Military Strong

About a week ago, I saw many military spouses post on social media their feelings regarding an article that was circulating the internet about a high school in Fairfax County that played a game with students called "Identify Your Privilege" with boxes labeled Bingo style with types of privilege in them, one being "Military Kid."

First, this post is my OPINION, as both a military spouse and the mom of 4 military kids, and MY feelings regarding this ONE box (and only as it pertains to my kids and what their dad does because even in the military, all experiences are different based on the service member's job). All the posts I read really made me stop and think because there have been so many times where people have said to me, "I don't know how you do it", or "I could never deal with that" regarding this life, so I would just like to share my thoughts for any other moms who might be feeling the same when it comes to our kids and this life because the fact of the matter is, we chose this life, they didn't.

If at any point you disagree, feel free to stop reading and move on with your day.

On the surface, I can understand why some may associate being a "Military Kid" as being privileged. There are some military kids who have seen more of this world and/or country in their first 10 years of life than I have in my 36 years due to their parent(s) being stationed at different bases around the world. Though not all military kids experience this, I guess the possibility of it happening at some point is good enough to warrant a 'privilege' point. Even my own children have lived in 3 different states across the entire US, whereas I lived my entire life in the same town until I was 18 and only left to go to college.

Random events of coolness are also something that pops to my mind. As an example, my kids get to see Santa fly in on a helicopter almost every Christmas at my husband's squadron Christmas party. They also get to see an air show put on by the squadron (sometimes, as it's not a definite thing for every squadron or even every year) for a family day where they see all the helicopters do all the things that their dad does at work. Another 'cool factor' point.

The opportunity of living on base is also a nice bonus for military kids (if their parents choose to live on base, as we did with our last two duty stations, and if there is military base housing close enough to where they are stationed and no, it is not free, we do in fact pay for housing even on base). Military neighborhoods almost always have tons of kids close in age to play with, lots of parks, they are safe to just ride around in with your friends and build forts, and usually when you live on base the housing community will have special events several times a year for the families. When we lived in Yuma, housing would put on a movie in the park every few months where they'd serve dinner, have popcorn and snow cones, and project a movie on a giant outdoor movie screen.

The base theater there would also have free movies once a week in the summer because, you know, it was 120 degrees outside.

But I have to say that for me, when I hear the word 'privilege', it means that a person or people have it easy, or easier than most, or that the road is paved smoother and there are very few, if any, obstacles to overcome in their journey regardless of whether we are talking about childhood, career paths, financially, whatever. That is not what I think of when I think of my children and everything they have gone through in their short lives.

My oldest, who is now 14, has started at a new school for the past 4 YEARS in a row. The summer before his 6th grade year we moved from Jacksonville, NC to Yuma, AZ. As he was approaching middle school years, I asked the mom groups in Yuma what schools I should be looking at and the number 1 school that kept getting repeated was Gowan Science Academy. So luckily, as it is a charter school that goes by a lottery system for new students, I applied as soon as registration opened, and he got in.

However, GSA is only a K-6 school. So, for his 7th grade year, he needed to start at a new school even though we were still in Yuma. I know this was my choice to send him to a school for only one year, but I was looking at quality of education when choosing his school, not just location, something that constant PCS-ing forces parents to do with each move and new house selection process.

Luckily, in the summer of 2019 I was hired at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School as one of their middle school teachers. This meant that my oldest and my second oldest (who was starting Kindergarten that year) would attend there the next two years while we finished out our orders and I taught. Great!

Well, after just one year teaching and my boys attending school, my husband's 3-year orders were cut down to 2 and we wound up moving to California the summer before my oldest would start his 8th grade year. And as we all know, after 8th grade comes high school. So, 4 years, 4 different schools for my oldest.

But it's not all about school life, sometimes it's about home life...and what's missing.

My now 7-year-old was born when his father was deployed to Afghanistan. The first time he heard his voice was over the telephone at the hospital. The first time he saw his daddy was on the computer screen on a Skype call two weeks later. He was two months old before his father held him for the first time.

Three months after my husband came home, he needed to leave for a month for training across the country. When our son was almost 9 months old, he deployed again. We celebrated DJ's first birthday with daddy on a computer screen, again, and when you asked my son, "Where's da-da?" he would turn and point to a picture on the wall in our living room (see picture below). To him, his father was 2 dimensional and came in a rectangle frame.

Since then, my husband has only deployed once, last year, but all of the kids (minus the baby) were able to know what was going on and that daddy was gone and not coming home for a long time. And in kid world, 6 months might as well be 6 years. They had their first Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's Day, Spring Break, Easter all without daddy there. To give them something to look forward to, we would do an ice cream for dinner night each month on the day that daddy left and add a scoop to our ice cream cone on the wall. It was a way to make something so sad a little bit brighter that one more month was down, and we celebrated with ice cream.

Not only are military children forced into learning how to handle the big emotions of a parent being gone for long periods of time, but they also have to learn to say good-bye to friends that they make each year. We have been blessed with the street we were given a house on here in Cali and there are so many kids that are the same age as my middle two (my oldest has kids his age as well, but further from the house, and as the oldest he's able to go farther on his own to play) but this summer, almost all of them are moving.

My 5- and 7-year-old will say goodbye to friends that they have made, some since the very first day we moved in, and have played with on sports teams and just in general every day for the past two years. Friends are made fast when you're young, but it's also an age where they say goodbye, they see the moving truck, but they still wake up the next day and ask to play with that same friend that just left and it's heartbreaking to have to explain to your kids that they can't anymore.

I can remember growing up with the same friends, or group of girls on the same softball team, from the time I was 10 years old until I graduated high school. That's a critical time for kids. They talk about ALL the things that you can't or don't want to with your parents, they learn who they are or who they want to be...it breaks my heart knowing my oldest doesn't have that and that my middle two probably won't either.

Family is big with us. Something else my kids are missing is their grandparents and their aunts, uncles, and cousins. They see their grandparents about twice a year. They have an aunt and uncle that they have only seen once in three years, and another aunt and uncle that they have seen once a year for the past 4 years. Thank God for Facetime.

This life is hard. I have lost count of the times I have had someone say to me, "I don't know how you do it." Honestly, I just do it because I have to. I fell in love with a man who dreamed of becoming a pilot. We met before he got into the Marine Corps so I could have said nope, not for me, and taken a different path. But I wanted him, so here we are 5 moves between 4 states, across the country and back, four kids later.

And our kids? Man did we get lucky with the kids we are blessed to call ours. They are great, have great personalities, are strong, loving, adventurous, independent (although I wouldn't mind being out of the teenage stage already) but they take to this life because it's what they know. When they have had to say goodbye to so many friends with every move we make, or that their friends make, it's hard, but they do it. When they have to say goodbye to so many family members as the one or two visits that they get a year come always too quickly to an end, it's hard, but they do it.

When they have to say goodbye to their daddy who has to leave on deployment or for training and will miss so many bedtime stories and goodnight kisses and holidays and..... They hate it, but they do it. In my opinion, there is nothing privileged about tears, about goodbyes, about constant worry, about abrupt endings to friendships just starting, about being the new kid (again), or having adult emotions in tiny bodies, or the uncertainty of life in three-year intervals. My children are many, many things, and so much more than even I can see right now. I prefer not to look at my children as privileged, or as any one thing that labels them, because what they show the world they are is so much more.

They are Strength. Courage. Adaptable. Flexible. Grace. Joy. Perseverance. Love.