Sometime after our PCS this summer, I realized with increasing unease that I occasionally sensed booms in our new North Carolina house. I’d be rocking the baby, and I’d almost hear but definitely feel a deep, vibrating boom, usually several in a row. They weren’t loud enough to wake the baby, just enough to make me look around confused, and then they’d stop.
One day, it started booming while my husband was home. “Do you hear that? Is that something military?” I asked him. We are surrounded by military bases here — within an hour of MCAS Cherry Point, Camp LeJeune and MCAS New River — and I assumed my Marine husband would know about any military things.
He did not know about the booms. In fact, he shared my unease. We looked at each other, wondering if our new house was threatening to explode. My husband even went into the attic to look around. When he didn’t find anything, I texted some of my new neighborhood friends about the booms to see if they were experiencing them as well.
One friend immediately responded, “Oh, that’s the heavy artillery training,” and sent a link to noise advisories from Camp LeJeune.
Reassured that the booms are, in fact, not our house threatening impending disaster, I actually find them amusing. “Oh yes,” I imagine nonchalantly telling my friends and family, “Sometimes it booms at my house,” as if it’s the most charming thing in the world. And that’s because I am a big believer in romanticizing my life.
Romanticizing life is fairly buzzy on social media right now, and honestly, I’m all for it. I love the idea of taking the normal (and not-so-normal) of your everyday life and reframing it as something special. I also like that it’s not about ignoring what’s hard or pretending things are easy, rather noticing what’s already good or interesting in your life, no matter how small, and leaning into it.
It’s not rushing through your morning coffee, or in my case, your morning diet soda, but reveling in the beautiful ritual of popping open the sparkly silver can and pouring it into a glass filled to the brim with ice. It’s hearing artillery fire and finding whimsy.
Despite being a social media trend, I think romanticizing your life is important, particularly when it comes to military life. So many things about being a military spouse are tough. It’s easy to slip so far into survival mode that one day you wake up and realize you’re sort of miserable.
When you romanticize your life, though, you remind yourself you’re the star of your own movie, not just the supporting character to your spouse’s military career. Suddenly, cooking dinner isn’t just cooking dinner: It’s the fun kitchen montage of the leading lady and deserves a soundtrack of your favorite music. With this perspective shift, it’s easier to feel excited about your day-to-day life, even when things are otherwise hard.
Take, for example, PCSing. As military spouses, we do not get to choose our home. While it’s very easy for me to romanticize coastal North Carolina, I cannot say the same about our last duty station, Yuma, Arizona, a remote desert town at the edge of the United States.
When I got off the plane in Yuma for the very first time, my two-month-old in my arms, it was 118 degrees. There is no romanticizing 118 degrees. But! There is romanticizing the fact that Yuma is the sunniest city on earth (this is a true, searchable fact!). And the inherited orange tree in my backyard that was so heavy with fruit in the winter that I taught myself to make marmalade.
And the helicopters and planes that flew low over town, much to the delight of my toddler. And the quirky shops! And the tamale festival! And! And! And! Eventually, I grew to love Yuma, despite the 118-degree days, and we built a beautiful — dare I say romantic? — life there.
Blog Brigade unites military spouses by creating a community built on shared experiences and mutual support. Navigating the complexities of military life can be challenging, but you don’t have to do it alone. Military OneSource offers valuable resources focused on well-being, readiness, and connection. Explore a range of moving resources and tools tailored to your needs.
