Since my husband returned from deployment in April, I've been taking mental notes and planning a column about the readjustment process. Actually, this time around has been one of the easiest, but after every deployment, it takes time to get the whole family back in sync.
My husband told me he has already heard a few comments about the August 3 column "The Nitty Gritty."
Ironically, we were discussing the subject over long distance, because while he is back home in Germany working, the kids and I are still in the States. Such is the life of a military family.
The August 11 Spouse Calls is a post-deployment story from another military wife.
Reunion wisdom
I asked some readers for their deployment reunion stories and advice.
Marilee writes that taking a trip after deployment was a good idea for her family.
"Taking a trip gets him some space to relax—he can’t be called in on his two weeks homecoming leave if he’s not in town. Getting away from everything work related right after deployment seems to help with recovery."
"It was a great time for all of us to unwind—we went on a sailboat cruise and your choice of activities were swim, lay on the boat or lay on the beach. No demands, No phones, No 'I’m just going to run into the office for a minute.' ”
"Ours was a 7 day cruise. I think the key is to plan a relaxing trip—one destination with lazy activities rather than a five-day, five-country, gotta-see-everything whirlwind tour."
Marilee found, as I have, that reunion occasionally includes some resentment when readjusting to doing things one’s spouse prefers.
“He expects to step back in and have things run the way they did before he left,” she writes.
“But you’ve been running things your way while he’s been gone. He has difficulty with 1) relaxing or 2) getting motivated to go back to an office that has been moving ahead at top speed while he was gone.
Another problem, she says, is “The kids crave his attention to the point of annoying him. He wants to be alone for a while, you and the kids want to be around him.”
She says she tries to “run interference” with the kids for the first few days to give her husband some space.
Regarding communication after deployment, Marilee says waiting for her husband to open up was best, but she said they also planned dinners alone and taking walks “where the likelihood of talking about it is greater.”
“Hopefully, we have kept in touch and the broad picture has been understood as it happened. Sometimes I will note certain issues he mentions but “can’t talk about now” and ask him later if he wants to share details. As for the rest, he tells them when he thinks of it…and I let him do the talking.”
Another reader, Julie, writes about a deployment reunion that was quickly followed by an overseas move:
"He was on a remote for a year and there were three kids, ages 12, 10, 5, and a dog involved."
"I had packed up our household goods. He came home and helped with the storage and hold baggage shipments. As we made our way to port from Scott AFB, the engine went out on our van. And yes it did have three kids, a dog and all of our luggage in it. We ditched the van and flew the rest of the way to Baltimore."
"That wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was trying to live with a man who’d been working 24/7 and thought his three children were airmen who worked for him. There were none of the great reunion programs that are available now to us. We were pretty clueless as to how we would work together after being apart for so long. We thought we could pick right up where we left off."
"His job in Italy was almost as busy as his job was in the desert so that didn’t help matters. It took us nearly 2 years to be “right”. We laugh about that trip and we have wonderful memories of Italy, but it was a difficult time in our relationship. The best part was all of us being together again, it may have been the worst part too :)"
"Oh, we did get that trip away together – Six years later a TDY to Hawaii. But, no kids!"
Who's dependent?
Navy wife Marie Hobson writes a column called "Anything but Dependent" for The Periscope of Kings Bay Georgia.
In August, one of her topics was homecomings.
Click here to read her insights.
Great thoughts, Marie, and I love your column title. If we were truly dependent, we couldn't survive this life!
An update, as of November, Marie now has a blog about being "not so dependent."
Click here to visit her site.