Insights into the Life of a Navy Wife, Part II

Wives, think of your husbands. Think of all the reasons why you love him: because he makes you laugh, because he keeps you warm at night, because he listens to you complain about your awful day, because he sends the mortgage payment every month, because he stops by the store for diapers on his way home from work no matter how tired he is, because he knows how to touch you in all the right ways and in all the right places, because he watches the kids so you can take a bubble bath, because he grills the hamburgers and hot dogs just the way you like them, because he always takes your side in an argument with your mom, because he discusses the Sunday sermon with you on your way home from church, because he tells you you’re not fat and actually makes you believe it, because he fixes the kitchen sink when it’s clogged, because he motivates and inspires you to do more and be better. Now imagine if one day he just disappeared. What would you do? How would you cope? Could you get out of bed every day and be the same happy, confident, optimistic, productive person that you were before?

Navy wives love their husbands for all the same reasons and we must do just that.

 In a matter of days the USS Enterprise will deploy. She will pull out of the harbor and leave in her wake thousands of Navy wives, who will stand on the pier, wave good-bye, wipe the tears from their eyes, give their children hugs and tell them that Daddy will be home soon, then drive back to empty houses to face their grim husbandless realities. We will all struggle to find a way to continue being us without our other halves. Making this change is not easy and like any change, it does not happen overnight; it is a process.

Step 1: Denial

At first, we simply deny it. Embracing the truth cannot prevent the pain. The ship’s departure is inevitable. We might as well refuse to accept it for as long as possible and hope to squeeze as much happiness out of our days as we can.

Step 2: Depression

Pretty soon after our sailors leave, reality begins to set in. Everywhere we turn there are reminders of our husbands’ absences. Here at our home, Josie heard the dogs barking at a car driving by and said, “Daddy is home!” I had to explain that it wasn’t him because he was working on his ship. A few days later I was folding the laundry and found a pair of James’ jeans that were the last pair he wore at home before leaving. It was hard to fold them and put them in his drawer knowing that I wouldn’t fold another pair of his pants for a long, long time. And just today I was browsing through our DVR and deleting the programs I’d already watched to make room for new ones. I stopped for a moment, thinking to myself that James would want to see them first. Then it hit me- he won’t be home to watch them anytime soon. All of these things brought me to tears.

During this time, the logistical complications of running a household alone also begin to rear their ugly head. The kids need caring for, bills need paying, the budget needs balancing, appliances need fixing, and snow needs shoveling. Everyday tasks, that were once do-able, become daunting. We wonder how we’re going to do it all.

The most depressing part, though, is the emotional and physical loneliness. With our husbands gone we no longer have a partner to bounce ideas off of or confide secrets in. For me, the hardest part these past few weeks has been facing this loneliness in the evenings, after the kids have gone to bed. The house is too dark, too quiet, and too much of a reminder that I am on my own from here on out.

The physical loneliness begins to take its toll as well. We miss having someone to kiss good night, we miss laying our heads on someone’s shoulder to cry, we miss having someone to scratch that itch in the middle of our backs. And yes, we miss sex too. After all, we’re only human.

Step 3: Acceptance

There finally comes a day when the dark cloud of mourning lifts and we feel ready to face the challenge ahead. We must make a conscious decision to make the most of our time, regardless of the sadness. Inside every good Navy wife there is an undeniable inner strength that enables her to thrive under the most difficult of circumstances (The source of this strength? Well, that’s a whole post in itself).

Step 4: Adjustment

We eventually change our daily routines and habits to compensate for being husbandless. We buy fewer groceries and learn to cook for one less person. We start sleeping in the middle of the bed and cuddling with the extra pillows. We become accustomed to taking all the kids with us everywhere we go. And, most importantly, we learn to lean more on our family and rely more on our friends.

So, where am I? I think I’m stuck somewhere between Step 2 and Step 3- almost ready to push forward but haven’t fully emerged from the darkness. So if I seem a little ‘out of sorts,’ a little needier than usual, and a little more prone to emotional outbursts, then I am truly sorry. It’s all a part of the process.

Wonderful Winter Day

Like I said before, I REALLY like snow. I especially love it when it comes at the most opportune times, like it did this weekend. We woke up on Saturday morning to find a beautiful foot of fluffy white snow wishing us “good morning!”  And what made it all the more welcoming was the fact that we had absolutely nothing else to do that day, other than lounge around the house in our pajamas and watch re-run episodes of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. I knew right away that we’d spend our day in the snow.

Sure enough, as soon as Johnny went down for his first nap at 8:30 am I started gathering the snow gear and bundling everyone up. We headed out and spent an hour and a half outside- shoveling, sledding, and smiling.

Johnny woke up from his nap and joined us for a few short rides down the hill. But soon everyone’s cheeks began to sting from the cold so it was time for a hot cocoa break. While we were sitting around the kitchen table, warming our fingers and toes, a friend called and invited us to join them for more snow play at one of the local high schools. So out we went for a second round. Everyone had a great time and the adults got plenty of exercise helping the kids back up the hill after each ride down.

 

What a wonderful way to spend a winter day!

Milk & Cookies

Dinner time can be quite a struggle. I have to fight to keep the kids in their seats and then battle to get them to touch the food on their plates. So I was very impressed tonight when everyone came to the table eager to eat. Josie finished all her mashed potatoes, most of her vegetables, and took three healthy bites of her meatloaf. Jamie shoveled his mashed potatoes in his mouth and loved his mixed veggies so much that he was stealing mine off my plate. Even little Johnny was quite the eater. He finally showed some signs of enjoying his rice cereal.

As a little reward, I served some milk and cookies for desert. Josie and Jamie dunked to their little hearts’ delight. I'm on a mission to lose some weight so I didn’t have any cookies. But that was okay. Watching my three kids sit around the dinner table with big smiles on their faces was sweet enough for me.

A Jamie Story

Don’t let those adorable dimples fool you. That face means trouble.

This morning we were expecting guests and, in true busy mom fashion, I put off a lot of house cleaning until the very end. So when I went upstairs to lay Johnny down for his nap I was calculating exactly how much time I had left to take the curlers out of my hair and throw on some make-up, dress the kids in their clothes, take out the bag of trash that was stinking up the house, tidy up the kitchen, and give the toilet and potty seat a quick scrub before our friends arrived. I’d be able to do it all if I was quick and efficient, I thought. But as I came back downstairs I was outraged to find the living room littered with Chex and Cheerios. In the mere minutes that I was out of the room Jamie had pulled a chair into the pantry, climbed up to the cereal shelf, pulled down two nearly full boxes of cereal, and then proceeded to scatter the contents all over the living room floor, from wall to wall. I was fuming mad because incidents like this are a regular occurrence with Jamie. Later in the day he dunked several battery operated toys into the fish tank, hit his sister and friend in the head with a toy hammer, and scattered Josie’s collection of hair rubber bands all over the bedroom. Jamie’s troublemaking is legendary. So much so, in fact, that my mom refuses to hang up the phone if she’s talking with me and she hasn’t heard a Jamie story yet. She knows that if she stays on the phone long enough she will hear him getting scolded for some outrageous act of no good and she can always expect to get a good laugh.

But actually, there’s nothing humorous about it. The fact that my son constantly misbehaves and refuses to follow directions is frightening. For one thing, I am tired of cleaning up his messes and spending money to replace things he’s broken (like the $200 universal remote control he smashed when he threw a motorcycle helmet on top of it, just to give an example). And then there’s the obvious immediate concern of safety. His life could be in danger if he doesn’t stop when I tell him not to run in the parking lot or not to play with the kitchen knife. And years from now, if I haven’t taught him good decision making skills, his health will be at stake when he agrees to try his friends’ cigarettes, alcohol, or drugs. But the prospect that scares me the most is that, if I don’t handle this problem now and in the right way, it could someday ultimately affect the mother-son relationship that I share with him. Second only to losing a child to death, having a dysfunctional or non-existent relationship with my adults children is my worst nightmare. I know several grown-up men who have poor relationships with their moms due to the unhealthy way that discipline was handled during their childhoods.

I do not blame Jamie. He is not a bad boy. He’s a wonderful little man, full of spirit and pining for attention. If anyone gets the finger pointed at them, then it’s me. I guess I have a soft spot for my little boy. Maybe I love him too much. I let him get away with things he shouldn’t. He looks at me with those big brown eyes and my insides go soft. Plus, I just don’t have the energy to keep up with him. He was still so young when baby Johnny arrived on the scene, and still in such need of constant attention and continual affection, all of which I failed to give him because my time and energies were otherwise employed. Between all the diapering and nursing, somehow poor Jamie got lost in the shuffle.

But no more! All that is about to end. I am stepping up to the plate and whacking this discipline problem out of the park. The next couple weeks (or however long it takes) are going to be all about Jamie. I will be watching him like a hawk and scrutinizing his every move. The poor little guy won’t be able to escape my gaze. We're going to nip his defiance in the bud. It’s not going to be easy, seeing as I still have two other children to watch over and care for, but it’s going to be worth it.

(Me with a six-month-old Jamie)

Baby Smell Therapy

A day or two before James left I came downstairs after half an hour of nursing Johnny and rocking him to sleep for a nap. James wrapped his arms around me, gave me a strong hug, then released me and said, rather matter-of-fact-ly, “You smell like baby.” He could have been trying to tell me, only in nicer words, that I smelled like curdled milk, or poop, or spit-up, or diaper rash crème. But I chose to take his comment as a compliment.

There’s no smell like baby smell. You all know what I’m talking about. I think that most people- or most women, at least- would agree that baby smell is delicious. If I knew what it was comprised of then I’d make a fortune bottling it in little glass jars and selling it to expectant mothers, lonely empty-nesters, and proud grandmas. It’s a soft and sweet scent. It’s also the best remedy I know for sleep deprivation, stress, exhaustion, depression, loneliness, frustration, etc. …… Basically, baby smell makes everything better. But, take heed, because a big waft of baby smell is also the leading cause of baby fever!

I took Jamie’s baby smell for granted. Just before he turned 6 months old we decided that it would be best to wean him from the breast to a bottle. Our primary reason for this decision was that we wanted to start trying to get pregnant with our third baby so that he/ she would be born before James’ reassignment to a ship. (In retrospect, it was a great decision. We never could have predicted the difficulty we would have selling the house or how soon James would have to deploy, and if we had waited any longer Johnny would have arrived without a daddy to greet him or quite possibly might never have arrived at all.) Despite the positive outcome, weaning Jamie was very hard for me. For one thing, the engorgement was physically agonizing. I also didn’t realize how expensive the formula would be. And the biggest reason, what I never saw coming, was that my baby boy’s smell changed. My breast milk had given his skin a sugary sweet smell and the formula changed it to an almost hard and bitter one. It took me several weeks to adjust to his new scent and for a while it felt like I was holding and cuddling someone else’s baby. Anyone who is a mother can imagine how emotionally trying it was for my baby to feel foreign in my arms, after I’d spent six long months getting to know every intricate detail about him. It made me sad.

So this time around there will be no formula, no bottles, no weaning. I’m keeping Johnny breastfed for as long as we both want and I’m soaking up as much of his smell as I possibly can. I love to rub my cheek on his little peach fuzz covered head and breathe deeply, filling my lungs with his aroma. It’s therapeutic and invigorating. And I’m pretty sure that God designed it that way. He knew that mothers would face some of the roughest and toughest emotional plights known to mankind and gifted them with baby smell to help them persevere through it all. Now that I’m staring down many months of single parentage, I think I need that baby smell a little extra. So I didn’t mind one bit that I was awake with Johnny more than normal last night due to the onset of a nasty head cold. In fact, I deeply valued it as baby smell therapy.