As I sit here and type this, I must admit to you that after the better part of a decade of being married to David, I'm really not feeling the love for the Army at the moment. I have had these feelings for oh, I don't know, the last two years since he told me that we were coming to Fort Lewis, Washington. Really, my first thought was how the weather was going to suck...seriously, doesn't Seattle have the highest suicide rate in the country? They are at the moment retrofitting a bridge so that people will no longer be able to jump to their death! Admittedly, in all fairness to the situation, no matter where we were going to go, I would have been unhappy, due to the fact that we were living in paradise at the time, and it would have taken an act of God himself to get me to happily leave Newport, Rhode Island. However, in all seriousness, nothing has been right since the inception of this move. I have been in a constant state of limbo..actually, I can't even qualify this chaos as limbo. It's more like a constant state of Pergatory, heading towards the outer ring Dante's Inferno. A constant state of flux if you will, where everytime you see an end in sight, something moves and pushes me away from the light of happiness. There is no concept of time and schedule in this pergatory of mine, and it's driving me insane.
It began when we discovered an entire walk in storage closet full of boxes that the movers had left behind in RI, and it continues into the present where the 2 years that I thought we had left here at Fort Lewis is now sitting in pergatory with me as we now do not know when the hubby will go down to his new job that would allow us to get the Hell out of Dodge by August 2012. At the moment, I have no idea when we will leave this awful, awful place. In all fairness, I do know that some people really love Fort Lewis. From what I gather, you will either love it here, or you will hate it here. I fall into the latter category. Might I mention that as I type this, I really should be packing boxes for our move onto post 3 weeks from now, as we made that decision due to the fact that our new home is literally falling apart at the beams, and our 13 year old son is somewhere between becoming a thug, and being bullied by his peers. We have made the decision to move onto the what I now refer to as "the movie set," (thanks Heather) on the 19th of July. And here in lies my love part of the relationship. I feel as if by trying to live off of the base, and in the civilian sector, I have made a huge mistake. Almost as if denying my wifely servitude in the Army, and I almost feel that for doing so, I'm being punished in some perverse way. You see, that in almost 10 years, we have only lived off post for one duty station, until now. Although, I'm not sure that the first station really counted as off post as we were literally right outside the gate! It was almost like living on post--every family on our block was an Army family; we all were friends, we took part in everyone's kid's birthday parties, and 4th of July was a big BBQ.
Have you ever seen the Walgreens commercial where everything is perfect? When I think of our time living in housing, that is the vision I see (with the exception of the actual house we lived in for 6 weeks when we first got to Fort Knox, LOL, the neighborhood itself was spot on though.) I miss living in that kind of neighborhood. I miss having friends surrounding me and my family. And even though, I'd never admit it otherwise, I miss the idea of my neighbor knowing everything that is going on in my life, and vice versa, and knowing the families that my children play with, and hang out with. I love how you can walk down any given street in the village, and see an American flag stationed on the front of almost every house, and how most houses have some sort of "Home is Where the Army Sends You" sign or plaque hanging somewhere on or in their home. I love how everyone in the neighborhoods know one another, and have get togethers on a regular basis. You see and hear happy children playing outside, and riding their bikes around the neighborhood because they can, and not have to worry about getting run over by some schmuck racing his car down your street just because there's a hill and he wants to see how fast he can get the car to go down said hill.
There's another thing that I miss about being on post that I didn't realize that I missed until yesterday while waiting for my son's football game to begin at 5:00. This thing momentarily erased all bad feelings that I harbored against my husband's employer. It was witnessing and taking part in retreat. The time of the day, that ends the day in the military. The moment they play the bugel, and retreat the flag down it's pole, to fold it up, and put away until the dawn of the next duty day. At this moment, you instantly feel like you are part of something bigger than you can imagine, hearing the cannons fire brings a chill down your spine as the hairs stand up on your arm. Every person at that moment stops what they are doing, (to include the morbidly obese lady holding the burrito in her right hand that I just had to include because she cracked me up when she held said burrito behind her back instead of placing her right hand over her heart!)faces at attention toward the direction of the flag during the entire ceremony. For those few moments, life stops still, and it is an awesome sight to witness, to be a part of, and to behold, because you know that nobody outside of the military would understand what that moment means.
For those reasons, I cannot say that I do not love our life in the Army. I guess the saying "I'm married to the Army" is true...It's kind of like a marriage. My husband makes me mad, but I still love him. I guess I can view his job in the same context. Because his job is so much more than employment, it's part of our lives and who we are. I'm proud of the fact that my 4 year old knows to stand still with his hand over his heart to watch the flag retreat. I'm glad that he and his siblings will know that our flag stands for so much more to this country than just something to pledge allegience to at school every morning. I'm glad that we will be moving back to a place where respect for others is something taught to the majority as opposed to where we live at the moment.
I'm so looking forward to the 19th of July when we get the keys to that red brick colonial house built in 1940. It will be a much smaller place, it's definitely not new, but I am determined to make it our home. I honestly think that in moving, things will feel less like purgatory, and maybe, just maybe a little closer to dare I say perfect for the next however long we are chained to this God forsaken post, LOL! I say this because I really thought that I hated Fort Knox when we moved there, and by the time it came for us to leave, I was very sad..not for David to leave his job there, but to leave our home..our community, and our friends. Let's hope that our move brings about as many blessings as our time at every other post where we were happy...
