Kelli
When I married my husband, we left my family home only two or three days after the wedding. I would like to say it was an easy transition with rainbows and butterflies accompanying our journey, but it wasn’t. We loaded up my blue 1975 Toyota Celica hatchback with all our wedding gifts. Sandwiched into the front bucket passenger seat, I waved goodbye to my family as we drove off in the gray, early morning light. Our destination was Camp Pendleton, California where we had a one bedroom apartment in the town of Oceanside waiting our arrival. The day we arrived, my husband’s leave was over. I looked around a small empty apartment in southern California where I knew only the man whose last name was now on my military ID card. Then he left me and went to work.
I share this story of our beginning as a military couple because, looking back, it was much easier than what I am now facing. I am the one waving goodbye as my children, one by one, begin their journeys out of our home. It seems a little weird all of a sudden going in reverse. As each child joined our family, we simply added another dresser to a bedroom and a plate at the table. I never fully appreciated the impact their growing up and leaving would have on my family. I never fully appreciated the impact my leaving home must have had on my own parents. I knew they missed us. I certainly missed them, but life was quickly becoming hectic and that has never really let up, leaving little time to really reflect.
When thinking about this time of shoving – I mean helping – our offspring out of our nest, I always pictured us retired in a civilian community, homesteading somewhere in Texas on about 10, 50, or maybe 100 acres. I saw a big house with a barn, some four wheelers, a horse or two, and plenty of room for 4H projects as well as room for grandkids and the garden club to come for lunch. Yes, I fantasized about being one of the Ewings on the popular television series Dallas. I still do. I maintain it could happen.
My kids aren’t waiting for that to happen. They have the audacity to grow up anyway in spite of my plans, go to college, get married, and have babies! I’m not in position yet for this transition, people! No one is listening!
They are moving forward in their lives just like they should, only it’s not like I pictured. The hardest part, you wonder? Being apart from my grandbabies. THEY NEED ME! How did my mother survive living so far away from what she must have thought were the most perfect human beings on the planet, her grandchildren?
As a military family, every time we said good bye and moved to a new area, we did it all together as a unit. We loaded up and left. “The Grandparents” were always in the same place too. When we referred to “home” it was always their house we referred to. They were our hub and we were tethered there no matter where we went.
I always thought by the time my children started making their own way into the world and I was granted the title “The Grandmother,” I would be stationary somewhere. We would become the family hub. The kids would all go out on their own, with their own individual tethers, but not too far away.
I am now the Grandmother and I have no hub! I am still living according to PCS orders and the Marine Corps. I need my hub. What is going to happen to their tethers?
Having them leave ME is much harder than when I left my parents and is in some ways harder than when they joined my family. It was easy to be the one to leave. It’s really not easy to be the one left.
Making room for a baby was exhausting yes, but joyous. I don’t remember it being all that traumatic. The fabric of our family stretched and everyone fit. Now when one leaves, there is this gaping, sagging hole in our family fabric. I don’t want to pull it together either. However, I have to figure out whose turn it is to do the dishes and I’m desperately trying to keep my name off the rotation schedule.
My husband and I miss them of course, but I am sometimes caught off guard by how much the other kids miss them. Now I have to worry about my heartstring and theirs. There are other things too. I can’t take them lunch if they forget it, or pick up a surprise candy bar if they’ve had a rough day. What if their car breaks down? What if they don’t get home by nine?! Okay, some things are ridiculous. I know that, maybe…
In defense of my insanity I want to point out something about military spouses. For years we manage, care for, secure, nurture, and are responsible for all things family. Handling and carrying, quite well most of the time, the burdens placed squarely on our shoulders due to our spouse’s military service.
There is no magic release from worry and concern over a child just because he or she has now completed a thirty minute graduation or wedding ceremony. You don’t just turn off the switch that easily. They are still yours and the letting go is not as instantaneous as the taking hold was the day they were placed in your arms.
I only have two gone so far. One calls every day and the other… I have to call his resident advisor on occasion to make sure he is alive. The only reason I’m not curled up in a dark room under my quilt in the fetal position as they grow up and fly away is I have so many. I am exhausted and don’t have the luxury of really getting into my self- pity and wallowing around like I want to. In fact, as I try to write this I have settled no less than five disagreements and two physical skirmishes. I’ve signed two school agendas and threatened quite eloquently what might occur if they don’t give me a few minutes to wrap up work.
The craziest part some might say is really the greatest part. I wouldn’t trade one obnoxious, laundry filled minute for all the easy moments in the world. I will even face the horrific goodbyes as I have always done… with a smile, a good movie, and an Excedrin P.M.
