I just found out that Kevin will likely miss our 10th and 11th anniversaries and both kids' birthdays due to training and deployment. It helps that everyone on our street has a running list of all the missed holidays over the past how many ever years they've been serving. It's also okay because...that's what we signed up for. We definitely factored in 'time away' when we were deciding if this was the journey we needed to be on. We believe enough in Kevin's job and what this would offer our family that we can handle some time away. It will be hard, but we can handle it.
I still have a hard time seeing myself as a military wife. I haven't earned any stripes yet (now next year will be a different story). So I still see things as an outsider on the inside. Living on base I get to see so many comings and goings that some days it's emotionally draining to see families saying goodbye and then others putting up their Welcome Back signs. Kevin has a good cry-worthy story every couple weeks or so and those are just the ones he passes on to me. Just because deployments, training leading up to the deployments, injuries and worse are all part of what is 'signed up for', it doesn't make it easy.
While I was waiting to pick Kevin up from his Lasik surgery a girl came in that I knew from my Zumba class. Her husband came in behind her, using a cane. They sat in front of me, facing the other direction and I realized that he had 4-5 scars on his head. One of them was huge and was most likely caused by an IED. I haven't been able to get that image out of my head. She was just kissing him on the cheek and rubbing his arm and I tried to imagine how she felt, how her life had changed. It didn't sit well with me, as it shouldn't, but I couldn't figure out what was really bothering me about it. A few nights later The Dark Knight was on tv and I turned it on as the Joker was talking to Two Face. The Joker says, "You know... You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan." But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!"
It's true. It's sad. Now, no matter what your feelings are about war, it takes special people to 'sign up' for a job that has such great risks. It makes me very proud to be with the military (something I never thought I would say) and it makes me especially proud of Kevin's job to care for those that are going on 'according to plan'. We may not be able to stop the war, but we can sure love everybody through it. By we, I mean all of us.
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