Jen
Alexander
RebekahI’m back in Iraq after about 23 hours of travel time. I took a flight from Hawaii to Japan, then a transport to Iraq. I do so love to be in the air for that long… Not.
I had a great time being home with my family. I’m still laughing about the look on Jen’s face when she saw me. I wish I had taken a picture of it. The scream that Madeline let out was something that would have shattered glass if there had been any actual glass near her. Her reaction may have been better than Jen’s actually. But I digress.
Being home after 10 months in Iraq was awesome. I knew I missed Jen and the kids, but I didn’t realize how much until I was back in Hawaii and with them. I got the chance to spend some time with Jen, which is something I always miss when I’m away. Anyone who knows me, or reads this blog, knows that I love Jen a lot, and I miss her while we’re apart. Being in Iraq on a base that’s 90% men means that the conversation is usually not the best. I love my job, and I love the people I work with because we’re a family. But I miss getting to sit down and have a conversation with Jen. One of my favorite times of the day is when the kids are all sleeping soundly because they’ve had so much fun that day, and I can sit on the couch with Jen and talk about something besides guns, ammo, bombs, and why the water in the showers is ice cold. I really enjoy talking to my wife because she always has something interesting to say and always has good insight into whatever is going on. I love to sit in front of the TV and watch whatever show or DVD that Jen picks out, while pretending I don’t want to watch another one of her chick flicks, but really enjoying every moment I get to spend just sitting there. I also enjoy seeing her happy, which is why I spent about $500 getting her a new iPhone 4 that she assured me that she “needed” so badly that she had to upgrade 7 months early. The good thing is that now I have her old 3GS to replace my BlackBerry which has sand and dirt practically melted into the outer shell. With a new Otterbox case, her old iPhone should actually make it through this deployment.
Having the chance to be with my kids was also a blessing. I get updates on them on an almost daily basis and pictures on a weekly basis, but seeing them in person was a gift. One of our favorite things to do has always been to take each of the kids out individually to make sure they get enough one-on-one time with us. I got the chance to take Reed to the beach to play in the sand and swim a little. Brookes wanted to visit the various memorials at Pearl Harbor, and Beau wanted to tag along, so I took them out for awhile to see everything they wanted to. The twins are just happy to be alive, so I didn’t actually take them out alone anywhere. But I did give them their first feeding of the day most mornings, and gave them a few lessons in the finer points of playing Halo 3. I think they enjoyed it. Madeline and I made plans to not only go on a lunch date to her favorite pizza place, then spend a few hours shopping, but also to have a tea party so she could turn 3. (she’s waited since last October to “be 3″, so we had a killer tea party)
I love all my kids equally and without boundaries, and it’s hard on me when I have to leave them. It’s hard to leave Jen too, but I know that she understands the reasons I have to leave. My kids on the other hand are another matter entirely. Reed and Brookes have both been alive long enough to know that I deploy sometimes and that so far I’ve always come back alive. Beau doesn’t really understand why I leave, but he takes it pretty well because I tell him that I’ll always do my best to come home. The twins are just now learning to sit up on their own, so I’m not worried about explaining it to them quite yet. My biggest concern is Madeline. Madeline is like my little shadow when I’m at home. She’s very attached to me and always has been. I worry about her because her reaction to me being gone is nothing short of depressing, for the both of us. She’s a smart 3 year old, but she is just 3. I don’t expect her to be completely okay with me being home for such a short amount of time before leaving again. But the way she reacts to me leaving worries Jen and me. Before I deployed last September I had several discussions with her about me leaving and why I had to go, simply to attempt to make the whole situation easier for her. That seemed to work fairly well because she went back to normal after about a day, according to Jen. She was still sad about me leaving, but later the same day she was back to playing with her siblings. This time she’s been much more depressed and doesn’t want to do much of anything except sit in my chair in the basement. It’s heartbreaking to know that she’s so upset and there’s little we can do about it. Jen spent some extra time with her on Friday and Saturday, but she’s still fairly apathetic about life in general. Friday night she fell asleep in Jen’s lap while they watched TV after everyone else was asleep, and woke up less than 10 minutes after Jen put her in bed. Reed woke up and heard her crying in her bed and took her into the master bedroom to Jen. I’m hoping she sleeps better on Saturday night and this doesn’t become a problem for her. There’s no worse feeling than knowing someone you love is upset, and not being able to be with them. If anyone out there is the praying type, please pray that Madeline goes back to normal soon.
When I was waiting for my transport back to Iraq on…whatever day it was in Japan…I talked to Jen on Facebook for awhile. We were discussing when I would be on leave again and how maybe it should be closer to when I would be home for good, for the kids’ sake. Then we considered that maybe I shouldn’t even come to Hawaii during my leave, and that Jen should just meet me somewhere and we can spend a week together. I would still get to see her, which is always great, but I wouldn’t have to upset any of the kids by being there for a week and then leaving again. The downside to going on a vacation with just Jen is that I wouldn’t see the kids for another year from now, and if anything were to happen to me between my leave and redeploying home, I wouldn’t have seen my kids for 9-10 months, and they wouldn’t have seen me.
There’s a lot to consider in the next few months. Obviously I don’t expect anything to happen to me, and I’ll always do my best to get home to my family. But there’s always some chance that things will go wrong and I won’t make it back alive. I’d hate to die knowing that my kids were upset at my seemingly constant in and out, or that the fear of upsetting them kept me away from them for a year and they never got to see me.
