the same living room i’ve seen for years. a little messy but i like it that way. comfortable. cozy. home. i can see my mom in everything. she’s rearranged this furniture a dozen times in the past six months. she’s in these denim couches. she’s in the paintings on the walls. the flowers on the porch. the colorful pasta bowls in the kitchen. i took this place for granted every day. those nights i didn’t come home. there were times when i would leave to go be with friends and driving away i felt a twinge at my heart as i looked back thinking, what if i never saw this place again? but then, oh i’ll be home tomorrow. i won’t be home tomorrow on sunday.  there won’t be familiarity in other places. there won’t be home for me. just here. i am here.

it’s hard to see these faces and face the harsh reality that it’s all transient. i’m here now but now is so yesterday. yesterday it was in five months and now done. the tickets are bought i’ll be gone and this place will only be in my dreams her face will only be on a screen his advice will only be on a phone line and the smell of the smoke on the porch will only be a someday, maybe christmas.

the cats, they drove me crazy some nights. thunder down the hallway kept me awake, the litter box was everywhere. but i loved them. the clumsy one the skittish one the one on the refridgerator looking down on us with irreverance. they all owned us. who knows if i’ll be able to have little paws running around, little green eyes staring out at me in the night. a companion when he’s gone. i’m afraid of being all alone.

i want my cake and eat it too. i want my lover and my family. i want to carry them with me when i leave. i want to ship them every where i go, meet me at the airport when i get there, carry me through california japan and wherever else i go. make dinner, play scrabble, see movies in parks, watch the scifi channel and the braves, go to church, paint your paintings for all of us to see. i don’t want to leave.

i hold my head up high some days but we all lay our heads back down at night. we puff our chest up in the daytime but we all breath the same in our sleep. this is real. and this is so, so very hard.

Wow, it’s amazing how much can change in just a day. Friday night, I”m sitting in the living room with my mother and my grandmother, and biscuit saunters into the room, looking all cute like she does. She kinda pokes around at everyone’s feet, eventually getting to my mom. Of course my mom, being a cat person, gets suckered right in, tch-tch-tch’ing at her and petting her. All of a sudden she announces, “Jennifer, tell Arron you’re not taking biscuit to Japan. I’m keeping her.”

WHA???????????????????

I almost fell out of my seat. I couldn’t even talk for a minute there, and I don’t think there’s a single other time that’s happened. Finally, I came out with “Are-are you serious? Really???” I still can’t get over it. So, mom is taking biscuit and that means I’m heading to California to see my hubby! YAY!!!!! I leave Sunday at 7:04am. It’s really exciting that I get to be with Arron again, but I’m still really scared of leaving my family. I’ve been so close to them my whole life, and I know once I get on that plane, I won’t see them again for a really, really  long time. Hopefully we can come visit around Christmas, but even I know that’s not a definite. /sigh….

Still, given the choice, I have to choose Arron. I mean, there’s just no question. It literally hurts being away from him. I’ve basically had a headache since he left. I get headaches but not ones that last for like a week straight. I’m so excited. Sunday is going to be such an emotional roller coaster ride for me. I’m glad my brother will be there. That’s such a blessing that he just happened to be coming through Charleston this week. I hung out with him almost all day yesterday. We went to the beach and then saw a movie at the Cinebar. Then they came over for dinner tonight and we had ribs that my dad smoked. MMMMMMMM. My dad is basically the king of the smoker and I would say Arron is his apprentice. And I’m not going to say that either of them is better than the other.

Arron got a tattoo last night. Rawr. And you can say it’s lame and dumb all you want but we’s agonna has matchin’ tats. He got a big old black and red nautical star on his back. I think within a couple of weeks he might get another one on the other side. He was thinking about making the other one black and blue, but…. I dunno, I have this obsessive compulsive thing. It would really bother me if they didn’t match. Like, really, really bug me. Anyway, when I get there, we’re gonna go to the same guy and I’m gonna get two stars much smaller down on my, like stomach, hip area, below my belly button, ABOVE my pants line. barely.

I can’t wait to get there and see it up close and in person but here’s a picture.

So, as much as I tried, I succomed to my emotions yesterday. I’ve said it a thousand times, but it’s hard being seperated. Men and women are so different. When a man and woman are in love, and they become separated, the man distracts himself with other idle tasks, plays his video games, goes out with friends, watches movies and whatnot… meanwhile, the girl analyzes herself into a nervous wreck until she explodes on the poor boy and he has no idea why. He misses her but he doesn’t respond the same way she does.

Why is it so easy to say in writing, but so hard to work out in my head? I guess it’s because I’m a “newbie”. Who am I fooling, I’ll never trully be comfortable with it. I’ll just… adjust.

On a more positive note… I guess… the movers came and took all our stuff today. I wanted to help, if nothing else than to just speed things along, but you can’t do any of the packing. They showed up at eight thirty in the morning and packed all day until about six thirty or so in the afternoon…….. to move a two bedroom apartment…….. -.-   It takes two days to move a whole entire house with kids.  So frustrating, but at least it’s done and over with. Now all I have left to do is go back tomorrow and vacuum/clean counters and stuff, and then return the keys and pool pass.

Our first home: gone. I’m such a sentimental doofus.

We also got our bonus today, which is AWESOME. Kaching! Yay, that means I can finally take bicuit to the vet and start the process. Hopefully, I can get everything done quickly and in time to go to California a little early (crossing my fingers).  Sigh…..

Listen to me, I’m just trying to occupy myself with all these little–big, but little–things.

We had a great time tonight, though! We discovered that we could play games on skype, and we played battleship, checkers, chinese checkers, tic-tac-toe, minewars, and hangman. It was fun! And he was so sweet. Once I just expressed the way I felt, he was so sweet. He never realized that it was so hard for to not be emotional. I’m just different.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is, for any other military wives out there, don’t bottle up your emotions and then explode on him. Just calmly explain that it’s hard as a woman and that you perceive the situation differently. It’s not necessarily that you think he meant it that way, it’s just hard to not take it that way.

See, I’m a girl, and my emotions are all over the place, and so this post is all over the place. I bet Arron’s rolling his eyes right now.

So I’ve been married for going on 4 months, but I don’t think I was really an air force wife until today.

I knew this day was coming but you just can’t prepare for these things. We woke up at 6:30 this morning and drove to the air port. I’m lucky to have a close-knit family because I know a lot of Air Force wives do this all alone. My mother, my father and my grandmother all came. We got there early enough to get breakfast at a little airport bistro after going through security and I’m sure it was really tasty, but I may as well have been eating sand. All I could do was stare at his hands, and his strong arms, memorize every little detail of his face, things I may not have noticed before. Where every single freckle is on his soft, sweet cheeks. They’re so light you can hardly even see them. His blond hair, and his green eyes. I love him so much, I want him to stay.

Yokota decided last minute that they wanted him to go to California for 2 months to take a C-5 class before we go to Japan. And since his class is “only” two months, the air force won’t pay for me to go with him. They say I would be a distraction. Also, I have to stay and take care of Biscuit’s out processing. Being a new Air Force wife, I’m embarking on an up hill journey towards positivity. My natural tendency is to kick and scream “it’s not fair!” But I’m realizing, slowly, that it’s just not productive to be defiant towards the military. You can’t change it. Go with it. At first, it’s really hard. I’ve spent a lot of time being angry, hurt, frustrated, disappointed, and still angry. I wanted to go down to the base and scream at everyone I could get a hold of. But I’m really trying to change my attitude. This is an opportunity. When a husband is deployed, it’s usually for three or four months. I have an opportunity, early on, to get used to my husband being gone, but for a lesser period of time. It’s like practice. And being my first time, I’m not all alone. I have my parents, and my grandmother this go round. Next time will be harder, but I’ll have an experience to go on. And luckily, they say he won’t deploy from Japan. The longest he’ll be gone is about 2 weeks at a time. I’ll see him again in 7 weeks at the Seattle Airport when we meet and head to Japan on the same flight.

But right now, in this little airport bistro, I want to stop time. It’s hard. And it hasn’t even gotten to the hard part yet. We finish our meal, my wonderful dad pays everyone’s tab (I notice Arron doesn’t fuss much, ), and we head to gate A3. The whole thing was kind of screwy. His flight was supposed to depart from gate A2 at 9:00, heading to Atlanta. He was going to get there about 10:00 and his next flight would be at 10:45 to San Fransisco. Well when we checked in, apparently Arron’s itinerary was mistaken. His second flight departs at 2. Okay…. Then, when we look at the board, it says that the 9AM flight to Atl is boarding at A3, not A2 and it departs at 10:20, not 9. So, okay, we head over to the desk and ask the lady what’s up? Apparently the plane broke so they had to bring a new one in from Atl as substitute. It should be here at 10. *wince*

So, now I get another hour of being tortured, knowing that I’m losing my baby for what seems like an eternity when you’re a newlywed. And we sit and we wait, and we sit and we wait, and I’m cold and we look for a blanket in the little store but they have nothing but Palmetto tee shirts and magazines, so we go back and snuggle, and sit, and wait, and I’m doing a really good job of keeping it together and then the plane pulls in. I burst into tears. It really hit home when that plane pulled in. He’s leaving. When he gets on that plane I won’t be able to touch him for 7 weeks. No more hugs. No more kisses. No more head scratches. No more silly motor boats. No more raspberries on my belly. Just me and an empty bed. I tried so hard to keep it in, but those tears, they came. He was the last one on the plane. I held him as close as I could. I wish I had an “I love my airman” shirt so everyone that was staring at us wouldn’t think I was a nut job, but oh well.

My husband is so strong, and so encouraging, so comforting. His hugs are so solid, his arms are so warm. He knows exactly what to say. “Baby, don’t cry. I love you.” He touches my nose. “It’s so short. It will be over before you know it. I love you so much.” When everyone has boarded the plane and he’s the last one left, he has to go. With one last big hug, he holds me so close, and then he’s gone. We stayed until that plane went all the way down the runway and disappeared into the clouds like it had never even been there in the first place. And I was leaned against that giant Plexiglas window the whole time, crying like a child that lost her father. And that’s basically what he is to me. My hero. My big, strong, hero. “Come on baby. We gotta go,” my dad says. “He’s gone.” And now all that’s left of anything that happened this morning are my two hand prints and my cheek on the window. I guess I’ve been christened. I am officially an Air Force Wife.