We Are Going Where??? (Shocked Once Again...will this ever stop???)

The military and its assignment process never ceases to amaze me.  Every single time we have received notification of a new assignment, there is a sense of shock and either amazement or dread.  But there is ALWAYS shock.  Even when we suspected that we may be heading somewhere, when the reality of it hits, the shock remains.  There is only so much mental preparation that you can do.  Because we are expected to be strong and resilient, the ever present support to our military members, we spouses often wear a mask of cheerful acceptance that hides the fear that courses through our souls.  

In the autumn following our Angel's first birthday, we discovered that we were heading to the Orient.  Because I was still disillusioned about what was expected from me as a military spouse, I plastered that smile on my face and declared it an adventure.  Family didn't help my internal battle one bit.  There was talk of "taking their baby to that place" and "is this REALLY what you want??"  SHOOT!!!  We didn't have much of a choice, now did we??  After a while, I just stopped talking about it.  

At that point, I had a few really dear friends, but I felt that by voicing my fears about our next location that I was showing weakness.  Good Heavens!!!  I wish, with all my might, that I could go back and slap that young woman!  I kept all those questions, fears, and shock bottled up inside.  "For goodness sake, Girlfriend!!  You are heading to a country that blows stuff up and is known for gastrointestinal illnesses!  It is OK to be scared!"  But NO!  I had to keep it to myself, smile, and pretend that not only was everything ok, life was PREFECT!  (I am sitting here, shaking my head in wonder at my naive self!)

But life wasn't perfect.  It was FAR from perfect.  We had been told that we were probably going to California, stationed close to my grandparents.  My disappoint was beyond acute.  All I had wanted, after being in the Great White North for three years, was to go home.  I hadn't learned yet that home is where the USAF sends you, and so my heart ached for something it couldn't have.  My engineer kept asking me if I was ok with everything.  At the time, I just couldn't tell him that my heart was broken.  There was nothing that he could do about it.  When we married, we had the passage from Ruth as part of our ceremony.  I distinctly remember telling myself, "where you go, I will go."  Part of me felt like I had made my bed, and now I had to lie in it.  

After spending some time researching our future location, I stopped reading about the Orient all together.  Every article was about unrest, bombings, and terrorist groups!  What the heck were we doing?  I remember holding my Angel, thinking about the fact that she had not been given a choice in the matter.  What kind of mother was I?

With squared shoulders, I smiled and presented a strong facade.  I felt that if I acted like it was a great thing, it would become one.  Life is built around perspective.  Actively changing my perspective, I stepped forward with my foot over the abyss.  All my little family had before us was the unknown.  Our sponsor was single. And while she tried, she didn't have any answers for any of our questions. We were embarking on the ultimate adventure.  The Orient and all that it held awaited us.  

In the end, we had all that we needed to make it work.......

Each other.

"Home" for the Holidays

Holiday Traditions took on a whole new definition after we joined the military.  For years, our holidays had the push and pull chaos that went with various family groups demanding our attention.  I am sure that all of you understand what I mean.  Quick, hurry and do your intimate family plans at home...and then RUSH to meet up with everyone else because it is expected of you.  I think you can tell that rushing around and pleasing everyone is not my idea of a good time.  Now, if these family gatherings happened on a day that was not Christmas Day, I would be happy as a clam.  New Years and Thanksgiving....I can live with that craziness.  But really....Christmas should be left alone.  For the first time in years, my wish was granted!

Please don't think I don't like family.  I LOVE family.  I adore the large family dinners that come with Thanksgiving.  Family recipes that are only used once a year are dusted off and prepared with love.  But it wasn't until after we went into the military that I was given the freedom to spread my wings and find our own!  With great joy, I discovered how to create a turkey that my guests would actually turn over and pick absolutely clean, despite weighing in a whopping 26 pounds.  My mother's Cranberry Jelly wouldn't have to compete with a can shaped mass of reddish-purple stuff.  It was with a lot of experimentation that I would create my signature Thanksgiving Pie that my daughter would talk about throughout the year, relishing the thought of both helping me make it and, subsequently, consuming it.  Until entering the military, my cooking skills were shoved to the nose bleed section by the older women in our family.

You see, I LOVE to cook.  I had been raised to know how to cook.  When I was 12 years old, I prepared my very first complete Thanksgiving dinner when my mother was ill.  I didn't learn how to cook when I got married.  By the time I tied the knot, I had over a decade of experience in the kitchen, and LOVED it.  There is nothing more pleasing than to see people sit back, with their eyes closed in ecstasy, as they eat food that I carefully prepared.  The military presented me with the ultimate environment in which to better my skills and learn new ones.

While we missed our family during the major holiday seasons, that distance gave us the perfect environment to immerse ourselves into our new community and military family.  We grew to love the motley mix that would gather during the holiday season.  Singles, couples, families...they would all come together to form a family that could laugh and talk with the best of them.  The thread that always came up at these gatherings were the various traditions that each brought to the table.  It was like having all of America under the same roof!  We would exchange recipes, laugh at blood family antics that always happened at holiday gatherings, and share memories that defined our love for those special occasions.  After a while, while we didn't travel to be with our blood family during those times, we grew to absolutely love our new tradition of spending that time with our military family.

I will never forget our first Christmas morning of our military career.  We had a wonderful dinner the night before, dropped cookies and treats off to our friends and military family, and tucked in for the night.  The next morning, I had put a dish in the oven and we enjoyed a quiet, laid back, Christmas Morning together.  Stockings, gifts, a good simple breakfast, and each other.  After a peaceful morning together, we called our families, and then took a dish to a quiet gathering we had been invited to.  I will never forget my engineer looking at me and saying, "this is one of the best Christmases I have ever had!"  It would be with great joy that we would make that peacefulness a tradition in our own home.

Another aspect of Military Christmas that I adore is the annual cookie drive.  Every year, the spouses organize a baking frenzy to supply single service members with freshly baked cookies.  Every location has a different name for it, but the goal is the same.  Our young singles live in dorms and typically can't afford to travel home for the holidays.  That very first year, when I heard about this military tradition, I fell in love!  With great care, I combed through my personal recipes and chose my mother's gingerbread cookie recipe to be my contribution every year.  This cookie is the BEST gingerbread I have every had...and I have had several.  It has the right amount of heat to it and is soft & chewy...yet maintains a beautiful form.  Knowing that this cookie converts gingerbread haters to lovers, I knew this had to be my choice every Christmas season. With gusto, I bake 15 to 25 dozen of these cookies every year for the base wide cookie drive.  To this day, it is one of my favorite parts of the holiday season.  It just wouldn't be Christmas without it.

Our Holiday traditions would continue to morph and grow as our time in the military increased.  The traditions gathered while in the Great White North would stay and more would be added with each subsequent move.  Base Christmas Tree Lightings, the Annual Cookie Drives, quiet and simple family time, and warm gatherings of "displaced persons" would become real parts of our heritage as a family that our children would look forward to every year.  While they may not be America's idea of a perfect family holiday, these all became such a treasured part of our lives that the idea of giving them up is not a savory one.  As long as we are all together, wherever we are at, we are Home for the Holidays.



 

The Bug Chain. Pt. 1

Bugs.  What on earth is it with my pairing locations with their bugs?!?!  As I sit here, in the Pacific, thinking back on all our past assignments, one of the major things that forms a chain between each is bugs.  Every single place that I have lived or spent any amount of time in my life is always marked with very graphic memories of their insects.  I seriously wish that I had known this pattern would be there when this journey started.  You had better believe that I would have taken pictures...and LOTS of them!  No, I am not going to ruin the mystery and talk about the bugs for each location in this one post...that would spoil the fun.  Instead, I am going give you Part 1 of The Bug Chain.

Since the Great White North had such harsh weather with temperatures that spent most of their time down in the negatives, their insects had to be resilient little freaks.  It wasn't as if they could escape to a nice warm fire during the winter months like the rest of us.  The big thing, bug wise, that I noticed our very first winter was the lack of flies.  They were no where to be seen.  Seriously, I thought I had lucked out!  I had never thought there could be a location that didn't have flies.  But my glee would be short lived when the ultimate thaw in May took place.

With the disappearance of snow came the emergence of the Great White North's mascot bug: The Mosquito.  Oh my, did it emerge with a vengeance!  The first hint of a problem came when I started noticing these faint gray clouds that started forming over grassy areas.  Up close, because these were the first hatchlings after a long winter, they were puny, tiny, weak looking little guys.  But there were a lot of them!  Unless I wanted to dowse myself with bug repellant, my daily walks became quite an adventure.

On base, there were areas that were worse than others.  I learned quickly to avoid walking near parks, ball fields, or long expanses of grass.  These places were absolutely infested with them.  One step on the grass would raise an army of mosquitos into on defending their turf to the death.  Now, in hindsight, I think it is quite hilarious.  We had our own proverbial minefield, right there, in the Great White North.  Let me just say that mowing the lawn resulted in an explosion of mosquitos on nightmarish proportions.

As I mentioned earlier, the first round of mosquitoes were very small in size.  With horror and a morbid fascination, we would actually see the following generations get bigger and bigger, ending with the largest mosquitos we had ever seen.  I remember how I would get a closer look at them as they rested on the window screens.  By late summer, when the Great White North was preparing for its long winter, the mosquitos were so great in size that I could see that they were actually brown with what reminded me of tiger striped designs.  By the end of summer, I felt that those little blood suckers were appropriately designed.  Predators indeed!

Just as the military went to war against the Dak-Rats, they also launched a campaign against the mosquitoes.  West Nile was the major headline in the news at that time, and our leaders took every measure they could think of to eradicate their foe.  Our version of the ice cream truck would slowly drive through our neighborhoods spraying bug killer, causing all the mothers to quickly usher their children inside...and rushing to close all the windows and doors. Luckily, they timed these "drive bys" to happen at sunset, when children were supposed to be indoors anyway.  But woe to anyone who had a BBQ going on.  "A little bug killer with your steak???  Don't mind if I do!"  It was just part of the summertime fun.

By the end of summer, I discovered the reason for our very healthy population of blood suckers.  Like many military bases, the Great White North was built on unwanted land in the middle of a swamp. While the military had converted the area to a small town, all the bones of being a swamp still remained: unpredictable soil make up that resulted in construction issues, beautiful birds, frogs, soggy ground, and last...but not least...mosquitos.  After that first assignment, the first thing I would ask about a new location would be whether the base was built on a swamp and what kind of bugs did they have.  I can't imagine what our sponsors may have thought of me.  But after the dealing with the Great White North's Bug Mascot, I feel that it is a very legitimate concern.