“Sometimes love means letting go when you want to hold on tighter.”—Melissa Marr
If you had told me 20+ years ago I would send both my daughters off to serve in the military, I would have laughed at you. While we do have a military presence in our family, it was not a tradition of any sort. I once had dreams of joining the military, but life happened. I can say though that from the day I became a mom I was hell bent on raising respectful, honest and smart children who would be able to succeed in life in a very independent way. Teaching them life lessons and consequences was a must, as they needed to see how their decisions affected the outcome. Of course, we can all parent perfectly looking back, trust me it was far from perfect during the process. Yet somehow, I managed to raise three kids who work hard, they are smart and two of them chose to serve our country.
Being a Navy Mom was no small feat the first go round. I had so much to learn, so much to absorb and so much waiting to endure. I discovered that sending your child off into the unknown was a lot more heartbreaking than I thought. The weeks of no contact, of not knowing and thoughts of wondering. It was quite the journey, between her being injured in boot camp to going overseas for her first duty station I learned to just wait and wait. I cried so much I am quite sure I had a midlife crisis. I quit my job of 20 years and decided to chase my dreams of being a chef. Life was hard and much like being on a roller coaster that never ended. I had to navigate the military life and still being an active mom to one more child at home, the baby.
While I learned to adapt to having a child in the U.S. Navy, I never realized the impact it had on her little sister who was all of 11 when her sister joined. Now at 19, she too has enlisted and set off on her career I the Navy. I am once again a Navy Mom and its all new with the COVID changes. This might even be a bigger challenge as RTC (Recruit Training Command) is now 10 weeks for unvaccinated recruits instead of 8. There is absolutely, no contact for 5 weeks! Yup, 5 weeks of not knowing crap and no graduation to look forward too. No liberty in Chicago, even if it is only for 6 hours due to her rate. I have too once again …. wait.
Waiting is the name of the game with the military and now they took that literally and put it into action. I have created multiple plans of action in the event they open graduation or allow liberty and if not, when she can have liberty at her training station. I am once again planning out holidays based around possible leave time and graduations. Being a Navy Mom is difficult to say the least, we cannot just pick up the phone and call them, we cannot send them a text to say hi. We simply just pray for them and wait for the day we can hear their voice again and the day we can hug them so tightly even if for only a few minutes. It is amazing how much a few minutes means to a parent of a military child. These new tides of change are just another “new normal” that we all must adapt too.