Deployment Battle Buddy
One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood. — Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Deployments are a challenge and each has different struggles. Almost anyone who has been through one, or half a dozen, knows that.
Our lives often change abruptly, and no matter how much planning has been done, a new and unknown monkey wrench gets thrown into the mix.
Under normal circumstances, this would be where you would turn to your spouse and ask them to hold the ladder while you cleaned the birds and their nest out of the bathroom vent. Or to mow when the grass may be tall enough that your boxer is getting grass stains on his stomach. Or to watch your children on the day you happened to get called for jury duty. Or to help you understand a seemingly simple situation that you can’t wrap your head around.
Or, most of all, someone to listen to your crazy.
Most of us know that, with deployments in the picture, our sounding board and our life battle buddy isn’t always available in a way we may want or need them to be at the time it’s needed.
This is where our independence comes in and the deployment battle buddy.
My deployment battle buddy came along shortly after my husband deployed, but a little before hers headed out. Our service members were in different theaters, different cycles, and very different jobs, but that didn’t change the big picture of what we were going through.
Between the two of us, we have five boys, ages 2-5, who are high energy, and I’m pretty sure that most people think we’re crazy most places we go. Bless you if you happen to be at the playground when we are (we’re at Riley, for future planning).
Even with the craziness of everyday life, I can count on one hand the days we’ve gone without talking. We are in almost constant communication, even if it’s a two-minute check on the other one. She invites us over for dinner when I feel like I’m at my wits end and completely out of frozen chicken nuggets to feed my boys. We go have Mexican food if she’s having a bad day.
We both struggle with the days that seem to be never-ending or beyond challenging, but we each have someone who understands what a rough day of deployment means.
My deployment time has ended for this round, but her time is still ticking by more slowly than she would like. Even though my husband is back, we’re still going to be those two crazy women with those five boys at the playground or the zoo or grabbing Mexican food.
Just because one deployment ends, doesn’t end the journey or the need for a battle buddy for the other.
The best thing I could wish for someone going through a deployment is a battle buddy who is as awesome as my deployment battle buddy.
