I see my icon has been on the sidebar for a while, and I was introduced oh, almost a month ago, but I haven't posted yet. I've been tortured over what to write. As a reserve family, we don't deal with the same daily issues active duty families do. But when we have issues, we really have issues. Luckily, ours have been minor, and my husband's military career has just sort of bumped along, no real ups or downs besides a few false alarm deployments. His civilian career is much the same, but I think it's because he's a very calm, efficient guy who doesn't make waves or freak out over every little thing. That's my job.
I feel a little hesitant posting just now since we haven't had to deal with the myriad of issues so many readers and other posters have. We've been consumed with family oriented things, mainly plowing through the paperwork for our second adoption. However, as a Reserve spouse, I am in an interesting position for interacting with civilians. Not everyone with whom we come into contact knows my husband is in any way connected to the military. Many assume he's not because of his civilian job-- he's a social worker for a large, East Coast city. If they do know, they assume we're not really military (read, not really supportive of the military or its missions) so they feel free to say negative things in front of us, things they would never say if he were active duty. So every once in a while, when someone says something particularly annoying, obnoxious, or thoughtless, I'm sure I'll post on it. I have a few zingers, but we'll save that for another time.
These comments depress, annoy, and sometimes frighten me. So when we have a positive interaction, it really makes my day. Hopefully there will be more positive stories to share, and that's how I'll start off.
This year, our son dressed in a kid's knock off set of Navy dress blues for Halloween. We live in a multi-cultural, middle class neighborhood. Our neighbors are of many different ethnicities, ages, religions, educational levels, career tracks, with a decent amount of first generation immigrants and newly arrived folks. He was the hit of the night. My husband took the kids out, and everyone loved his outfit. They saw a little boy dressing up in a military uniform as a positive, wholesome thing. Many commented on how nice it was to see a kid dressed as someone who in real life made a positive contribution to society, rather than the usual axe murderers, ghouls, etc that we get a lot of around here. A few people asked if he was dressed up as his father, to which he replied, "No, I still have my own hair."
It was a nice change from what we've been hearing lately, and we welcomed it. Hopefully I'll have many more stories like that to share from my position straddling the divide between a military and civilian existence.
