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Seems like a good thing, right? But all change, even good change, brings some stress. This has been the hardest transition of all of John's redeployments. I'm not exactly sure why. Perhaps because it is final, there is no more traveling for months at a time. That sounds backwards, but that's the way it is. Maybe part of it is knowing that the extra money from deployments (housing allowance, hazardous duty pay, etc) won't ever be there again.
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I think part of it is that John came home to two teenagers who had their own minds and needed different things from their dad, who was not all caught up on the situation. My ways of handling the situations that arose had to change because John had different ideas (and I'm not happy about handing back the reins!). That's probably the hardest thing right there.
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Fitting this person back into the family dynamic is difficult. Yes, we had lots of phone calls and emails, and John "parented from afar" but that is not the same at all as being there as things happen.
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Things that have changed:
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We don't have the nightly tears, "I want my Daddy!" from Luci. (This photo is from December 2009.) That is a good thing. But now she's transitioned into, "I want my Grandma!" or "I want Pal!" (the dog who was run over 3 years ago), or "I want my China Momma!" or anything else that is not reachable now. What is good is that Luci only cries for those things when she is extremely tired. Unlike crying for Daddy when he was in Afghanistan--that she did every night. It was pitiful!
I guess we can take down the time-table that's on the fridge. It does not seem quite real that John won't be going on any more long trips. The boys still have this table taped to the back of their bedroom doors, too.
I'm not constantly checking the news online for updates on the troops. (While John was in Kabul, if there was a blast I'd email him the story and he'd hear about it first from me--after they were released from the bunkers, that is. Usually they heard basic information. The online news had more details.) I don't feel such a need to read the crawl at the bottom of the screen on my favorite 24-hour news channel. I'm checking the earthquake page fewer times to see if John's area is still quiet tectonic-wise. The US Corps of Engineers page is no longer on my daily must-read list. Sleep is still hard to come by, though. I thought that sleep would come more readily once John got home..
Here's the sign we put up for John's homecoming. Check out Build a Sign / Troops to get one for your favorite troop. It's nice to not have to have the yellow ribbons anymore. We also notice everyone else's ribbons, and talk about the families in those homes.
Nice that John can stand next to the real Luci now. :)
Sweet that John can tell us things in person now, and we don't have to play "Where's Waldo?" just to see him.
Did you find him? Here he is!
It was strange taking these signs off of the van's windows. Not only is the vehicle more bare now, but have you noticed how many silver vans there are in any given parking lot? I can never find ours now...those signs did more than let the world know that we were missing a vital part of our family. More than once I've walked to the wrong van!!
Luci actually makes love letters for me now. Here is a string of notes she made for John one afternoon...multiply that by the 365 days or so that he was missing from her life since November 2008, and you get an idea of the love this little girl has for her Daddy. During all that time, I think I got five little notes.
No more standing in airports, waiting for that special man...
No more of Daddy missing out on the kids' learning special skills, like Luci learning to use chopsticks (or chapsticks, as she calls them)....
Or missing JT's TWO gold medals at a Tang Soo Do competition.
But the best thing of all is not having to count on this chain how many days John was missing from our lives. This was after six weeks or so...before his last trip was over (June 28, 2009 to Dec 23, 2009), this chain wound around our entire dining room. The deployment was really over when John and Luci burned the chain, as you can see here in this post.
