05/09/2019
Find your peace within some walls, even if they won’t always be your walls.
As I stare at all the boxes and stacks of tiny clothes, the half-assembled stroller in the corner I wonder how I’m going to do ALL of this. My mom friends who have gone before me are constantly telling me “You’ll be fine!” But will I be fine? Or will I be the only person in the world to screw this up, to mess up my kid? Or will I actually be fine. Will my kid like us? Will he be happy and healthy? Or will we worry about something worse than bottles and paci’s? The infinite amount of questions that have run through my mind would take an entire 500-page book. Although, to add to all those questions I already struggle with, something recently hit me, something that hadn’t even crossed my mind amid doctors appts and nursery décor. Moving.
See, for those of you who don’t know me, my home is adorned with a pair of combat boots by the front door and a weird corner of my garage that holds an absurd amount of camo, damn its and a sea bag’s. My little family is part of this larger collective we call the military. We’ll drag out moving boxes every few years and throw our lives into a truck and hope it arrives where we do, preferably without a large hole in the side of our washer (even though we all know that’s asking for too much). What does all that have to do with this baby I’ll birth soon? I’m so glad you asked. It means that my kid won’t grow up in one house. They might not even grow up in two or three houses, they might grow up in ten houses. Finding “home” when your life is determined by a single sentence on a single piece of paper is … rough at the least.
I’ve seen plenty of our friends and family fight this exact battle, several times over in fact, and while I have always lent an ear and could sympathize with them, this time it’s different. It’s our family, our baby, and our home. This weird battle is personal to me in more ways than one. I’m a mom about to bring a baby into the world, but I’m also the lady who sells you on the idea of “home”. I walk families through houses every single day, I give them specs, tell them about school districts, and bathrooms. I make appointments with other military families and give them all the info they need to know about VA loans and the turnaround should a surprise PCS fall into their laps. However, I didn’t emotionally FEEL, what this house was for them and much it really changed when a car seat came through the front door. That car seat changes everything. The idea of home became so much more complicated and so much more important.
When it was just me and my husband, we were each other’s home. Wherever he was, that was home for me and vice versa. We could have lived in a cardboard box and been happy so long as someone delivered pizza there. Out of sheer luck and hope we were able to buy the house we were once renting, because we loved it, for the version of us we were at that moment. But now we look at my growing belly, and we see all the things we want for our kids present and future. We see a huge fenced yard, and a patio, somewhere for them to play with the dogs, a room that’s all his and his toys scattered everywhere, a big kitchen perfect for baking holiday cookies (just to clarify, we still need to able to get that pizza delivered. Cause I’m REALLLY pregnant and I hear newborns never sleep) and a drive way with plenty of room to teach him how to ride a bike. While our house has some of those now, it won’t always, and we won’t always be able to keep it. Someday our little home, will have to become someone else’s dream, and someone else’s family will call our home, theirs.
In all the chaos that is the military, finding that balance is hard. We’re finding it increasingly more difficult to keep the peace we’ve found in OUR home, while in our peripherals those uniforms, and orders aren’t going anywhere. I will say this though, finding your peace in the form of 4 walls and a ceiling is worth the time and effort, even if its only for a little while. Be it that you’re renting, or maybe staying with friends. Finding that place to hang up your emotional hat is what will keep you going. That place where that brand-new crib fits perfectly, or where your beloved coffee nook has the perfect amount of space, those are the things that will keep you sane in this journey.
Bringing that car seat through those front doors will be your most exciting journey thus far. Home is where the heart is at the end of the day, but it can be a place, no matter how temporary.
