Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Ready, Set.... Dont jump!


The military is full of rules. Rules for everything. I usually try to find gaps in the rules and deviate from the norm but there is ONE rule I will follow, rules for deployment security. So before I begin, any specifics in this post are probably inaccurate and so forth. Apparently posts containing deployment details can endanger our soldiers even more so let’s avoid that.

So GOOD NEWS! I finally have a social group. We recently celebrated our daughters 2nd birthday! This came as a shock to us, being that when we gave birth to her we figured she would always weigh 8 pounds, 3 ounces and make goo-goo eyes and coo at us. Didn’t work that way. We had to officially celebrate 2, bittersweet. Anyways, so we celebrated with our good friends down the street and their almost 2 year old son for a 1:30 gift give and cake. Then we went out to dinner with a couple from my husband’s unit and their almost 2 year old son. (This was Saturday). Then Sunday we were invited to this same couple’s home for chicken and mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, beans and corn bread. I brought a cheese cake, which I was reluctant to leave with them, and it turns out another couple met us there for dinner!

This was indeed the most eventful weekend we ever had here on base! So today is Monday and since we finally jumped onto the social gravy train we just couldn’t let it go so we invited yet another couple, friends of my husbands, over for a grilled cheese night! Dinner went smoothly, I was able to clear the kitchen table and get both kids in bed by 9 pm, while my husband retreated to the garage for some “man to man” chat with his best battle buddy.

 So I continued cleaning up and just happened to stroll passed the cracked door to the garage. The boys were discussing a briefing they had, had earlier that week about their up and coming deployment, which apparently the other gentleman had filled in his wife about. The briefing was to inform the soldiers about the seriousness of this particular deployment and how they would be entering one of the most DANGEROUS areas. This particular deployment post has no buildings-the boys will be building their own functioning station (which probably means it won’t be as secure as an already standing one) and there will be NO communication between soldiers and the people they are away from. They were unsure about the possibilities if airmail.

A returning soldier was 1 survivor of a group of 6, where the other 5 had died. He watched his friends die and then came back only to suffer from PTSD. At first I was horrified by the danger these boys were facing and I was hurt that my husband hadn’t disclosed any of this to me previously. He didn’t know I was eavesdropping so had he known, would he have continued to talk about it?

As you have probably noticed the best way to cope with stress or uncertainty for me is bring humor to the situation to make light of it and laugh more than I cry. I am not sure how to bring that light over this cloud. So I called Alex. I spat out as much as I could as fast as I could and waited eagerly for some heart-warming words to ease my worries and put my mind to rest.

Heart-warming words: “Yeah, that particular area is producing a death rate of 50%; but don’t get your hopes up for a change, they’re definitely deploying. He’ll be lucky if he comes away unscathed.”

Really?! Excuse my vulgarity but F**K YOU ALEX!

Right hand to God, I thought deployments at this time consisted of playing video games and Skyping. One soldier said after we arrived on base, if you can play call of duty you’re a good infantryman. So I was relieved.

Now it’s come out of the video game? How am I supposed to react to this?

 I always thought that joining Uncle Sam was an honorable endeavor but not because it was dangerous- because you were asked to be away from your spouse and children for outstanding amounts of time! Now, its life-threatening and I’m wondering where the glitch in the contract is that I can get him out of this… but there isn’t one.

 Who can I pay off to get him on some god-awful non-deployment duty? No one.

I kissed my husband 7 times more before bed this evening and 40 times longer. I stayed up an extra 10 minutes to do his laundry and pre-set the coffee and breakfast for the morning.

He has no idea why….

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