And The Earth Stood Still: July 20, 2007, Part 2

And so on April 21, 2007 my parents and I set out in a Penske Truck (that I was absolutely convinced my dad was going to drive into the side of the jersey barriers somewhere on the highway) and my little Cavailer armed with 3 books on CD for a 2-plus day trek to New York. Erik's parents would meet us there, and fortunately they and some friends of Erik's from home and driven to NY a few weeks prior to drop off the few things Erik had. All we had between us was a couple of bedroom sets and our personal items.

We got all my crap moved up the steepest staircase in history, and explored an area I had been to a grand total of 3 times in my life. On April 26 (I think) we (Pat, Ken and myself) took my parents to the airport in Syracuse where I was later told by my mom that my dad cried and said "It ain't right to leave her here by herself," and my mom said "She'll be just fine..." and I was. It was the bravest thing I'd ever done, and I'm so glad I did.

Ironically, on April 28, I went with Pat and Ken to a memorial service for the grandmother of a friend who had written and told me of her eagerness to visit Oklahoma. I remember Erik called that day, while I sat in a room surrounded by his family and friends and everyone took turns saying hello. We were all *supposed* to be together that day, but for a wedding, not a funeral. The irony that it could have been Erik's funeral was not lost on my and I can't tell you the number of times I thanked God that day that we were saying goodbye to an old woman and not a young man.

Shortly thereafter, I made my way back to New York in Erik's 4-Runner and set about figuring out my life in this new, foreign place. Erik and his commander set me up on a "blind date" with his commanders fiancé who had moved up to NY from VA shortly before the extension, and it was so nice to have a friend. The days passed and I spent time trying to make our tiny apartment, with barely anything in it, into a home, complete with brand new living room furniture (hey, it was a big deal back then!), for Erik to come home to.

Eventually, eventually, eventually, the day came. On June 5, 2007 at something like 2 in the morning -  478 days, SIXTEEN months after he left (stop and think about how long that is, people, that's 1 year and 4 months that he spent away) - Pat, Ken and I welcomed Erik home. That's a post in itself for another time. But it was hands down, the best day of my life. In fact, Erik and I agree that in many ways it was a bigger day than our wedding day because THIS meant our life together was finally starting.



This might be my favorite picture of all time.

After a quick trip to Las Vegas with friends and (the somewhat rude awakening of) learning to live together after never even having lived in the same town, a friend mentioned that he had National Guard training at the end of July and we figured we'd better get down to business planning a wedding. After making some calls and checking people's schedules, we set a date of July 20, 2007 in Westfield, Massachusetts at 1PM in the Stanley Park Rose Garden. It was a Friday, and someone along the way had mentioned that it was presumptions to get married on a Friday, forcing folks to take a day off work. We A) at that point, couldn't have cared less about anything other than actually being married and B) figured if they were going to take a week off to come to glorious Enid, Oklahoma, they'd happily just take a day off to stay in Western Mass. It was also 3 weeks away so we shifted into high gear to get things planned.

After the extension I had talked the bridal store into taking back everything we had bought for the wedding but my wedding dress and veil. So I had bridesmaids, but they didn't have dresses. I had happened to be in a store a few days after we set the date and overheard the saleslady saying she could have bridesmaids dresses in within 3 days. I approached her, told her our story and she told me to come back with everyone's measurements and she'd make it work. I did so, and she called the Jessica McClintock factory where someone went through all the tea-length dresses by hand to find one that matched our specifications, and then they sent them. They wouldn't have been my first choice, but they were perfect, and at a deep discount for all that we'd been through. The owner of the store told me that her husband had narrowly missed the extension himself.

We hired a harpist without ever having heard her play, we ordered flowers by telling the florist a friend had used for her wedding what our budget was and told her to go to town, we paid something crazy like $75 extra to have our invitations super-duper-speedily delivered and then had to chase them all over Watertown when we missed the UPS truck, in an effort to get them out before the weekend (did I mention that at the time the invitations went out we didn't have a reception site?). The cost-cutting measures didn't matter, micromanaging the details, as all brides do, didn't matter. The park would only allow us to have 50 chairs, which wasn't enough, but that didn't matter either. The baker couldn't deliver the cake on Friday because they were so busy baking for Saturday weddings (that had no doubt scheduled sooner). No problem! The dads could go pick it up before the ceremony. It didn't matter that my dad stuck his pinkie in the frosting while they were in the car. In fact, I love it.

Pinkie mark on left of bottom tier.

We had a come and go, cocktail reception. No music - we don't really dance, we were out of time and money and just didn't care. Erik put together a CD that the bistro played over the speaker in the reception hall - God, I wish I had a copy of that - he worked so hard on it. We walked in just in time for Feels Like Home by Chantal Kreviazuk. Look it up and cry your eyes out (because I am, right now). Oh here, I'll save you the effort.

"If you knew how much this moment means to me
And how long I've waited for your touch.
If you knew how happy you are making me
I never thought that I'd love anyone so much.
It feels like home to me"

We were the last ones to leave the reception, and upon leaving had to stop and pay our bill. I remember standing at the bar in my wedding gown, watching Erik sign the credit card slip. Finally. We then headed off to an after party thrown by several of Erik's friends. We couldn't have possibly felt more love on that day.

I truly don't remember all that much about the wedding. It poured all day the day before and the morning of, but that afternoon the sky was beautifully clear. There were about 70 people there, it was pretty toasty outside and a cool breeze blew through right as the pastor was talking about those who couldn't be with us. I'm sure she was talking about our missing family and friends, but at that moment I immediately thought of all those whose lives had been lost during Erik's deployment.

I remember my mom and dad being irked by the fact we were getting married in a park versus a church and the fact that it was going to be officiated by a woman *gasp*, but even they agreed it turned out far better than it ever could have at home. It was perfect, we just had to wait for it. None of the stupid obsessing I had done (that all brides do) mattered, and I remember thinking the morning of that I wasn't excited for the wedding, I was excited to be married. And I really, really was.

We have only spent like 2.5 July 20th's together since that day - I suppose that's par for the course in this lifestyle. Even as I type this (on a Saturday) Erik is at work. Cest la vie - at least he's not deployed.

I thought I knew clearly what I was getting into six years ago - and though in lots of ways ways I did, in many I didn't have a clue. What I do know, though, is that after 3 cancelled wedding dates, making our home in 5 houses in 4 different states (3 states in our first year of marriage!), enduring 2 more deployments, adopting 2 dogs, and creating 1.9 kids: life has been nothing short of the adventure I expected. Thanks for showing me the world, honey! Or at least, the world outside of the only world I knew.

 

My dad wore his cowboy boots.
Pre-extension Sheena would not have gone for this. Post-extension Sheena found it hilariously fitting.



 

There's that amazing sky I told you about

 

 

Right about here my good friend Katie exclaimed "My God, Sheena! Finally!"

Erik's Grandmother Agnes (Kens mom) was the only "extended family" that was able to make the trip on such short notice.
She died about a year later. As an aside, our now two-year-old loves to name everyone in this photo. It's framed in our dining room and has been so well loved lately that the glass broke.

My dress broke, as you can see. Pat fixed it in the bathroom of the reception site. I had never loved it - when I first tried it on I said it looked like something someone would wear to get married in a park, but I was so tired of looking that I just bought it. Prophetic words. Of course, in the end, it too was perfect.

 

And The Earth Stood Still: July 20, 2007, Part 1

When Erik and I got engaged in December of 2005 (December 22, actually), we decided we wanted to wait several months after he got back from his first deployment to get married, and we (eventually) set a date of October 13, 2007.

 

In June 2006, after he'd been gone for a few months and we had both experienced death that we didn't necessarily expect, we decided we didn't want to wait until he had been home for awhile, and moved the date to June-something-or-another, maybe the 9th, 2007.

 

A few months after that we found out that block leave was scheduled for July of 2007 and there was pretty much no way he'd be given leave to come to Oklahoma in June, so we moved it to April 28. And with that my mom and I began planning like crazy because we were already less than a year out and nothing was scheduled.

 

We met with the usual suspects: Florist, preacher, musicians, started looking for venues. Finally it was settled. Symphony Hall in Enid, America, for both the ceremony and the reception.

 

At the beginning of January, 2007, I sent out our Save the Date cards, as at least half of the guest list would be traveling from the Northeast for the wedding.

 

On January 22, I was sitting at my desk at work when an email from Erik popped up. It was entitled "Here It Goes." You might remember from the mid-2000's, those stupid survey's people used to send out about themselves. I had sent a particularly funny one (in my opinion anyway) to Erik and I thought this was his (uncharacteristic) response. I remember thinking he was up late, but I was happy to have heard from him anyway. I settled in and clicked the message. It read:

I really don't know how to say this, so I'm just going to come out and say it... We've been extended. We're not coming back until June now. I think the most obvious thing is that the wedding will have to be postponed. This info is about three hours old right now, so I don't have a lot of answers. Normally I'd call for something this important, but the phone line has about 150 people in it right now and it's only getting longer. I really don't know what to say right now, we're all still in shock. I've got to go now and talk to my soldiers, a lot of them aren't taking it well. I love you guys.

 

-Erik

 

 

I literally did not know what to do. I was working in my moms office at the time, but she was out of town. I went into the bathroom and called my best friend - sobbing of course. Then I called Erik's mom. Then I tried to pull myself together and go back to work. My mom called shortly thereafter to check in and she told me I should go home for the rest of the day. I thought that was pansy and told her I was fine. Then the person in charge since my mom was away came to my desk and told me my mom had told her to tell me to go home. So I left, stopped by my dads office for a hug, then dropped by a liquor store and went home. I spent the evening in my bedroom, crying, drinking wine straight from the bottle, penning a letter to everyone who had just received a Save the Date card - explaining what happened and why the wedding wasn't going to be rescheduled. I wasn't planning another damn thing until Erik was standing in front of me. My parents had lost enough money in all the other reschedulings.

 

He was nineteen damn days from coming home. NINETEEN. I had already bought my plane ticket to New York to welcome him home. We had already bought plane tickets to Las Vegas for my birthday and concert tickets to see Dave Matthews (twice) while we were there. We had already bought his plane ticket to Oklahoma for our wedding. I had already given notice to my job. He was nineteen stinking days from being out of serious, serious danger. What a rip-off. I went to sleep. It would be better tomorrow.

 

But of course, it wasn't that easy. Not only did I need to cancel all our wedding vendors and beg for our money back by telling our sob story (which didn't work all that well, by the way), I had to help our attendants and some guests get their money back from the airlines, I had to get *our* money back from airlines. We had a little bit of money left from the check my parents had written us for the wedding and we decided we'd reimburse anyone who couldn't get their money back from the airlines. Of course, no one would hear of that.

 

So, a few days later I mailed the letters explaining that the wedding was off. And I started getting cards back in return. Erik's dad wrote an email about how sorry he was, his grandmother wrote a card about how devastated she was for us, a cousin of my moms wrote a beautiful note about how grateful she was for Erik's service and my "sacrifice" (to this day it embarrasses me when people think I'm the one who sacrifices), the grandmother of a friend wrote and told me how she'd already "written" to the Enid tourism office and had really been looking forward to seeing the area, and how disappointed she was, and Erik's mom wrote a card, which I still have that simply said "Erik made the right choice. Love you, Pat" The love helped, but there Erik sat, in harms way for another winter and spring in hell. They were extended to help with the Spring offensive - the time when the Taliban came back over into Afghanistan after the thaw, renewed and ready to fight. People were going to die. People that should have been on planes home. I heard through the grapevine that some of those extended actually HAD been on planes home. My God, can you imagine? Here they are, thinking they've survived an especially bloody deployment, only to be turned around and sent back. I decided it was time to put on my big girl panties and stop being upset. I was safe. I was grateful I had decided to move home a few months prior and live with my family before getting married and moving away. I was happy I was home with my family.

 

But like I said, I had already given my notice at work that I'd be quitting in early April. They had already hired a replacement and just that week  I had begun training her. I had found Erik an apartment in Black River, NY earlier in the month, so after some discussion we decided that I'd go ahead and move up there as planned and wait for Erik to return. I honestly didn't know a soul there.

Misty-Eyed

This morning G came up to me as I drank my coffee in one of our living room chairs, patted my leg and said "my best fwiend, my best fwiend," all while patting my leg. And I said "I'm your best friend?! You're MY best friend!!" and he smiled, gave me a big hug and said "I wuv you!"

Moments like that don't come along very often. In fact, this one took nearly two and a half years. G is not a kid who really likes to be loved on. We do it anyway, when he's not too anti-"lovins", but there are sometimes when we'll ask for a hug and he'll say "Okay, no kisses." or he'll say no to a hug all together. I'm torn, as a mom, on whether I should respect his wishes (because so often he sets out boundaries just to see if he can, not necessarily because they're important to him) or if I should force my hugs and kisses on him because that's what kids need. In addition to this, I am *not* the favorite parent. I'm sure that's part of the plight of the stay-at-home parent, and it's never really bothered me, but to have a little validation once in awhile sure is nice. :)

I'll tell you though, his love language is, without question, words of affirmation. The kid giggles with delight when you sing his praises (sidenote: Erik also laughs when overtaken by happiness - it's pretty sweet and I'm glad G inherited this). It's hard to believe someone so small can communicate something like his love language that so clearly (or that he could communicate that he was mad at daddy for being at (what we call) "big work," (while he was in Thailand last month) because he "missed him.") - but he can. He's becoming a little person now, instead of a baby, and it's so much fun to watch.

Treasuring the Doing

“…the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make…I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of [my children] sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4, and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.”
--Anna Quindlen

I follow a few blogs in my plethora of spare time, and the summer has made them all a little less posty. I admit, this is frustrating, I need my daily dose of voyeurism.

Have I ever mentioned how much I like when people leave their blinds open at night and you can see in as you drive by? I know, it's crazy. I probably shouldn't even admit it on the interwebs. But to be clear, I'm not stopping and nosing up to the window, I'm just fascinated by the glance I get as I cruise past. I like to see how other people live. *shrug* It's probably the same reason I never unfriend anyone from Facebook and why I'm so hopelessly devoted to these few other blogs I read. Or I could just be nuts, who knows?

Currently

Listening: to our obscenely loud air conditioner and the dog snore.
Loving: Mistresses. Last night Erik asked me why that show doesn't depress me. I told him it's literally the only show that's not in reruns, so I take what I can get. We'll see if I love it come fall.
Thinking: I should NOT have eaten so much lunch. It's making creating my grocery list nearly impossible.
Wanting: My house to be clean for Saturday without any actual effort. And a good nights sleep. Hello end of pregnancy miserable-ness.
Reading:  Nothing. Nada. Zilch. LOSER!