Will Things Be The Same
So as I have said this is Howie’s second deployment and it makes me wonder when he comes back how will things be? When he was in Iraq the first time I learned a lot about myself. I realized how to live on my own. Before Howie’s first deployment I had never had to live on my own. I had married Howie when I was 18 years old and before that I lived with my parents. So here I was at 19 with a six month old baby living across the country from my parents or any other family members and a husband that was in Iraq. I had to make it work! I couldn’t concentrate on being alone I had to concentrate on being independent. So that’s what I did. I learned how to get along without a partner. As my daughter grew though I had to teach her who her daddy was because she had forgot who he was. So when Howie finally came back our daughter was still kind of shaky on the whole idea of daddy and who was this man that was so eager to be a part of her life. I think Howie probably felt out of place because I had been operating on a routine that did not include him and I had a hard time breaking that habit. This caused a lot of friction between us over time.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how the future will be. This time around we have two kids. So will this be twice the friction? My son is pretty young he’s not even three yet so will he remember his daddy? Or will he be uneasy about it when Howie gets back. According to the article that I read at http://www.nncc.org/Child.Dev/ages.stages.3y.html even three year olds don’t have memory of yesterday like adults do. So does that mean that my husband will not be remembered by my son? I do my best to show pictures of Howie to my kids and make sure to say that’s daddy, but is that really enough? Then for me how do I let go the control of the household and learn to share? All of this makes things so complicated! I know that it’s a long way away Howie still has a year before his return but the more time passes the more comfortable I get with a routine that will need to change.
