Fractured World

Elder Holland spoke at a fireside in Houston that Andy and I attended. At the end of his talk he share that he felt every person needed three things to be happy (excluding chemical depression- and he made a point to share that that was its own battle): 1) Someone to love. I thought that was interesting. It wasn’t someone to love us, but for us to love someone. My kids and I will focus on showing Andy our love and loving each other, so I think we’ll have that already taken care of. 2) Something to do. I think we’ll all stay busy since Andy will be gone for most of the school year. Between school, extracurriculars, and projects, I think we’ll be plenty busy. I am not sure how busy they’ll keep Andy, but he’s got his own personal projects to work on when they’re not keeping him busy. He is planning on writing down some of his military and medical experiences to share with our kids and posterity. I’m excited to read them since Andy has had some amazing and powerful experiences (and he’s a good writer!). The last thing he mentioned was 3) something to look forward to. We are planning some family trips for when he gets back and as we get closer to the end of his time in service we can make some more solid plans. We’ve got Aspen Grove with the Rasband family at the end of May next year and Myrtle Beach with the Jacksons. While he’s away I’ve got their weekly dates, and though it will be hard to have Andy gone for the Jackson trip to Orlando and all of the holidays, they will be diverting and be something for the kids to look forward to, progressing along these next 9 months. For Andy and I, I think we can enjoy seeing our kids enjoy those things and also look forward to daily and weekly contact. It won’t be easy to keep our heads up, but we have plans and we’ll get through.

Since Andy left I’ve been having weird dreams. Last night I dreamt that the world had a big crack down the middle of it and I was trying to put it back together with superglue. I’m not huge on “dreams mean something” but I do think some times it is our brain’s way of processing our reality. Emotionally, I feel like I’ve been ok this week with Andy being gone. Of course there have been some tears, but I’ve kept my house up, my kids mostly happy, and have actually made some major progress on the novel I’m writing, but when asked about how we were doing by another lady whose husband is deployed, somehow the dam broke and I started crying. Not sobbing, just teared up, but the hardest thing for me is seeing my kids miss their dad. When he left on Monday, they sat on my lap and wailed for a good fifteen minutes. I felt at a loss of how to comfort them. Nine months is a long time for a kid. I think the weight of being both parents is the biggest struggle for me right now. Of course, when Andy left things began to break. I mean, they probably break often enough when he’s here, but he’s our “fixer” so they seem more blatant when he’s gone. The first was the AC blower in his jeep. He had a long, hot drive to Kansas. The next thing to break happened Wednesday. The power went out for about an hour, Max panicked and thought he needed to turn off the server so it wouldn’t get a power surge. Well, apparently he turned it off the wrong way and ended up crashing the server. I couldn’t be mad at him, it was an accident and he was trying to help, but it was upsetting. Max has been spending the past several months (pretty much since Andy’s first deployment orders at the end of December) being Andy’s apprentice. He has learned the ins and outs of the computers, a bit about the server (apparently not enough), and the care of the lawn and pets. He takes his role very seriously and I think that weight has gotten to him a bit. He thought the turtle’s water needed to be changed TWICE this week. He just did it, without consulting me first… the first time he got water all over the floor and the second time Mav did something while he was suctioning water that made the water pump break. We’ll adjust. Hopefully Max won’t feel too anxious about the turtle’s life, and we’ll find our new normal, but it’ll be a process. After I wrote this paragraph, we headed to church and a sensor broke in the Tesla. So now I need to drive to Columbia sometime to get that fixed. We’ll live. It’s just a pain. My friends who have dealt with these longer deployments said that at about 3-4 weeks we should plan on having another meltdown, but then after that it’ll be our new normal and for the most part we’ll be doing ok.

I am planning on taking each of the kids on a date. Each kid gets a week a month to pick what they want to do with me one on one. I think this will help give them more attention than I can give them when we’re all here together. For myself, I’ve got house projects, my novel, and my friends that will keep me busy and sane. And for Andy, we’ve sent him off with a Mama Eagle with for little birdies so he can snuggle them when he misses us. We have Marco Polo, snail mail, email, FaceTime, texting, family online gaming, and even “watch together” on plex that can keep us connected.