One week ago, it was the best day EVER. It was HOMECOMING day!!
After 5 1/2 months...23 1/2 weeks...165 days...of stress, feeling alone even though I was surrounded by my children and friends, of fights, heartache, mom-ache, and a sense the whole time that I wasn't whole...it all lead to the one singular day that makes the months of deployment suckatude (really, is there any other term for it?) almost seem worth it.
If you've gone through a deployment, you know that there is literally no feeling to match what you feel the moment you see your significant other walking up to you after months of separation. The hours of waiting for that moment, even on the day of, can be agonizing. One minute can feel like an hour...but it's worth it. Especially when you can fill that time with a mani/pedi, the shower, decorating the driveway, and buying tons of balloons to celebrate the day.
This is our fourth deployment, so we've done the homecoming thing before, and each one has been different. His first homecoming, it rained, and ruined what should have been his squadron's fly in. But...he was home...who cares how he got there?
His second deployment was a big one for us. We had been trying to get pregnant, with no luck, for a few months the year before his deployment. So, as we neared November, we decided to hold off on trying because he was going to deploy the following Spring. We figured we'd wait until it got closer to the deployment to try again, seeing as how it was a 6 month deployment, and I'd have the baby when he got home. But of course, the month we said, "we'll wait", is the month I gave him a piggy bank with a sticky note that said, "College tuition, you have 18 years and 9 months to plan!" (if you know how my husband is with money...you get it).
So, four months in to his 6 month deployment, I gave birth to our son, who is now 6, while my husband was in Afghanistan checking in with me every hour that I was in labor. When our baby boy was 2 months old, his daddy finally came home and got to meet him. It was a wonderful reunion, but I have to admit, the chaos of a newborn, along with our oldest who was 7 at the time, and the size of his homecoming group, made it all a little overwhelming. I don't even remember it all that well, except that it was during the day, there were SO many families waiting for their loved ones, and my husband had lost so much weight, and was so dang skinny, that I didn't even recognize him walking towards me until he was right in front of my face. Major wife fail.
Our third deployment homecoming was the following year, so our boys were 8 and a little over 1 year. It was also at 4:00 in the morning. This was by far our best homecoming. My in-laws came down to stay at the house so I could go welcome my husband home and we didn't have to worry about waking the kids and having a cranky toddler all day. Then, I just called my MIL on our way home, she got the boys up (by that time it was around 7am anyway) and we had our own private homecoming with our family.
Despite different times of day, different years, different numbers of children, different months, one thing was consistent...I never slept the night before a homecoming. I was always way too excited...nervous...anxious...you name it...I was feeling it. This time, however, four children did me in, and I actually slept! This wasn't the only deployment first we had though.
This was also a first for us as we surprised our kids with my husband's arrival. I had been telling them that daddy would be home on Friday. I did this mainly because with the middle two, (6yr and 4yr) if something had happened during transit (a broken down aircraft, a delayed flight due to weather, etc.), they would have not only been crushed, but they are not old enough to have really understood why daddy wasn't home the day I told them he'd be home. So, we kept it a secret.
The afternoon of his arrival, I went out to run an "errand." When I got home, with hubby in tow, I had him hide behind the car while I went in to tell the kids I had a surprise for them. They came out, he came out from behind the car, and honestly it took a few seconds to register that the man at the end of the driveway was daddy. But when they did...cue the tears.
This was also our first homecoming post-pandemic. Usually, for deployment homecomings, there's a big to-do. There's a bounce house for kids to enjoy, tables, food, drinks, activities for kids to be occupied by as families wait around the hangar in anticipation of the aircraft or busses to get there. This year, we had none of that.
We were told to park in one parking lot, and wait in another parking lot, outside the gates of the squadron. As I stood off to the side waiting to get a glimpse of hubby, I saw all the families and spouses and children waiting as well...just in a parking lot. And little by little, the marines came trickling out of the gate to find their loved ones.
It was the most anti-climactic homecoming ever. There was no big rush as you saw the busses pull in (because there were no busses) and all of the marines had been lined up before being released in the hangar where families were not allowed to be. There were loved ones on one side of a fence waiting for their marine to come out from behind their side of the fence. And for the second time (if you've been following, this puts me at a 50% average), I didn't recognize my husband when he was walking towards me. Only this time, it was because his sunglasses and mask covered his face and I wasn't sure until he started talking to me when he was about 5 feet away from me, (Insert eye roll and face slapping emoji here).
This may have been our fourth deployment, but each one had its own trials and tribulations. Each one, regardless of whether he was going to a place he'd been before, was met with new obstacles to be dealt with, at home and on his end. But despite the days, weeks, and months apart...you figure it out. You find a routine that works, that makes the days go by. Then...you get to plan for when they get home. Then...they get home! And now...the reintegration begins. Starting with about 5 loads of laundry.
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