I hate not seeing my husband. I hate not waking up with him, going to sleep with him, giving him a kiss as he leaves for work, and - well, you know. Other things.
I miss him terribly when he is gone. So it's safe to say that the first time he deployed we made a decision that had our civilian family (I had gone "home" for the duration of the deployment) just could not comprehend.
I told him that if R & R was offered, I didn't want him to come home.
Air Force Guy was not scheduled for a year long deployment, so it wasn't likely that R & R would be offered. But with extensions and what-not going on, you never know what to plan for. And, as it turned out, that was never an option available to us anyway.
But the rule stood - don't come home on R & R.
And it wasn't because I didn't want to see my husband, either. I wanted to be with him more than anything. I missed him with every part of my body. But I was scared. I was afraid that if he came home and took his eye off the ball for a few weeks, he might stutter when it was time to get back in the game. And if he stuttered, I was afraid someone would get hurt. Or worse.
I think there are an awful lot of non-military folks out there who know me and think that I don't love my husband after that little episode. I tend to be fairly honest when people ask me questions, because I talk so much that I would just spill the truth anyway. So, if someone asked (and you'd be surprised how many people did), I told them the truth. To say they were shocked was an understatement.
The memories of our R & R decision came back to me this weekend. AFG is not deployed right now, but with the exceptions of three weekends, he's gone the rest of the year. He's been gone since the beginning of June.
When he came home this weekend, I was absolutely excited. I wanted to see my husband so bad it was consuming my every thought. And we had a lovely weekend.
AFG headed back Sunday morning, and that's when the trouble started. His mind had shifted from "training mode" back to "I'm at home - what's for dinner?" He forgot a few basics, he was behind the curve. He was doing things wrong.
And now we're back to, "I love you more than anything, but don't come home until this is done."
After a few very pointed (and fairly rude) statements my direction when I admitted this to people, I stopped talking about the "No R & R" rule. It sure felt good when one of my friends, a Brownie leader in my daughters' troop, admitted that she and her husband had chosen to forgo R & R for the same reasons I had. And they had gone through a 15 month deployment! Made our decision seem silly, really - they had actually PRACTICED what we were considering. But she understood what I was saying.
I think I might give her a call sometime this week to talk about the new "Don't Come Home" rule for this go-'round. I need to talk to someone who doesn't think I'm trying to hide an affair or something.
