I am a mom. I am a scientist.
I am a postdoctoral fellow, trying to build her career. I am a
transplant, from the West Coast, living in the DC Metro.
And I am also a military spouse, a
Navy Wife. And my other half is deployed right now; like having my left arm on
the other side of the world.
What does all that mean?
What’s it like right now, for me? The sympathy has been
truly staggering; I have been touched and honored by the heartfelt words, nods,
looks of amazement of how I’m still standing. I have also started to feel
a little like an untapped market for Hallmark.
What is the appropriate
response to someone who mentions that their partner is deployed, especially
from someone who has little to no experience with the military? Luckily.
no one has physically run away from me when I explain my current situation, but
I have encountered some side-steps, some awkward moments, the silences in those
moments spent looking for the right words. I’ve even been asked if he knew he
was going to have to leave when he “signed up” (though only from people who
have never met M), not understanding how anyone could ever leave the chubby
little sidekick with astonishing blue eyes I tote around.
Ah, the truth is both the heaviest
and lightest I’ve ever had to carry! Some days it is so hard I feel like
my chest is collapsing on top of my lungs under the weight and/or my head is
going to explode with the frustrations of operating like a single parent.* I
miss my best friend. I miss his silent helping, our teamwork, his
runs to Starbucks on Saturday mornings while I fetch our daughter from her
crib, the shared decision-making (whether it be “to grill or not to grill,”
what kind of wine we might drink, should we watch Colbert or a TED lecture),
our intimacy, the way he fills up the side of his bed, family jog strolls
while he pushes the damn thing up hills... The absence is present every day,
albeit easier than the weeks leading up to his leaving, and albeit a little
easier and easier managing as the busy days march forward.
But there’s a lightness, too, which
is hard to put into words (harder during the heavy days). I sometimes do
feel that I’m made out of, well, not iron, but teflon, maybe, that I am tough,
that we three our tough, that we are fighters. That we don’t know real
tough, actually, because there are thousands of families that have it way
tougher than us. That through it all, I believe in M, and by extension,
all that he is and does, and that nothing can beat us. The lightness comes in
the daily conversations I have with my best friend G, the most recent being her
coaxing me through a teething-related tantrum that almost undid me. The
lightness comes with shared moments of laughter, tears, and embraces with my
other best friend S. It also comes on my weekly jogs with an amazingly
funny and fun run group at work, particularly with my friend B who has taught
me how to be a scientist, mom, wife, and above all else fun chick to be around.
The lightness comes in the morning when we have our family Skype, especially
the moments before, when the Skype signature ring plays and G yells, “DADDAA!
DADDAA!”, and in the moments during when she kisses his face or fills it with
stickers.
So, these moments, the heavy and the
light, all of these gifts are not the result of the deployment, but they are
perhaps highlighted by it.
Sometimes I wish I had more grace
than to tell people; we all have our baggage, right? Deployment is just another
suitcase in another hall, I suppose. But... I’m a sharer (the blogging
makes this a non-statement :) ), and so I do just that. So I tell people
how about G kissing the iPad, and I can feel them holding their breath for a
minute. Because it’s a breathhold moment the first time you see a little do
that. But it’s okay; we’re okay; we eventually exhale each time, go to bed each
night, wake up the next morning, mostly just taking as it comes. Walking the
line between willing the calendar forward and being present in the moment. As
in yoga, anchoring the body to the ground (accepting the heavy), while letting
my head and hard float upward (experiencing the light).
I accept this heaviness, because as
I struggle to wrap my arms around this boulder, push my cheek against it to
steady myself under its weight, I catch glimpses of the sun on the other side,
and I imagine how it will feel, some brisk November morning, to see it lifted
off.
“But
is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid? The heaviest of burdens
crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground....The heaviest of
burdens is [also] simultaneously the image of life’s most intense fulfillment.
The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real
and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes
man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and
his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are
insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?”
-Milan
Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
