terrific woman. I
can't even describe what a bizarre thing it is, to listen to your
wife's life and be a total spectator while she goes around being
amazing. I know from how she has impacted me that she is wonderful,
but to hear it from the perspective of her dynamism in the world… it's
mind-blowing, humbling and a lot of the time, lonely.
Being apart from your wife and your family, it is a good way of taking
your measure. It shows you how you are and who you are and if you are
at all given to introspection, who you were and who you have become.
It is a hard thing, but it makes me love my wife more. It makes me
appreciate what she has made me into and who she has become. I think
that we all, the deployed folks out here, can agree that the way we
live when away from home makes us miss both the comforts and the
people that we are without. But it also reminds us of what it is like
to live in squalor. And anyone who has ever been a single man knows,
squalor is what happens before you're married. (Or when you're on
deployment.)
For more of the Afghan Updates, or any I failed to send you, please
visit: http://dustintheeverything.blogspot.com/?zx=ee6fac97810abcfc
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