My Soundtrack: My Home (has no walls)

This song has been stuck in my head (again)...so I'm writing about it. 

Don Henley:  Taking You Home

I didn't have a "real" wedding.  I mean, I'm really/legally married, but we did not have an extravagant wedding for a variety of reasons--not the least of which is the fact that the good ol' USMC doesn't always make it easy to plan such events.  So, we got married in the church where I grew up, with my minister, with our two best friends as witnesses.  Then, we had a relatively informal "reception" with family and close friends.  We dressed up--Buzz was in his blues and I wore a white dress.  (It was actually a very plain white bride's maid dress--the big, fancy ones didn't look right on me.)  Anyway, if we DID have that big, fancy wedding--this would have been the song I would have chosen for our first dance.

We had only one pre-marital counseling session with my minister.  I remember him telling me that I would have to redefine home.  Home was no longer my hometown (where I had been my ENTIRE life--same house other than dorm rooms and apartments at college).  It was no longer a place.  There were no walls and there was no geographic boundary.  It was where my husband was--i.e. wherever the Marine Corps took us.  That was such a tough concept for me to grasp at the time.  It was hard to accept when it really happened.  I've come a long way.

"Home" is now with my family--here, there, or anywhere else.  I quickly learned what my minister was talking about--as we moved twice in the first 6 months we were married...and quite a few times since.  And this "home" has become even more significant since K was born. 

To me, the most important lyric in this song is "In this love, I found strength I never knew I had."  Beginning with the marriage and the moves in my new life, I found a part of me I didn't know was there.  Through having a daughter and going through deployments and more moves with her, I found that strength I never knew I had.  When I get down and start go fret about the hardships that military life brings (or am just irritated with my husband in general  :o) ), I always have to stop and remember that without falling in love with my husband and embarking on this journey, I may never have found the strength that was in there all along--just waiting to find its way out.  It's still going to be rough. I'm already worried about moving next year and concerned about all that surrounds a new-PhD trying to find a job.  It's not likely I will be able to get a job where my husband and I can live in the same house.  And we don't want to keep moving K all over the place--and I need to get a job where I can HOPEFULLY start working toward tenure without having to move yet again.  So I know the possibility exists that K and I will have to have a house that is separate from Buzz.  I don't like that idea.  But, I know that my home will still be the same.  Buzz will likely be deploying on a regular basis once we leave this duty station--so it's not like he would physically be in the house that much anyway.  And our home doesn't change--it's not bound by walls or filled with furniture.  It's filled with "this love"...and I have faith that this love who brought Buzz and me together and Kaitlyn into this world will continue to fill us all with the strength we need to handle whatever our careers throw at us.  In the meantime, I will still try not to waste time away, but will still look optimistically forward to Buzz's retirement from the Marine Corps--when we can be sure that our home fits in one house again.  :)

They grow up all too soon...

Today, I am doing a link up with the blog Goodnight Moon at http://www.goodnight-moon.org/. We are choosing a song that speaks to us this week. Since my little lady turned 5 this week, the same week that my best friend gave birth to her first baby boy, I have been thinking about how time flies and how important it is to cherish those moments when they are so "new." In honor of that, "Let them be little" by Billy Dean is my song of the week.

Time Warp

Holy moly! Where did the past 5 years go?!? I felt like an old lady today. I saw a man with a 6 month old (I asked how old he was) little boy in a waiting room today and SOUNDED like an old lady talking about how my daughter is turning 5 and it seems like she was a baby not so long ago. What a nerd, right? But it's true...sort of. It didn't always seem to be going by so quickly in the very beginning when I was sleep-deprived and she had tummy troubles. Time also seemed to stand still during deployments and various other separations. So how does it now seem that she was an infant just yesterday? I assume I'm just nostalgic for holding and cuddling with my baby girl. Now she is so independent and growing up too fast. She goes to school, has her own friends, can entertain herself... I remember when I THOUGHT I couldn't wait for so many of these milestones. Now I want to just wrap her up and keep her away from that big world that's out there...but I know I can't. And so I guess in some way I long for the days when I could protect her from everything. But I'm still enjoying every moment, even if there are skinned knees, coughs, and hurt feelings. I suppose in many ways it is exponentially "easier" now that there are no diapers, she can communicate with me, she can get a snack on her own, etc. So as I prepare for K to turn 5--a whole hand--I will keep those memories close and move on with my old lady ways of remembering the good old days and looking forward to more fun to come with my growing girl.

Best day of my life?

Four years ago, I was in labor. I had absolutely no idea how much my life was getting ready to change...or how much I could love another person.

I can't believe four years have come and gone. Through deployments, dogs, new jobs, school, and all that came in between, I have made it through with my partner in crime--my daughter. :) She helped me finish my thesis and my master's degree. She gave me a reason to get up in the morning (even if it was earlier than I would have liked) when Buzz was on the other side of the world in a war zone. She made me laugh and gave me a hug when I needed it most.

I am working to resist the urge to tell her every little detail of what happened on this day (this minute) four years ago. (I DO remember every detail.) But I will be up at 9:08 in the morning--recalling what some would call the best moment of their lives. Everyone says that..."The day my baby was born was the best day of my life." But I beg to differ--That WAS the best day of my life at that moment. In all reality, that was when my life started. Every day since has been better, because it has been another day to grow with her. Every day marks the new best day of my life. I look forward to opening presents and talking about THE birthday, but in my heart it is so much more. Mommies know what I am talking about. And my baby girl will too...one day. But for now I will crown myself the proudest woman on earth on THIS day--and I will celebrate with gifts, too much sugar, and Hannah Montana decor--because that's what SHE wants. And SHE is what makes my world go 'round.

The THIRD Shift

There is a great book called The Second Shift (by Arlie Hochschild) whose main point (now anyway) is common sense, at least to me on a personal level. In a nutshell, it says that when women entered the workforce, thus contributing economically to the family outside the home, they didn't really get a break with the housework--so they really had TWO shifts to work.


Well, I now contend that women sociologists work the THIRD shift--we also have our motherly instincts that make us worry about, well, pretty much the entire world of humanity. It takes a lot of energy to think on these levels! We learn some pretty depressing stuff that is highly unlikely to get "fixed" because of the force field of society and its structures that we have created. I spend lots of time worrying about lots of things. I mean, worrying IS my specialty, but now I worry on a larger level. For example, what are we going to do when we have literally used up the resources of the earth? How are those not born into advantaged lives really going to get ahead for themselves and their future generations? How do I live in such prosperity while so much of the world struggles just to eat or have clean water? Then my worries start turning to anger. Why are things so unfair? Why can't we change anything if we don't have power--economic power? Why in the hell do people vote against their own best interests as well as the betterment of others? I shouldn't even get started on these types of issues because I won't be able to stop--or sleep since it will get my mind running and it's getting late.


WHY am I doing this to myself?????


And then I remember...(Also quoted in a previous blog)

“…the evident genius of the human spirit lies in the hard fact of life that we, like our dogs... [are] limited in all the important ways… We cannot do all that our powerful minds trick us into thinking we can. In a word, this is the mystery of being human. Our finest nature is not our ability to think and do. It is that we do and think as we do in spite of the obstacles…On average, the better ones among us continue to think and do what they can with no assurance that solutions will be found.” --Charles Lemert, from preface of Thinking the Unthinkable


And, might I add from the same preface of Lemert's book, "To think about social things is to think through the shell of resistance that cuts of off from the hard truths of life."


So what does this have to do with anything? I want to be one of the better ones among us. I want to cut to the hard truths of life, so that maybe, just maybe, I can make things better for me and for my family--for my daughter and her generation, and generations to come. We are all human, but this is something I CAN do.


In a moment of frustration in class a few weeks ago, I asked my professor how he keeps from going crazy. He had a few thoughts...One was about an old saying he had heard that dated back centuries--I think it was a Jewish saying or something like that. Anyway, it said that as long as there were 35 (or maybe it was 36) truly good men, the world would keep going (or not self-destruct or something along those lines). Anyway, he said that he calculated for population growth and figures there needs to be a lot more than 30-something now and he has decided that he was going to be one of them. He also said he hopes that there may be a time when politicians and public officials will realize that they need to look deeper into social forces--a window in history that will allow for the knowledge thay sociology has gained to become mainstream. And he said that, if and when this time comes, he wants to be part of the contribution of the discipline that can help develop a language to convey some of our important findings to a larger group--and maybe make some qualitative improvement.

What great perspectives! I am stealing them for myself. (I hope he won't mind.) Maybe, right now, it seems like I am reading and writing about things that only others in academia (who clearly have no push or pull in "the system") will share. Maybe I am frustrated when I find something important--like how necessary certain things are for military families that the military ignores or how there are huge groups of children whose needs are ignored because of their parents' low socioeconomic status--and no one knows except others who are as helpless as I am in "the system." But, if there isn't someone doing this work, what will happen if and when that window opens? And, isn't it better to search for knowledge than to ignore it's out there?


So I am working on turning my worry into something more productive. It's a lot of work, but I am going to run with the assumption that it's worth it. I will use my energy in the third shift--and hope the overtime will in some way, some day reach far beyond this computer in a positive manner.

Bathrooms can be dangerous!

"When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he's doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911." --Erma Bombeck

So with a youngster, bathrooms are always a topic of discussion and a source of intrigue--in one way or another. Well, today they have been a humorous yet dangerous spot on our radar--well, partial danger, partial perceived danger and all humorous. This morning, I was getting ready to take a quick shower. I told K I was going "to jump in the shower." Very seriously and sternly she told me "No, Mommy--Don't jump in the shower. You might get hurt!" Hysterically laughing and not knowing how to respond, I decided this was not the time to explain such phrases and double meanings so I thanked her for reminding me that wasn't a good idea and I promised not to jump but I was going to take a quick shower.

Later this afternoon, we were at a friend's house. K was upstairs playing with her friend who came down the stairs and asked her mom if K could use her little sister's toothbrush. Her mom replied that her baby sister did not have a toothbrush yet. Confused, about this time I hear water running upstairs--I run up the stairs to find K brushing her teeth with a baby toothbrush and toothpaste. GROSS!!!!! I grabbed it away from her and told her no--not knowing whether to laugh, be mad, or just gag. Turns out, it was K's friend's baby toothbrush from a few years ago that they had just stuck in a drawer. When I asked her why she did it, she told me she just wanted to brush her teeth and her friend was sharing. I had to explain that toothbrushes are something that we don't ever share with our friends--or anyone. (This is not the first time we have had this conversation. A year or more ago, I found K brushing her teeth, then brushing Sampson's teeth a little bit, then back to hers again...she told me she was sharing then, too.) I am still grossed out quite a bit. We all had a few good laughs today though. I hope K thinks these stories are as funny as I do when she gets older and doesn't get upset at my sharing them. :)

So, basically, with the bathroom as the topic on my mind, I am just reminded how fun and exciting it is to be a mom...NEVER a dull moment. I wouldn't change it for anything--though I hope there will be no more sharing of toothbrushes in the future.