Major Select - A Major Change?

We are so used to celebrating all of our kids’ incremental as well as big successes.  When something major comes along in one of our (us parents) lives however, it almost seems somehow random.  However random this major thing had appeared to me, there is truly nothing random about it.  All of the steps that had brought us to this point in time were well in the making, since the very beginning of Alex’s military career.  Alex was recently on the list of Air Force Major Selects for JAG Officers.  I was not the slightest surprised.  Although he has some months ahead of him and others to promote sooner, before we know it, that time will be soon here.  We will be celebrating his achievement, his dedication and his promotion.  Our family has reached another milestone in our path.

So what does this all mean to our family?  Do titles really change anything?  Will our day - to - day life be any different than it is today?  Well first, it doesn’t feel like we’re at the beginning of our military adventure anymore.  We are well into its progression.  We’ve endured a deployment during my twin pregnancy in ‘09.  We had the twin’s birth and Jake’s autism diagnosis at our very first base along with Alex being a Lieutenant and then his promotion to Captain at Lackland AFB in San Antonio, TX.   Jake learned to ride a horse in Texas, our twins are literally Texans, and I had my first university music teaching job in Texas.

Now, Alex is a major select at our second base – third assignment, at Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, AL.  Of course this means the obvious change in rank, pay raise, and change of title.  Perhaps it means some more credibility and respect in his career field.  Hopefully it means continued job security, which is huge in today’s economy and dwindling job market.  It also means continued health coverage for the kids’ speech therapies as well as Jake’s ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis - autism therapy) and occupational therapies – the ABA coverage, being the largest benefit of all three.  It means continued career satisfaction for Alex, who has been very fulfilled with his work, and that in itself, is a major lifetime achievement.  How often do we run into someone who is truly satisfied with his/her job?  Basically, our whole life revolves around Alex’s job.  Moreover, I not only married Alex, I married the military too, for better or for worse.

When we were getting ready to move to our first assignment and Jake was just a couple months old, a friend mailed me a book that she came across called: Married to the Military.  I remember being introduced to all of the acronyms and tips about enduring and enjoying the military lifestyle.  One of my favorite acronyms coined in this book is CINCHouse: Commander in Chief of the House.  That has become a playful nickname when we discuss military stuff.  If someone calls to invite us to some event, Alex would say “hold on, I’ll have to check with CINCHouse.”  It seems like a lifetime ago, when I first laid eyes on this book, and it has only been six years in.  Having children changes someone’s life so much already.  Having lived our military life, with the moves, deployment, work related travel, making new friends and leaving old ones behind, living in new places, being away from family, enduring special needs with our older son and speech delays with our twins, feels like a lifetime of events compressed into only a handful of years.   

Our twins will soon be four years old and barely resemble babies to me anymore – where did the time go?  I’ll tell you where it went.  That time went into the every day things that make up our life of creativity with autism, twins and military adventures.  When we live through it, some things feel like they are never going to end.  Other things however, the enjoyable things, like the way that Max cracks me up every day, Miriam’s sweet laugh, and Jake’s beautiful smile and thick dark hair, feel like they are going to change as soon as I flinch my eye lashes one too many times.  I can’t imagine them as teenagers yet.  I’m not ready for it.  I want to hold on to these beautiful childhood moments forever, those moments that take your breath away.

Something has always told me intuitively that we were supposed to walk this path, to have this life with its challenges and high points.  Somehow, this life all came together for us.  All of the stones have lined up a certain way to create this specific path that we are walking.  Things are by no means perfect.  Certain situations are presented to us in our lives.  It is within those situations, that comes a certain potential.  What we do with this potential, is how we make the best of every situation and every opportunity that presents itself, as it reveals itself to us across our path.  For example, planting some roots everywhere we live and making it a home, without feeling like it’s only temporary, and making the most out of that location by embracing the real flavor and essence of the place with open arms.

For now, a certain Captain in this family has transitioned to a Major Select and that is a real simcha (a happy occasion).  Within this milestone, there is potential for a continued Air Force commitment of "integrity first, service before self and excellence in all we do."  To me though, these core values are merely a reflection of what he does every day at home with his family already, and of course with his job as well.  Time has to simply play itself out and line up to be the right timing, to make it official, when he pins on in a designated ceremony.  The key is, that greatness comes from within.  Certain situations that present themselves to us however, reflect and magnify what is already exuding from the inside.   

Some exceptional situations, draw on our reserves and inner strength.  We may not even have known we’ve had such reserves, but when we are called upon to step up to meet all sorts of challenges, its all about perseverance for us.  Our child lives with autism and we give it all we’ve got, even when we don’t have anything left to give and we're running on fumes.  So in our family, we’ve experienced a Major change times two.  Moving forward, we cheer everyone on in our bunch.  For one day soon enough, our kids will be going through their own metamorphosis.  Spreading out their lovely wings and gaining their own momentum, they will look down with a smile, as we lose our voices, endlessly cheering them on.  And just as our Air Force planes soar towards the horizon, they will be flying high, up and over the silvery clouds.

Visit my blog:  

Lily and the Roses ~ 

Creativity with Autism, Twins and Military Adventures 

http://lilybrose1948.blogspot.com

Leave me a comment if you find any of my posts meaningful to you.  Feel free to share posts with your friends to help us raise autism awareness and acceptance.
 

Visit my other blog: 

Creationlily.blogspot.com 

Where I display 

my artwork, music compositions and travel photos 

Stop by and share posts with your friends

Creationlily

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Today I dropped off my three and a half year old twins, Max and Miriam at the Air Force base CDC (child development center).  Usually, Alex drops them off on his way to work down the street, but he has been out of town for a case.  Walking into the class room, there was a little boy standing sadly and quietly crying in the entry way.  I automatically thought that he was probably having some separation anxiety, as I have seen many times before with children this age.

During the few minutes that I was there, taking the twins' coats off, and snuggling and kissing them, I noticed that this little boy was being comforted by one of the teachers, but that he was still sad and crying.  It seemed different then when I typically see kids that cry out of separation anxiety.  They are usually more vocal about their parent leaving them at school, and more stressed about the situation.  I felt compelled to ask the teacher if separation anxiety was truly the cause of his demeanor.  The teacher told me that the boy's father had just returned from a deployment, and had literally dropped off his son just then.  It was the first time the boy had seen his dad in what must have been at least a several month separation.

The most valuable gift that you can give anyone is not a material possession, 
it is your time, because that time will not come around twice, 
and you can never get it back.

 

By the time his teacher finished her sentence, I felt my eyes tearing up, and my heart starting to ache.  I wanted to reach out and hold this sad little boy and comfort him.  Instead, I asked Miriam and Max to go up to him individually, and tell him "I love you - you are my friend - it's going to be okay."  They were so sweet.  Max even had a little pouty face and was very gentle when hugging his friend.  I told the twins "we have to be nice to our friends when they are sad."  It is important that children who have gone through a lengthy separation from a parent due to deployment, that other kids get involved in being supportive and understanding, and not just the teachers.  It is important, because many of these young kids will also experience this type of separation.  They will need the interaction and support of their school friends, to help fill that void and temporary loss.  This is where they spend most of their day, if they go to a military CDC.  Their friends will see them longer during their day then their parents will, aside from weekends and holidays.  Teaching children to be a good supportive friend can start from very early on.  This can be of great help to the child that misses his parent for months at a time.

Alex with Jake, and Max sneaking by - San Antonio, Texas 2011

I suppose that this hit a personal note for me, because our family had also endured a not-so-easy deployment.  Jake couldn't even tell me if he missed his daddy, because he was only two years old and living with autism (this was several months before we knew he was autistic).  Before Alex left for Iraq, I shot a little DVD of him reading all of Jake's favorite bed time stories in Jake's bedroom.  I would play that DVD for half a year for Jake, featuring a different story every night before going to sleep.  Alex also had several messages that I would play for Jake for times that Jake was sick, weekend morning greetings from Dad, good night messages, and a special message to be saved for Jake's birthday.  We also ordered a "Daddy Doll" for him.  This is a pillow doll with Alex's picture print on it, and Jake would sleep with it every night.  Dads could have these dolls made from their deployment locations, where they would have their photo taken and imprinted on the doll for their child/ren and send them back home as a gift.  These ideas were some of the ways we kept Alex's presence and spirit continuously with us.  We would also skype once or twice a week, but it was difficult to have Jake hang out by the computer for more than a couple of minutes.   In any case, we did what we could to have Alex still "be with us" at home.

The military lifestyle is not very easy for children in cases of work related travel and deployment.  As far as our twins go, we haven't even begun to feel the challenges of uprooting them from school for a PCS (permanent change of station - a military move to a new location) because they are still young. But with Jake, the last move took a few months of settling into the new school and therapy programs.  We felt a backslide in his developmental progress due to this major change.  We are enrolled in the EFMP (the Exceptional Family Member Program) which protects us from moving to a location that does not have adequate services for Jake's special needs.  We complete an exit interview prior to moving to a new location to make sure that all of the paperwork and services are in place.

In one of my previous posts, Pregoploymentcy http://lilybrose1948.blogspot.com/2012/11/pregoploymentcy.html  I discuss passive versus active support that I received during Alex's deployment, and how we need to collectively have more active type of support during deployments.  I was pregnant with our twins as well as learning of autism signs in Jake.  I was also teaching music at a local university during Alex's deployment in 2008 and coping with much of it on my own.  As I mentioned above, Jake couldn't tell me if he missed his dad.  I believe that we need to do what we can to actively support children as well, even though the one parent that's left behind at home does what he/she can to compensate for the other parent's absence.   We should not wait and hope that someone else will step up and do it instead of us, because we are busy with our own lives.  We have to take a personal approach to this and a personal responsibility, especially if we have already experienced the hardships of deployments ourselves.

When you come to know of a family that is enduring a deployment, 

think of that one little boy, for he will soon grow up.  Some day, he will possibly be 

some other little boy or girl's dad, 

watching out for families in our heartland, 
far away from home.

Visit my blog:  

Lily and the Roses ~ 

Creativity with Autism, Twins and Military Adventures 

http://lilybrose1948.blogspot.com

Leave me a comment if you find any of my posts meaningful to you.  Feel free to share posts with your friends to help us raise autism awareness and acceptance.
 

Visit my other blog: 

Creationlily.blogspot.com 

This is where I display 

my artwork, music compositions and travel photos 

Stop by and share posts with your friends

Creationlily

Pregoploymentcy

I like be creative by composing music, playing the piano, drawing, painting and writing.  I also enjoy puns that lighten the mood, no matter how badly the outcome may be.  I usually save this privilege for people that know me really well - so you don't have to worry about getting hit over the head with one of my puns just yet.  This occasionally does regress a step further.  I make up words by stringing two or more words together, to form a lovely concoction of flavors.   In this case, it pertains to a very meaningful personal experience, to which I'm sure many military spouses can relate.  This one concoction contains elements of surprise, exhaustion, extreme happiness, extreme sadness, isolation, bitterness, rising through to the end, and some humor.  Humor, being an element that is a must, for any of the concoctions that make up our life of creativity with autism, twins and military adventures.

So here we go -  Pregoploymentcy 

Definition:
The art of coping with a pregnancy while a husband, partner, or significant other is deployed.

This definition also calls for some equations that can be a result of a scenario such as the pregoploymentcy.  For instance, in order to break things down to fully appreciate some of the major components of this scenario, I like to think of it like this:

Deployment = stress on a spouse and stress on the whole family.

Deployment + Pregnancy = experiencing stress and personal hardship.

When you factor in another very important component to this equation, we get: Pregnancy + deployment + passive support = undergoing extreme personal hardship.

Lump on one more factor to this lovely equation and we have:

Pregnancy + deployment + passive support + stress of a possible upcoming autism diagnosis for a 2 year old = One exhausted pregnant lady that's barely able to cope, but will rise to the challenge, anyway because that is what you have to do.

Military Support During the Deployment

I love the military for so many reasons, but I have issues with the type of passive support provided during some deployments.  To say that I didn't have an easy time during Alex's deployment would be an understatement.  I can think of three people that were there for me by means of calling me on the phone up to once a week, or inviting me to an occasional coffee or dinner outing.  Some people offered passive type of support by saying "give us a call if you need anything" but didn't call to see how I was doing, didn't e-mail or stop by the house, no matter how close they lived.  The more times that people said that to me, the more irritated I got about this passivity.  What I saw was not a lack of good intentions, but a lack of follow through.  I really needed a more active type of support.  It didn't have to be anything special or anything big.  The passive level of support made me feel like while I was trying to embrace this new military life style, it is not readily embracing me back.

I was feeling more and more isolated.  I'm sure that living off base in an area that is as spread out as San Antonio, had something to do with it.  Alex and I had also talked to great lengths about how various branches of the military cope with deployments differently.  The Army for example, deploys whole units at a time.  You can imagine the spouses sharing a comradery.  They all know what the other is going through, so they naturally want to be there for each other; the situation itself lends to be of support.  The Air Force only deploys a couple of people at a time from any given office.  Most of the spouses don't really relate, unless they've already gone through this experience before.  Keep in mind that bases are different depending on the mission, but I have not seen much active support for the spouses that get left behind.  This unfortunately left a bitter taste in my mouth.  I had a difficult time dealing with these negative feelings; it took away positive energy that I needed during my twin pregnancy and single parenting Jake.  What should have been a very joyful and beautiful time in my life, was more difficult than I could have imagined.  I'd like to believe that as more and more JAG's deploy, the level of active support will improve.

Twin A and Twin B

 In one of my first ultrasounds where we listened to the baby's heartbeat, I thought and actually said out loud, "if there's another baby in there, I guess we'd miss that second heartbeat."  My mother-in-law was there with me for that one appointment.  I don't know why I was thinking that.  I guess on some level I must have already known.  Since twins didn't naturally run in my immediate family line, it was the last time I entertained that thought and put it out of my mind.  It wasn't until my 20-week ultrasound that I learned that I was having twins.  I had a feeling that it was going to be one big baby, as it was strenuous on me from pretty early on.  Thankfully, my mother was at that appointment with me at Lackland AFB.  I can't even imagine getting the news and having to take it all in on my own.  It was just too much happiness not to be able to share it with anyone else.  The lab technician did the ultrasound and jokingly asked if I would like for him to name the baby.  Playing along, I said "sure".  "the name I give to your baby is Twin A and Twin B."  To his response I shouted "I Knew it!" and mom couldn't believe her ears.  I was eager to get in touch with Alex, but since he was on a training mission at another base in Iraq at the time, I had no way of calling him directly, and I didn't want to give him the news over e-mail.  It took us about 24 hours to finally connect.  I stringed him along over several short e-mail messages, without giving anything away, until we finally got to talk and share in the exciting the news. 

Civilian Support During the Deployment

On the non-military side, I had one friend who flew in from Seattle to visit me for a week, early on in my pregnancy.  Another dear friend from Scotland came to stay with me for five weeks, to keep me company and help me with Jake - a blessing.  Family wise, my mother stayed with me for a month, and it was the best time during the deployment.  My father-in-law came for a few days visit, and then Jake and I came with him to Florida to spend Thanks giving together.  My mother-in-law also came for a short visit.  But as for local help, aside from what I had mentioned, it was shockingly scarce.   This is a matter that had affected me in such a deep and personal way, that Alex and I decided to be supportive to other military spouses, in a way that I wished I had been; even though I didn't benefit from much of this type of active support.  It is my hope that by doing this, other deployed spouses will see a positive example for themselves to emulate going forward.  I'd like to see the good will move forward and eventually become the norm.  It shouldn't have to be something that spouses have to stress over.

Weekends were the most difficult time for me during the deployment, because that is when families spend time together.  That is when loneliness can really set in and mess with your soul.  That is why I make a point of inviting spouses on weekends, in order to make them feel like they are a part of the family, they are included, they are wonderful and special.  They are not forgotten about.  Looking back, I now light-heartedly refer to this deployment time as the "pre-baby boot-camp."  One of the pluses however, of going through something like this early on in our military life (Alex deployed during his second year of active-duty) was that we got it out of the way early on.  Even if Alex gets deployed again, it will never be as difficult for me in the same way that it had been.  I will not be pregnant, we won't be stressed about an on-coming autism diagnosis, and the kids will be older.  If it happens again, I will be able to tolerate it better.  It will never be the first time twice.  It also taught me a hard lesson of having to make it on my own and to be my own best friend through tremendous challenges.  This on it's own, is absolutely a priceless life lesson.

Third Trimester

The Return of Capt Dad

Alex and Jake at the airport -  homecoming April 2009

 Just because the deployment was over, it didn't mean that there were no challenges left for this little family.  There were some post-deployment reintegration issues for us to sort through.  This is common for our returning service members.  It took me some time to recover emotionally from this whirlwind.  Unfortunately, it caused some unnecessary friction throughout and after the deployment for Alex and me.  Alex was as supportive to me as he could have been at that time, but it just wasn't enough to get me through my feelings that quickly.  It was going to take some time.  On the up-side, he was back for my third trimester and was not going to miss the birth of our twins.  That was a relief as well as very exciting.  It was nice to have him accompany me to doctor visits.  It was very fortunate timing for us, and we felt lucky to get to share this together.  We both knew of other couples that didn't get to share the birth of their child together.

Double Duty 

Once Alex returned from Iraq in the spring of 2009, we only had a few weeks to adjust to being together again as a family at this new point of our lives.  We got the twins' room set up and got reacquainted as family.  On top of which, we were observing more and more changes that pointed to autism in Jake; it was quite a scary thing.  We knew that this would be another big challenge for us, but we really had no idea what was about to transpire.  Taking care of two babies at a time, additionally, would stretch our abilities.  There was so much to accomplish, but the transition went by quickly - for better or for worse.  We had to be solid, focused, and be determined to get through it - even if it meant getting through it one day at a time.  That is what most of our early days after the birth of the twins were like.  The "one day at a time" motto I lived by during the deployment was practical and doable for me.  I was already in the correct gear from the "pre-baby boot camp." Looking back on it all, it was one big exhausting blur.  The good news was that the twins were healthy, so we were very happy, sleep deprived, but extremely thankful.   We were delighted to have these three wonderful children bless us by coming into our life. 

Visit my blog:  

Lily and the Roses ~ 

Creativity with Autism, Twins and Military Adventures 

http://lilybrose1948.blogspot.com

Leave me a comment if you find any of my posts meaningful to you.  Feel free to share posts with your friends to help us raise autism awareness and acceptance.
 

Visit my other blog: 

Creationlily.blogspot.com 

This is where I display 

my artwork, music compositions and travel photos 

Stop by and share posts with your friends

Creationlily