Monday morning, I woke up before my alarm, thanking the heavens that both my girls had slept past 6.
I gazed lovingly at the baby tucked in my arm from her last nightly nursing session and then rolled over to brush the hair out of the sleeping eyes of my toddler. She always spends a few weeks in my bed when her father deploys.
Then, I heard it. The reason this tired mama woke up at all.
The grind and groan of the garbage truck came like clockwork for the weekly trash pick-up.
“Oh, crap!” I yelped, disentangling from the kids and leaping out of bed in one fell swoop.
I grabbed my husband’s old PT sweatshirt hanging on the back of the door and threw it over my bed-head as I ran down the hall, through the living room and dining room, and into the kitchen.
In another singular movement, I grabbed up the kitchen trash and went out the garage door, furiously pushing the button and running out to our long driveway at the same time.
With one arm now in the sweatshirt furiously waving, I yell, “Wait! Wait!” and grab the big city-distributed trash can and wheel it haphazardly down the slope, totally unapologetic that I am still in my pajamas.
The garbage man laughs as I hand him up the extra trash from the kitchen and I see my neighbor, recently home from his own deployment, giving me a knowing smile.
We have been here before.
Every deployment, every time my husband leaves, I become the disheveled woman on Monday morning who, no matter how many alarms I set or how many reminders I post Sunday night, I still forget trash day.
And like clockwork, every Monday morning, after I finish my pathetic trash dance and start my walk of shame back up the driveway, I think, “Man, I miss my husband.”
Because, even though the holidays are painful, and the dance recitals and weddings and funerals are even more heart-wrenching when he’s not here, there are also the little things that make us hate deployment all the more.
The responsibilities that seem insignificant but are huge reminders when we take them over that he’s no longer home: changing hard-to-reach light-bulbs, cooking bacon on Saturday morning, re-organizing your “Documents” file on the computer, taking out the trash on Sunday night.
Those are the things that make you hate the fact that they’re gone. Each of these jobs is yet another reminder that you’re holding it down alone.
But, for every military spouse, there is that season.
The season when you mow the lawn or put up the Christmas decorations alone. The season when you mail the birthday cards and you water the godforsaken indoor plant he insisted on buying. The season when you make the smiley-faced tacos on your family Taco Tuesday night.
Right now, I’m in that season. The season of waiting, watching, hoping and missing him.
But hopefully next week, I’ll beat that truck to the curb, with time to spare.
Follow Brittany at www.brittsbeat.com
