Live and Breathe Military?

This is something I wrote in 2017. I had taken Last Born to my friend’s Basic Training graduation because we lived close and I could go and show my support of her, and this conversation with another graduates’ grandmother happened.
It was something I couldn’t get off my mind so I wrote about it, and now I’m sharing it with you:

Last week at basic grad, Last Born and I sat in front of a sweet grandmother who was very grandmotherly towards her. We chatted quite a bit and when I said that my husband was military, and an instructor there but on pat leave, she said “You must eat, live and breathe military then!?”

It kinda struck me.
I just answered “Not really, it’s just and job.”
Probably because that’s what my husband has always said.

But it is more than than a job.

We don’t have military everything.
My house isn’t full of cadpat (Canadian Forces cammo).
We don’t “eat, live and breathe” it… but it is a part of our life that touches every other part in every way.

• We don’t get to choose where we live, or for how long.
• We don’t get to choose our neighbors, hell we don’t even meet them half the time.
• We have to find new friends for ourselves, and our children, every few years, most of which become family, and then the next posting makes us drift apart to strangers, or at least just acquaintances again.
• You never have a doctor and you often just hope to God that nobody gets hurt or sick enough to need to see one because we all know what wait times in emergency rooms are when it’s not an emergency.
• You sometimes don’t speak the language.
• You rarely have family nearby, and you can’t afford to go see them as much as you’d like to.
• You never know when they’re going to tell you it’s time to move or or not move
• At any given moment your husband can come home and tell you that he is going away for a week, a month, or a year.

We don’t eat, live and breathe it but it is a whole other lifestyle that you don’t get unless you live it.

And if anyone is thinking “You knew what you were getting into, you’re the one that chose him.” well, you’re only half right. I did choose him. Or my heart did anyway. But I had no idea what this life would be like.

Not in the slightest.

I met a guy that gave me butterflies and took my breath away with his kiss, and this was all part of the unknown package. I will follow him everywhere, but that doesn’t make it easy.