It seems that military spouses often find themselves in a bizarre battle with the clock. We spend a lot of time wishing that time would either stand still or speed up. In fact, sometimes we don't even know which one we want.
Speed up.....
No, wait, stand still.....
I remember the day my husband deployed. It seemed as if time were frozen. One minute seemed to last an hour. While I would have loved to hold on to him all day long, part of me - a large part, actually - just wanted him to go. I knew he had to go, and was going to go, so the sooner he left, the sooner he'd be back. And the sooner I could begin adjusting to the new reality of life without him around.
I'm on the verge of a PCS move right now, and I find myself in a similar battle with the clock. I need time to stand still so that I can say all of the good-byes I need to say, but then again, I'm not looking forward to the chaos of actually moving out of one house, traveling to a new destination and moving into a new house, and I just want it done already....
In one sense, it's a bit odd to me that military spouses spend so much time wanting to fast-forward our lives. After all, that's wishing precious time away. Between deployments, unaccompanied tours, long TDYs and PCS moves, I'll bet we have wished years off our life. Given the circumstances, it's certainly understandable. But on the flip side, everyone I know makes the most of the time they do have together because they know it's often short-lived given the frequent separations due to hazardous duty, and the brief time we have with friends we make along the way. We value time together because it's a luxury many of us don't experience often enough.
We do seem to have an odd relationship with time, don't we?
Life moves fast and it can end at any time. Even so, I'm not going to feel guilty for wishing that this month moves along at the speed of light because I'm sure once we're unpacked and settled on the other end, we'll make the most of our time there. Then we'll move along to the next duty station and we'll make the most of our time there, too.
So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go look at the piles of stuff I have to do this week to prepare for the move. I might even don an I Dream of Jeannie costume, fold my arms, twitch my nose, close my eyes and hope that when I open them, I'm in my newly set-up, unpacked and organized house so that I can get about the business of life.
I'll let you know if it works!
