Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Appreciation

My husband has been deployed now for over 7 months. It’s definitely different this time around, having kids. I’m kept busier, and the time seems to be flying by faster. But it does make me sad, because he is missing so much. I have heard other military families express this same feeling, but I never understood it until I lived it myself.

I was sitting on the sofa last night, and my 2 year old son clambered up next to me, and scooted his butt against the back of the couch and imitated how I was sitting on the sofa. And then turned up to look at my face, beaming. And it filled me with such joy and happiness. And then I realized how lucky I was to be spending time like this with my son, and how sad it was that my husband was missing a whole year of those special moments. A year of those beaming smiles. And it made me incredibly sad.

My husband and I have also discussed the fact that we both tend to have morbid thoughts a lot more…like when he was home for R&R and I was making video of him with the kids, I couldn’t silence the thought in the back of my head that this might be footage I show the kids later of them with their dad…their dad that they can’t quite remember, because he never came home. He says, he also worries about me and the kids, something happening to us.

Yes, it’s sad. But I think because we have these thoughts more often, I think we also have a better appreciation of our family. We realize how precious our moments together are. So it’s not all bad.