Leaving For A DReam
I am leaving home today and will be gone for ten days chasing my dream. Tonight, I have the AJR concert, which I could not be more excited about because it is truly a dream come true, and I imagine I'll be talking a lot about it on Friday. Then I have a work conference over the weekend. That will be followed by working in the field in North Carolina for a few days. The trip will finish off with an early Passover celebration before heading back home.
The first half of the trip will be solo, and my son will join me for the second half. If the Passover celebration turns into a big enough family thing, we may see my husband joining in for the last bit as well. This will be my third biggest time away from my son. I left him with my parents for a bachelorette weekend while my husband was TDY. Both sets of parents watched him back in November when we traveled to Ireland. So this trip is a big deal, and leaving home is still a fresh feeling.
It's hard leaving my son. It's hard leaving my husband. There's a difficult balance to find in military life of when to be home and when to go. In theory, I want to be home anytime my husband is home. We miss too much time with one another by the nature of his job in the military. We've also been incredibly lucky with how much time home he has gotten because of transitions in his career. It's a balance that I struggle to find.
I don't want to miss time with him if we have the opportunity because a deployment or TDY could come down and sweep him away (that's what happened last year when I tried to go to this conference solo). But I also can't shut down everything else in my life to be a homebody when he's home. That would stop and start my dream so many times, leaving me even more frustrated with the constant changes.
It's my choice to go. I have complete control over this decision because of the job and dream that I chose. No one is threatening to take me to insurance jail if I don't work next week. But it's also my husband's choice to go when the military calls. And no matter how often they call or how frustrating his job feels, he still wants to sign that next contract. His choices may come up once every seven years, but he still chooses to go. We have to find that commitment to our dreams.
It's hard to leave our families behind. It's hard for us to do it, and it's hard for our servicemembers, too. But they make sacrifices for their dreams, and if my husband can do it, I can, too. I'm trying to build a better life for my family by doing something I strongly believe in. Maybe it's not as brave as serving the country, but it will make a difference.
This trip feels like a long time to spend away from home. Ten days is a decent amount of time. I also know that we have been traveling a ton, leaving both of us a little burnt out. But I know I am doing the right thing, and once I get in the moment, I will feel so much better. It's the few hours before leaving and the last bit before coming home that are the hardest to get through, at least for me.
I couldn't do this as a Lone Ranger. I have to have my partner in crime just like he needs me. My husband could not support his dream the way he can without me around to pick up the slack when he is gone. He is doing the same for me. My husband is taking leave tomorrow to be home with our son since our nanny can't work Tuesday or Thursday. Our nanny is coming in early and staying late on Friday and Monday so my husband can get a full day of work.
I want to be clear that this is one of eight possibilities of what we would be doing with our son this weekend. In the ideal world, we can all be together, but that's not possible. The second best is always going to be one of us staying home with him. If his parents are an option, then that's the one we will go with. We didn't officially decide on the plan until last week, though. Military life makes planning in advance really difficult, and we still have backup plans in place on top of this one in case something happens.
Navigating anything, especially childcare, with military life is difficult. It takes a lot of mental load to establish multiple plans and deal with the uncertainty of not knowing how things will turn out. That being said, we carried that load together because planning for our son and my dream is a family affair. Being able to leave my son back home with my husband removes so much of the mental load, making it easier to get ready and go. I didn't have to make him a list. He knows how to take care of our son. I didn't have to remind him of XY and Z because he was already fully aware. The only thing I told him before I left was that solo parenting is hard, and it's okay that it is hard. We all need that reminder.
Monday after work, my husband is picking up our son from the nanny and driving three hours to meet me halfway so we can swap. Then he'll drive the three hours back home to an empty house for the rest of the week. We both know what it feels like to be a solo parent, to come home alone, and to sacrifice for our partner's dreams. Sacrificing isn't easy. That's why it's called sacrifice, but when you do it for the right reasons, it is entirely worth it.
We have big plans for our life together. We have big dreams that we want to chase. We have good things in the works that depend on a little bit of sacrifice in the now. In the grand scheme of things, these ten days won't be burnt into our minds, but the fruits of these actions could have life-changing ripple effects. I am grateful for a partner who supports my dreams, and I am excited about this solo adventure. Life has sped up since we moved to Georgia, and the fun is just beginning.