HURRY UP AND WAIT
Today felt like the perfect time to talk about the concept of “hurry up and wait,” which plagues spouses and service members alike. For those new to the military, this will become the unfortunate standard, and the only solution is to figure out how to work with it. Flexing our lives and plans definitely comes easier to some than others, and if you have a hard time adjusting, take heart that I, as well as many other spouses, have been in the same position.
The phrase “hurry up and wait” refers to the fact that our service members must be ready at the drop of a hat for whatever the military throws at them. But, most of the time, this looks like getting ready very quickly and then sitting in a room waiting for the action to happen. This serves a purpose, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating.
When my husband was deployed, he sat in a room on base for hours until the plane actually left. He didn’t know when the waiting would end, and that was the point. If he didn’t know, then the enemy certainly didn’t. But the same thing would happen when he would sit on the jet for hours waiting to find out if a repair was possible so they could take off. He had to be ready to go at any minute, but there was an awful lot of waiting.
I don’t know if the phrase was coined by the military, but I do know the military isn’t the only victim of the concept. Today felt very “hurry up and wait” to me. We got snow yesterday in middle Georgia, which was very fun. I built a tiny snowman and made snow angels with our two-year-old. As a girl from coastal NC, I love a snow day, but I am flying out to Dallas tonight.
The worst part of our current base is that it is 1.5 hours from the nearest airport (at least the one that flies American Airlines). And if you know anything about middle Georgia, you know they don’t get snow, which means there is absolutely no preparation for an event like this. Atlanta barely got snow, meaning the planes were going whether I made it or not. But a coastal girl on roads not prepped for snow is not the best combination to drive.
Our driveway and street were a sheet of ice this morning. There was no way I was going to catch my flight. There is a shuttle service nearby that makes the trek from Warner Robins to ATL all day, every day. They weren’t going when I called this morning but said they would evaluate at noon, so I was using them as a metric for the safety of the roads. Obviously, a shuttle service has a lot more liability, so they would be more cautious, and if they deemed it safe, then I should be good to go. I wanted to leave by one at the latest so that I could easily take three hours to make the drive.
So I spent the morning packing, getting extra snuggles before my trip, and waiting around to see if I could actually leave. I was ready to go but had no idea if I could actually leave. It’s an incredibly frustrating feeling. And fortunately, everything worked out. I am writing this on the plane, and I’ll post it when we land in Dallas. The roads were passable when I drove them, although they wouldn’t have been if I had left an hour earlier and probably wouldn’t be an hour later.
Our ability to be ready for anything, all while not knowing when or if something will happen, will be essential to making it through military life. That is a complex skill to develop, though. It takes a thick skin, and I’m still working on growing it. I’ve certainly got it for some aspects of this life, but there are others that rock me to my core when the idea of getting ready enters our home.
There’s good news and bad news at the end of this. The bad news is that this concept isn’t going away. It will follow us throughout our spouse's careers, and we will either figure out how to deal with it or struggle through the years. But, the good news is that there is a team around to help you figure out the hard part, and in even better news, this still will be essential to seeing our dreams come true. The reality is that a big part of chasing our dreams is getting ourselves ready for the opportunity and then waiting for the chance to pounce. In a way, I guess we can thank the military for helping us strengthen that skill. I don’t know that I would give them too much credit, but anything that gets me closer to seeing my dreams come true is a win in my book.