Wondering

Stella wrote a paragraph on her Fifteen Months... blog that needs to be shared with every milspouse.  I know we have all sat and wondered these things, and that many of our questions go unanswered.  I often feel like my husband's deployments contribute immensely to who he is as a person, and yet I know nothing about them.  His day-to-day life is a mystery to me.  I wish I knew the little things: what he eats, how he sleeps, what movie he might've watched.  And yet I know very little about a combined 29 months of his life...

Stella writes:

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder what's happening in that other parallel universe when he's living. Now that I'm wondering this from Germany instead of California like I was last time doesn't seem to make me feel any closer to his world. It's 2:42 am right now, so he must be sleeping but I'm still curious about the smell and temperature of the air he's breathing in. I wonder what might have happened today or what conversations he had that made a part of him grow or change perspectives. There are so many things that I will never know about, so many conversations about the small details of our parallel lives I know will never be recounted. The collective weight of the significance of these many seperately experienced moments wakes me up in the middle of the night.

(Thanks to Post Tenebras Lux for the link.)

Comments

[Sara V.]

I've definitely wondered the same thing before. I'm not sure this has been mentioned before. But I definitely felt I was missing so much in the little details of his day to day life.

[aggie af wife]

wow - that was so well put.

It amazes me each time hubby goes away and comes back that we are still able to change as individuals but remain committed and attracted to each other.

Most people don't realize how LONG a year really is.. they say, "oh it's a year - they fly right by".. but every year you change ever so slightly..

but on the other hand, it helps to keep things fresh and I keep falling in love with him over and over again, every time he comes home.

[AussieCoyote]

I am feeling this much more acutely now that DM is deployed. Before we were still separated by 9000-odd miles, but at least we were in like environments - each working in our respective nation's capitals for DoD. And it's amazing the difference a visit makes, when you can finally visualise where he is and what he's doing.
I wish I could picture those he works with, what his office looks like, what he sees when he walks to the chow hall.
Sometimes, the details are everything.

[airforcewife]

That's exactly it.

[Lucy]

Glad I'm not the only one who feels that way. It's always been one of the hardest things about deployments for me.