Faint of heart

I’m sitting in Pudong International Airport. I have been in China now for nine days and am finally headed back to the States. My time in China has proven to be quite interesting—a true, once in a lifetime experience.

But first let me say this. As amazing an experience as this has been, I still would have preferred being home to see J’s return. Oh yes…I forgot to tell you all: J is home safe and sound. He returned from his deployment *literally* six hours before I flew to China, and therefore we did in fact miss seeing each other. Sigh. But at least I left for my trip knowing that he was on US soil, free from imminent danger (other than excursions on the town with his brother, which always hold a certain degree of risk.)

So yes, the missing each other business sucked. And of course, while there’s J’s Irony Theory to consider, I’ve gotta to ya—this timing wasn’t just ironic. It was straight mocking. As I sat at the airport, waiting to board the plane, the TVs above me were blaring CNN’s broadcast of the welcome home ceremony of J’s unit. No lie, I watched it on TV, all the while squinting at the tv and, quite meanly I might add, muttering the words “are you kidding me?” to myself…and most everyone around me. There might have been tears.

And so it was hard not being home to see J get settled back in. I was not-so-secretly jealous of everyone who got to see him first (which seems irrational and silly, but still…) He’s already had his first drink back and his first night on the town which I missed (and let’s be honest, those two events coincided. Please reference excursion with his brother mentioned above.) He’s gone back to work now, and I don’t really know what’s going on there. He has new roommates and a new routine. It’s been really hard for me, knowing he was home and not being able to share it, or even talk to him regularly. We seriously talked more frequently and regularly when he was in a war zone in Afghanistan than we did in the last 9 days. Thanks, Mao. (In a related story, once taken away from me a la Communist China, I realize I am in fact addicted to Facebook.)

So leaving the country on the day your fiancé comes back from war and making it through the additional salt-in-wound time apart…not for the faint of heart.

All of that having been said, China was amazing-- Such a strange and crazy and active and wonderful place. The whole time though, the phrase that kept repeating in my head was “This place is not for the faint of heart.” (I’m sensing a theme…)

There’s a very real and interesting dichotomy in Shanghai which was where I spent all 9 of my days in China. Shanghai is two cities simultaneously.

I stayed in what is known as the Financial District. It is shiny. It is beautiful. It is across the street from Shanghai’s version of Central Park. I stayed in a five-star hotel that was a beautiful mix of Western and Eastern. And so luxurious. I was safe and warm and VERY well taken care of. I was next to the main drag of the city, the pedestrian street that runs from city center all the way to the riverfront, about a two mile walk. And that, my friends, was a combination of Vegas and Times Square, plus about two million people (that’s not even hyperbole.) It is busy and crowded. It is bright and loud. There is pushing. Everyone is shopping or posing for pictures. Street peddlers and food vendors are coming at you from every direction. It is very overwhelming to all of your senses, but in an exotic and beautiful way. But it’s not for the faint of heart either. You have to keep your wits about you, stand up to the street peddlers, and confidently state what it is you need, which is most typically for them to buzz off.

The good news about the tourist district/ financial district is that it is very safe, and enough of the signs have some English on them and enough of the people have basic, conversational English that you can get by without knowing much Chinese. I’ve got hello, goodbye, thank you, and (JUST as importantly) no thank you down pat now. Other than that, you just have to wing it and mime things out.

But such fun local things I did!

I went to the shopping district and haggled for gifts for my friends.

I learned how to eat mystery food with chopsticks (Note, silly Westerners…they do not provide forks. You learn to use a chopstick or you go hungry. It’s amazing how good you get when you’re starving.)

I fell in love with some food and much of the culture.

I got a two hour (yes, two hour) massage that cost me a whopping $30 USD. And it was awesome. (I’m anticipating the massage parlor jokes you’re thinking about right now and not finding any of them funny.)

I have never met a group of people more given to kind hospitality and manners.

(Unless of course there is transportation involved. And then all bets are off. I legitimately feared for my life ONLY when I was trying to cross a street or was in a cab. When I first got there, I was very curious as to why no one was using the phrase “excuse me” or “I’m sorry.” And I’m here to tell you, here’s why: if you stopped to say excuse me in a city of millions of people, all of whom are trying to cross the exact same street as you at the same time in a 11 second window of time during which cars don’t actually pay attention to stoplights…or, you know, lines on the road, you’d get plowed over. I witnessed, not kidding four separate car/ pedestrian accidents. Yup. Truth. You just have to look directly across to the other side of the street and walk in straight line at a steady pace- no fear! And in the cab…well, just close your eyes and pray.)

The skyline of Shanghai is decorated by shiny new, amazingly beautiful and truly unique buildings. I believe that Shanghai is the last bastion of unabashed architectural renegade. If I designed buildings, I would want to build in Shanghai. Each building is more strange and beautiful than the next—resembling the skyline in an episode of the Jetson’s. Chic, sophisticated. Brilliant…and strange. Scattered among these shiny buildings and tourist areas are remnants of old Shanghai—The French Concession and the English-held shoreline—the Bund, with hotels like the Plaza and the Waldorf that still have speak-easy type jazz clubs and 1940’s classic charm.

It’s easy to get lost in the beauty of the new and forget that these beautiful skylines and modern buildings are but a small and very recent part of Shanghai’s history.

One day I had nothing to do – no meetings to make, no duties to attend to—just me, and the city. It was incredible to wander. Once you get more than about two blocks off of any of these major tourist areas you remember where you are. You are in a developing country, dirty and gritty and smelling of urine, only very recently thrust into the limelight of the world as money and people and commerce and business-dealings have been thrust upon them. China has basically experienced an economic growth spurt resembling that of an active 13 year-old-boy. And just like that kid who has grown 6 inches in 3 months and can’t find shoes that fit him anymore, China is equally clumsy, tripping over its own feet, trying so hard to stay in balance between the old traditional customs and the new economic happenings.

I wandered those backstreets with my camera a little bit each day. I went to the outdoor markets where they brought in fresh eels and octopi and butchered chickens in the street. I went with a long-time China native as he did his market shopping for fresh grains and greens daily. I sat on a tiny stool in a tiny tea shop as I participated in an authentic tea ceremony. And I have to say, that that part of China is beautiful too. But it is not for the faint of heart either.

The last 10 days, with all its different adventures, has been about bravery. About taking chances, leaps of faith, embracing the difficult, and sometimes disappointing, and spinning it into something life-altering. I missed j’s homecoming (and honestly, it’s gonna take me awhile to mentally recover from that—I’m not quite there yet.) But I also went to China. And learned and grew and explored and tried all sorts of crazy different things. And it was scary, but I think that I realize that life is not for the faint at heart. It’s about being brave and embracing the unknown.

And now, for the greatest adventure of all: Home to J.

Ironic

Irony: a (1) : incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2) : an event or result marked by such incongruity b : incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play —called also dramatic irony, tragic irony

One of the songs in pop culture that has always driven me crazy is Alanis Morrissette’s “Ironic.” In the song, she lists a number of events she claims as being annoyingly ironic. Yet in point of fact, the only thing that is annoying about this list is that none of the things are, in fact, ironic. “It’s like rain, on your wedding day. It’s a free ride, when you’ve already paid; it’s the good advice that you just didn’t take...”

Given our definition above (and I tend to trust my boy Meriam Webster), irony is not just having unfortunate events you’d like not to have happen, happen, but is instead when basically the exact opposite of what you expect to have happen, actually does. The events in this tune: Inconvenient? Yes. Annoying? Yes. But ironic? Not even close.

I used to get soo mad when I heard this song because the English geek in me found myself pleading with the radio: “But Alanis…those things aren’t ironic!” (I would scream this at the radio, by the way.) Who bases an entire song off of the misuse of a literary device? (Clearly, this is a rhetorical question...)

I’ve always been one to use irony in my writing and in my storytelling. Crushing people’s expectations can be fun. But not when you don’t do it right. Silly.

In every dating relationship, you finally get to the point at which you air all the dirty laundry: Not just sharing the exes and the childhood heartaches, but you start to reveal the little personal quirks…the “you’d-better-know-this-now-so-you-can-still-walk-out” type things. I of course clued J in to my big two-- my often quite unbearable stubbornness (pretty sure he’d already figured that out all by himself…) and the fact that seeing me cry holds absolutely no indication of how I’m actually feeling (I can seem like a cold, cold horrible person when the tears don’t come in very sad and serious situations…and I can cry for an hour after watching a Cosby Show repeat to which I have tied some ridiculous memory. Rhyme and reason, I have not.)

When it came J’s turn, I held my breath in anticipation. What could he possibly tell me? Very calmly and rationally, but with a great deal of seriousness, he turned to me and said “You should probably know, that irony follows me everywhere.”

Irony? That was the other shoe dropping? I gave him tears and stubbornness and he needed to tell me about the irony?

I remembered thinking it was sweet and funny and a little anticlimactic at the time. But being a lover of all things ironic, this merely endeared him more to me. He was ironic. How sweet! He had told me the opposite of what I had expected—ha HA! Irony again! I loved this game!

But here’s the thing. He wasn’t kidding.

I’ve never met another person on the planet that finds himself in ironic situations more. And true—it could be that we’re just hypersensitive and looking for it. But honestly, I don’t think that’s it. This kid is an irony magnet. And it would be amazing and hilarious to watch…if I wasn’t now almost always involved in it. (Curses!)

And thus, we come to tonight’s story.

I’m happy to say that we’re pretty sure that J is home within the week. He is definitely on his way, making the 5-6 day trek from one country to the next…from sleeping in one airport to the next airport, until finally he weaves his way home. In my head, I can see the old cartoon graphics from the Indiana Jones films where they drew little lines following the airplanes across maps of Europe and the Middle East as Indy made his way from one exotic locale to another (I’m positive J will not see his flight pattern with such romantic eyes.)

Yes friends, he’s in route home. Thank God. Close to three weeks before we thought he would be. I’m so excited that I can hardly stand it. And yet…what does this blessed event of his early return bring to us?

On Friday of this week, I leave for a 9 day business trip to Shanghai. Yes. That’s right. It was supposed to happen right BEFORE J's return...something to keep me distracted in the final days and weeks of his deployment. Instead? Just about the time J is putting his feet back on US soil after a year-long deployment, I’ll be leaving to fly literally halfway around the world.

I’ll let that sink in for ya.

After a series of deep breaths, long sighs, and (not surprisingly) some tears on my part (those were actually real ones), we both just sorta had to shrug. Nothing either one of us can do to change our job schedules. No getting out of it or rushing it or hurrying or delaying. It is what it is, and we just have to learn how to roll with it (this, by the way, could be my Army wife manta…)

“So, I’ll not have facebook there since I’m pretty sure it’s illegal. And I might have hit or miss internet. I’ll have my cell phone, but it will cost a lot and it will probably be bad reception, so maybe just a minute or two a day. But I think we can text, and as soon as I find a…”

J just started laughing. “Listen to us. Is this REALLY the conversation we’re having?”

It was almost identical to the one we had had in the first week when he went Over There and we were trying to figure out how we’d be communicating from halfway around the world.

“Is this really happening? Are you REALLY going to be home almost two weeks before I get to see you?”

“Irony, baybay. Irony.”

While it doesn’t really rhyme, Alanis, you might consider something like this for your song next time: “It’s like sending your significant other to a war zone halfway around the world for a year only to leave to go halfway around the world yourself on the day he gets home thus prolonging the time apart in an annoying and painful fashion.”

Now THAT’S ironic. Don’t ya think?

The New FRG

One of the most frustrating parts of joining a well-established organization well AFTER it has been established is the catching up one is forced to do when you finally become a member. These organizations have been doing things THEIR way for a very long time. And I’m here to tall ya’, you’ll not be changing them. So you’d better get on board. Fast.

And there is no finer evidence of this phenomenon than the military. Having not grown up in or around military families, I had no frame of reference when I started dating J. I didn’t know the rank structure. I didn’t know branches or the jobs or the duties. I couldn’t tell a Colonel from a Capitan. I didn’t know the difference between a brigade and a battalion (still no idea on that one, actually.) Hell, I couldn’t even tell time correctly.

It was a lot like trying to learn a new language through immersion... And not the “I’ll-drop-you-in-Puerto-Rico-where-all-the-signs-are-in-two-languages-and-you’ll-figure-it-out” immersion. I’m talking Costa Rican Rainforest Emersion. Good damn luck. Try not to die.

Additionally, everything in the Army has a codeword. Or a number. Or an acronym. I grew very quickly to understand that lest you look like an idiot, you just listened to these shorthand conversations and then later in the day pulled out your decoder ring to figure out what you’d just talked about. To this day, Army folks will say to me, “Oh, what’s J’s QLX CTR (or some such silliness. All the acronyms sound like this in my head…) And I usually nod politely and make some sort of compensating joke like “Well, his t-shirt is an L and his coffee an XL.” Ha ha ha! (Such a idiot.)

Now, for the wildly intrepid (gluttons for punishment) they have classes you can take to learn all this stuff. But honestly, I think that these classes are mostly geared towards the better-halves of the 19-year-old Joes (Joes = young enlisted men. Look how I’m picking up the jargon.) Things like: learning how to communicate with your husband; how to tend to the kids while he’s away; and social graces for the young thrust into potentially awkward social situations in a manufactured social structure. Oh, and they teach you the acronyms.

These classes hold no interest for me.

In my (very limited, admittedly) experience with the Army, there seems to have emerged two pretty distinct classes of Army spouses, so wildly opposite that they seem irresponsibly placed on the same continuum. First, there are wives of the enlisted men who tend to be young (young, young, so young) whose boyfriend/ husband has gone straight from high school to the service; they have married and procreated at 19, and now are at home and exceedingly lonely (and very alone) because the strapping young men have been shipped Over There somewhere for deployments.

On the other end of the spectrum is what I call the Old Guard: the Wives of the Generals and the Colonels—the long time Army wives who refer to their husbands by rank instead of first name; who have always lived on post wherever their career military husband has been stationed, and have stayed at home and raised the kids and made house or had a very portable job they could do on the side (nurse, substitute teacher.) Because for the Old Guard, their job, their life’s work, was to be the General’s Wife.

The way the Army spouse structure works is that these Old Guard ladies run a group called the FRG. (That stands for Family Readiness Group…I realize that I have used that acronym several times throughout the blog without defining it…in essence doing exactly what I’m railing on--just using organizational acronyms and assuming that others knew what I was talking about or would figure it out. My bad.)

What the FRG does is reach out to those 19 year old brides whose husbands are deployed and helps them with coping skills. And plans activities to keep their minds off other stuff. And teaches them about Army life. And life in general. And helps babysit the kids. And talks them out of cheating on their husbands. It’s a really truly wonderful thing that these Army ladies do for one another, and I admire the hell out of them for it. For the young wives of the young soldiers these are essential life skills.

But wow, is that not me. I am not now nor was I ever one of those 19 year olds. And I really don’t see me being one of those Old Guard wives ever either.

In my experience, the demographic of the military wife is rapidly changing. And while that FRG model fits a good deal of the people that the classes and activities and services are intended to support, they do not fit well for what I am calling the “New Military Wife.” Or possibly better yet, the metaphorical “middle children” of the Army spouse family.

The New Military Wife is older. Wiser. Has been around the block a time or two. Possibly married into the Army later in life. Have had their own lives and their own careers for a long time. Have never lived on a Post. For the women who have not been a 19-year-old for a very long time…and who will never *ever* refer to their husbands by rank instead of first name. For women who keep the Times and the New Yorker in the bathroom for reading and not “Chicken Soup for the Military Wife’s Soul.” (…it exists.)

There’s this whole middle class (middle age?) emerging in the ranks of military spouses. And it’s funny…you find yourself seeking each other out at parties…And let me tell you, it’s pretty easy to spot one another.

Please understand, and I can’t really highlight this enough, I am speaking in generalizations. And I am applying *no judgment* to any of these groups of people—The ones who offer these classes or the ones who attend. Everyone does something amazing in the small world of military spouses in order to get by and to help each other out. And that is honorable.

But in my experience, the thing that helps us all get through the day best is finding someone “just like me” who gets what you’re going through and can help you work through it all. And I can tell you this: I’m not the Old Guard. And I’m definitely not the 19 year old. I’m something different than that. And during J’s deployment I have found myself looking for others in that same boat.

And better still, I’m starting to be sought out by others also in that boat. Since J left for Over There, I have been set up on no less than three Army-wife-blind-dates. The story always goes like this—“I have a friend whose husband is getting sent over and she just needs an army-wife friend who gets what she’s like and what’s going on and can help her through. Will you meet her?”

And of course I do, because I think that’s awesome. And I *DO* understand a little bit what they are going through.

These are usually early 30’s women, whose husbands have maybe not been deployed since the two of them have been together…or that are maybe National Guard and they just never assumed he would actually become active. These are women who have Careers (capital C) and routines and who do not now nor have ever lived on a Post and have never seen, let alone thought about what military life on a daily basis looks like. Not to mention thinking through a deployment.

And to be honest, these ladies (much like me, I think) haven’t really been seeking comfort and support as much as they have been seeking non-party-line information. They don’t want it sugar-coated. They don’t want arts and crafts activities to take their minds off things. They don’t have that kind of time. They just want to be recognized and have someone sooth fear with fact; uncertainty with information. We’re strong, bright, independent women: Give it to us straight-- We can take it.

This blog has actually brought several other friends of a friend to me as well, saying things like “Thank God someone is talking about all this” or my personal favorite: when some of my new Army wife friends have supplied me alternate interpretations for the FRG acronym (hilarious…and inappropriate…) I’m happy that I have found my own little network of strong, middle-aged, no-nonsense Army spouses and vets (yes…there are men and soldiers in my little network, too!) who can tell it like it is, and have frank conversations about how much all this sucks.

Because at the end of the day, we are a group of logical, rational, information consumers. And for many of us, the only way to make it through something as illogical, irrational, and completely emotional as dealing with a deployment is to arm us with experience and evidence. And while we all march on with our crazy lives at home, we’ll be able to take comfort in knowledge and in each other. Our NEW FRG! Sans glitter.

Petty

Today, after an extraordinarily long writing hiatus, I feel compelled to return here to quote two great American wordsmiths: My mom, and Tom Petty.

In the immortal words of my mother, “if you can’t say anything nice, then shut up.” (Is this ironic to anyone else?)

Herein lies the excuse for not writing for lo these last three weeks. I haven’t had a single thing nice to say. Yes, I have been insanely busy at my job, working non-stop days from 7-7 and coming home, shoveling food in my face and falling asleep at 9 p.m. (true story…) And so finding the time has been difficult, yes. But honestly, more than that, I’ve just been angry, and truly felt like everything I had to say needed to be self-censored.

Basically, I put myself in a timeout.

Angry is a hard emotion for me. I rarely, rarely get really mad, and when I do, I don’t know what to do with it. It sneaks up on me like a lion on the prowl on the savanna who pounces with no warning from behind on its prey. And I’m just a poor unsuspecting zebra, swatting flies and just trying to get in a decent day’s work at the watering hole.

Now all the other iterations of the angry I do for sure. Those I know: I get frustrated. I’ll sometimes get flustered and often impatient. And I know disappointment intimately. But all-out, pants-on-fire-pissed-off…I just don’t really do much. Not normally.

But here I am, squinting my eyes suspiciously and shaking my head slowly while pointing my finger at everyone I see, scowl plastered on my mug, on the verge of saying something I don’t really mean almost every minute of the day. My Army wife friend K told me that as deployment time came and went that it would be predictable, these angry waves of emotion…and that right before J came home I would lose my mind. You win again, K. You win again.

When J left for over there, the two weeks leading up to his leaving were miserable for me—by far the hardest. Because everything was completely unknown—up in the air. We had no routine, we had no schedule and we swam in an ocean of uncertainty without even a set of Dora waterwings. And we never really knew if TODAY was the day he was going to leave or whether or not it was another day for him to haul ass over to wait some more. I hated this time. My heart permanently lived in my throat, directly underneath whatever it was I had eaten that day and was convinced that my nerves would cause me to vomit across the room at any given moment (I’ll let that image sink in a minute for you…There it is.)

Now that we are “inside the window of return time” we’re back to the waiting game that I’m so bad at (by the way, “inside the window of return time” is the vaguest most ridiculous, most unhelpful measure of time ever put forth in the history of ever… worse than a score…way worse than a fortnight.) And I’m back to being on edge. Constantly.

And while the emails I’ve been getting from the FRG should be making me feel better, they just make me mad. (I mock them…I can’t help it. I’m know I’m being really petty, but there it is.) “Join us to help make posters for your soldier’s return!” No. I don’t think so. I don’t want to. And you can’t make me. He doesn’t even like posters (my impression of a 4-year-old, Army wife, apparently. Oh… there’s a joke in there that I’m going to let go for now. Restraint.) And the email that said “We hope you’re getting excited for your soldier’s return!” Really? Is that what you hope? I seriously came so close to writing back and saying “Nah, not really. I don’t really even like him very much…” You *hope* I’m excited? Sigh…annnnnd eye-roll. (Eye-rolls—also a very good passive aggressive angry tool I’m learning. We really all stay 4 years old somewhere inside of us our whole lives, don’t we?)

And by the way, if we’re making a list (I like lists…) of the worst days to spend alone when you’re “inside the window of return time” it’s definitely Valentine’s Day which happened this week too. And it’s funny-- it’s not because J and I really make a big deal out of Valentine’s Day. We don’t, and I don’t expect it. It’s that everyone else seems to. And when all day long you hear about the flowers and candy and reservations and everyone is gushing over their SUPER wonderful fill-in-the-blanks, well, insert exasperated face here (and an eye-roll for good measure.)

And then the conscientious ones realize what they have said, look at you all sad-like and fumble for something compensatory like “But he’ll be home soon though, right?” or better yet “You should take *yourself* out for a glass of wine tonight!” This did not help matters.

I pretty much wanted to punch everyone in the face on Valentine’s Day.

And of course because we are “inside the window” there was a small part of my heart that half believed that J would walk in the door… that I would be minding my own business at my desk, working away, and look up and there he’d be. These are silly daydreams, and I know better than to waste time indulging in them. But it was Valentine’s Day. And after all, contrary to popular opinion, I am a girl.

And of course, all of this feels taboo to say out loud. And as much as it feels good to get all of this off my chest here, I also don’t like sharing this part very much. I know that J reads these posts, and compared to what he is doing, I know that I have it so so easy. I don’t want to complain and I don’t want him to feel badly. I just miss him and I’m ready for him to be home. And I hate waiting.

But…I wait anyway. And I sigh a lot. And as you read this, I’m probably also rolling my eyes at someone. But let me also give you a few reassurances.

I am fine. And I will be finer soon. Please understand that I already know that I’m being petty and self-indulgent here and that I will happily snap out of it sometime in the “window” of the next couple of weeks. This is not a permanent State of Grumble. (I know people who could be the Governor of the State of Grumble… This is not me.) And please don’t think I don’t recognize the love and support of my friends and family. I soo do. I know you’re there. And I couldn’t have made it this far without you.

But all that said, until J comes home, please do not ask me for a countdown, for I no longer know (note its removal from the top of this entry…another reason I haven’t felt like writing, as this originated as a way to countdown to his return. Since I don’t have a countdown, that part feels useless…)

I’m just waiting now. And while I do that, it’s the words of the great Tom Petty that are running through my head. It’s true:

The waiting is the hardest part; Everyday, you get one more yard. You take it on faith, you take it to the heart…The waiting is the hardest part.

Yessir. It is.