The Magic Of April For Our Military Children
If you've been around the military for a while, you have probably figured out the importance of certain colors, their meaning, and when they should be worn. For example, on Friday, we can often spot more red in a crowd. In true military fashion, red is an acronym for "remember everyone deployed." During my husband's first deployment, I did my best to wear red on Fridays.
Similarly, purple has come to represent military children. It isn't an acronym for anything, but that color was chosen because it combines colors from each branch. We take the blue from the Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard, then mix in the green from the Army and the red from the Marines to create purple. It is arguably more brown than purple when those colors are actually mixed on a palette, but the sentiment is very nice. Also, a fun fact that I just learned is that mixing red, green, and blue in terms of light frequency creates white, which is quite baffling to me.
It wasn't until I met my husband that I got a birthday month. Growing up, it was always just the day of and maybe a few days for any postponed celebration. And I never felt shorted, even though my birthday is a little less than two weeks before Christmas. But, when I met my husband that day grew into a whole month. It's been really special, and we always planned to carry that tradition on with our children.
I also recently saw a video on one of the social media channels (I really doubt I could find it again) that talked about making a half-cake for everyone's half-birthdays. I thought that was the sweetest idea and immediately planned to implement it for my son's half-birthday in June.
The point of that video is that we are creating our children's childhood. Right here, right now. We don't know what their core memories will be, but we are the instruments that make the magic of childhood wonder. We do this along with our family and community.
Magic doesn't have to be expensive. We certainly can create it by going to amusement parks and on vacation. But we also get to make it by establishing our own traditions. My family never did the Easter Bunny when I was growing up, so we never really did classic Easter egg hunts. Instead, my mom and grandma would hide Easter eggs in the living room while my dad and grandfather watched whatever athletic game was going on. We would hunt for eggs behind the rocking chair or in Granddaddy's shirt pocket. And then, after we found them all, we would hide them for my mom and grandma. That magic was only the price of one set of plastic eggs, which bought and brought years worth of memories.
As a mother and military spouse, one of the hard things for me has been the changes to traditions. The things I loved about growing up that I planned to do with my children haven't necessarily translated well into military life. It's easy to feel like the military is taking those things away. The reality is, though, that some of those were going to go away regardless because times change, and our spouses have their own special memories that they want to share.
My son is only sixteen months old, so it's pretty easy to splash some magic into his life. He recently learned how to lift just one leg up, leading to hours of laughter. As he gets older, he will realize more of the costs of being a military child. He won't know how to answer "Where are you from?" He'll say goodbye to a parent more often than his friends at school. And he'll be the new kid on the block far more than I ever was.
It's our responsibility as his parents and your responsibility as his community to help keep the magic alive. In our house, that starts with a bonus "about them" month. He'll get his birthday month, a half-birthday celebration, and April as a military child. He'll have to share April with whatever siblings he gets in the future, but that will always be a time when we intentionally create more magic.
There are so many ways to celebrate. We'll pick traditions that we will do when both parents are home. And we'll also choose ways to celebrate when one parent can't be. And we will always find ways to make up missed celebrations to one another. Military life is hard. Everyone we know is either going into a hard time, in the middle of a hard time, or just coming out on the other side. That's not going to change. Just because a time is hard, though, doesn't mean we can't find some magic in it. For the month of April, I am making the commitment to create more magic in my son's life (and using it as a reminder to create magic in my own). Our military kids have certainly earned the celebration for all the resiliency they have shown.