Counting Down the Days

You may (or may not) know that my husband is in the Royal Air Force.  He is an engineer.  When we got married I knew that there was the possibility of him spending some time away here and there.  I never expected to have him gone quite as much as he has since Maddie has been born.  The last year or so has been rough - he has been away for 4-5 months or more out of the year.

I know to some that this doesn't seem like much.  I know that some people in the forces spend 18 months or more away from their families at a time.  I don't think I could be married to somebody that has to have that kind of commitment to their job - power to the wives, girlfriends and families that do.

Matt left in early January for what was to be the last deployment for a while.  When he got back 2 1/2 weeks ago I could have wept.  I was tired, stressed, overworked and unbalanced.  I was really looking forward to having some time for us to be a family again.  To have somebody share the (wonderful) burden of caring for a 4 1/2 year old child and an 11 year old dog with bad gas and even worse breath.

We got the first call about 4 days after he came home - deployment......again.....

He was meant to leave mid-May.  I was heartbroken, but thought "okay at least we have a couple of months to spend together.  At least I have a while to re-charge my batteries before being a single parent yet again.  At least Maddie can relish in the possibilities of having 2 parents to dote on her."

The second call came not long after.  Things had changed.  Deployment moved up.  Leaving on the 2nd of April.  "Crappity, crap, crap." I do believe that my actual reaction included a wild variety of bonus words that I will not type here just in case somebody gets offended.  But to give you a glimpse of the conversation that went down between me and the man I will say that the "F" bomb was dropped at least a half a dozen time as well as some vocabulary that would probably see me going to hell for a good long while in at least 6 of the major world religions.  By the way - I swear like a sailor - just thought you should know.

Matt will have been back for less that 25 days when he leaves again.  He is on standby to leave fairly soon.  I want to scream and cry but everybody I know is in the same boat or worse and pity parties don't last very long when you are a RAF wife.  My friends and acquaintances that don't have partners in the Forces aren't always understanding, implying "you knew what you were marrying into....."  I want to slap them, but I don't (okay sometimes in my head I do and seriously I have got a great imagination so it is AWESOME when it plays out).  I usually bite my tongue.  I smile.  I make a joke.  I let everyone know that it will be okay.  In the meantime I just keep counting down the days.