Songs and other things to avoid during deployment

Today I ran across a few things I plan to avoid when HabMoo is deployed.

Songs

“Come Home Soon” by SHeDaisy is getting temporarily deleted from my iPod—too much emotional longing. “Another Sleepless Night” by Anne Murray is also getting dumped, but for a slightly different reason—too much sexual longing. (It might be back on about 2 days before he returns.) I will also have to purge all the country songs about waiting for your trucker or cowboy to come home.

Certain blogs and podcasts

While taking my daily walk  and listening to Stuff Mom Never Told You the hosts spoke about 10 Reasons Why Long-distance Relationships Just Don’t Work. As if there aren’t enough reasons why our relationship might struggle, I’ll need to worry about these new ten while we’re spending another year apart?

This one I decided to just tackle head on.

10. Communication breakdown

I am not worried about that one. HabMoo would implode if he couldn’t talk to me. At least that’s what I like to think. I figure he could easily find a hundred other women he’s attracted to and could have a good relationship with, but even if left me for another woman he’d probably call me every day to tell me how it was going. And I think the military does what it can to promote family communication with soldiers, sailors, and marines. I don’t anticipate being unable to communicate for long periods.

9. A murky future

It is hard to imagine me being 60 and him being 43, but I can still easily imagine us a dozen years from now living and working in Minnesota and talking walks with camera and binoculars. I know he wants to make the National Guard his career and he’ll always be some rank of sergeant. Who knows what I’ll do with my life in ten years, but it’ll probably be a surprise to me. In some ways he is my stability.

8. The monogamy challenge or ZIP code rule

I think we have a shared understanding of this rule. If either of us were jealous, worrying types there’s no way we could have made it to marriage. He was deployed with his ex-girlfriend; I had my old boyfriend come help me fix my A/C. Neither was a problem.

7.  Trust

If I didn’t trust him with my heart, we wouldn’t be together. It’s not that I don’t think he’ll ever hurt me, but it won’t be intentional. He’ll always consider my heart. He’ll care for it and worry about it. I know that when he’s not feeling close to me, he’ll let me know and we’ll talk about how to fix that. And when I tell him he’s irritating me, I trust that he knows that it’s a temporary thing and not a fatal issue. We’ve always been able to communicate honestly.

6. Cost of keeping in touch

The Army and the Post Office help with that a bit. We’re both tight wads, but we’re willing to pay for staying connected.

5. Time commitment

Writing letters takes more time and effort than does a chat while we’re eating supper. When he returned from Iraq last time I really missed getting letters and e-mails. I loved knowing that he had spent time thinking just about me as he wrote. I had his focused attention. Honestly, I prefer the unfocused attention of his hand on my thigh as we watch a movie, but there’s a special electric excitement that comes with opening the mailbox and discovering a letter from him. I expect far more e-mails and Facebook messages, but those letters will be the things I pack away in my nightstand.

4 through 2. Blah, blah, blah … not issues at all.

1.  Life goes on

This is where my fear kicks in. There’s no way I can share the experience of serving in a forward operating base or wherever he’ll be assigned. I need the independence of separate lives and separate friends, but all relationships are strengthened through shared experience. He’ll probably come home with a new set of friends I won’t really know. I’ll know their names and some of their habits, but I won’t know them as civilians. I’ll have to learn their first names. They’ll share jokes that I’ll need carefully explained. He’ll invite them over and I’ll feel like an outsider. But I’ll also get new insights into his personality and what his experience was like.

I guess I better exercise and walk to the my Arabic music. I can’t get overly sentimental about lyrics I can’t even understand. “Habibi, habibi, habibi.” (I think that means “darling.”)