Thank you for the compliment!
I’ve been tromping around the world with my soldier for almost 20 years now and it’s not so bad.
I think that the worst was this last deployment. Both the kids are teenagers now and they really do need their father more than ever.
I always tell the young wives who’re stressed about “daddy” being gone so much the same thing, “They’re fine when they’re babies and toddlers. As ‘kids’, they’ll miss him, but adjust. But TEENAGERS! Teenagers - I don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl - teenagers need their dads.”
This op-tempo really is hard to maintain. The military has grown by tens of thousands since this all began and it’s still not enough. We need to *win it* and *end it*. (I do love the liberals reaction to the troop stress. “Let’s just give up and let everybody go home!”) :-)
At least they aren’t calling it a “peace-keeping mission” and screwing us out of the deployment pay like they did in the 90’s.
I hear you. Teenagers were a significant factor in my decision to retire rather than deploy again, lo the many years ago. They need close attention, even if they’re *good* kids. Hang tough Marie.
TC
I hear you on that one. Our kids were teens for hubby's 2nd tour to Korea, so I got to log all the hours required by the state for our daughter to get a driver's license. It wasn't quite as stressful as I thought, but I was more than happy to let my husband take over when it was our son's turn. I'm also glad they were a bit too young to drive when we were at Ft. Hood - some crazy drivers in that part of Texas! It seemed we had as many fatalities there per year as we do in the whole state of Hawaii.