Be-ing

A friend of mine recently and joyfully welcomed home her husband after a year in Afghanistan.  She spent the last 12 months creating a daily routine for herself and their three kids.  A routine which created the groundwork for survival during the deployment.  This routine was her life preserver, something she clung to like a child with a blankie.  And just as said child would throw a tantrum when that blankie is taken away, my friend is set adrift on the sea of reintegration without her life preserver.

Oh, she has done this before.  This ain't her first rodeo.  But this time was different simply because the kids were different, or should I say, older.  A box of mac 'n cheese chased with a Blues Clues video wouldn't cut it this time around.  She had to deal with female teenage angst, male preteen uncertainties, and the youngest who would not let her out of his sight.

I could hear her sigh from all the way at my house, and we live two streets over.

The much beloved hubby can't understand the need for some continuity of the routine now that he is back.  He wants her to stay around him all the time.  But aha!  My friend is one smart cookie and knows that a bit of time apart, a bit of the old routine, is indeed a good and necessary thing for the mental stability of all.

Which explains why she is still parking her butt in the patio chair by the pool each weekday morning at 6am to watch swim practice, right next to me.  The thought of her, or her children, joining the base swim team two summers ago would have provoked laughter from all who know my friend, but desperate times called for desperate measures, and when daddy left a year ago, swim team is what kept them moving all summer long.  And now it is swim team that allows her to come up for air and give both her and her husband breathing room to begin the day.

I can sympathetically understand her husband's difficulty with rejoining a family who has a routine that did not/does not include him, but I have empathy for my friend who needs that time in the morning to gab with the girls, and begin the day with idle chatter instead of a bunch of questions concerning the day's schedule.

It is her time to just be.