This week, good Lord willing, I will be 50. I never thought that I would be 50. I was supposed to be a teenager or young adult forever. Aren’t we all? We were never going to be those other people. They were cute, precious, sweet, but still old. I look in the mirror and I don’t see me. I see some overweight, old lady who let herself go. I was an older mother but I am not my children’s grandmother as some people mistake me for. I have an aunt that used to happen to. I thought it was awful for her, now I know for sure it was. My husband would say, “Then what are you going to do about it?” I wish I could tell him something. Some days I am frozen in place not feeling like I will ever change anything.
I am afraid it will just be one of those weeks. My husband is deployed. This year, he will miss my 50th birthday, Valentine’s Day and most probably, our 25th wedding anniversary. It is what it is. My children hear that a lot. I was under the mistaken notion that because they were older things would be fine. They are not. My oldest daughter tries extra hard to be good and helpful and cries for her daddy. My youngest daughter yells at me and acts out and cries for her daddy. I sit and wait for their daddy to call and then have nothing to say. What can I say? He is not here, the situation stinks and we are a couple who keep company, doing our own things, together. He doesn’t talk much and I talk too much but long distance calls don’t lend their selves to hanging out together and chatting (especially when he works 10 hours a day 6 and sometimes 7 days a week). He is tired. I am tired. So I get irritable because I want him to have something to say to me. I get angry because I want to have something to say to him, something that is not a problem or a complaint. I want to be able to be where he is and just hang out.
We did not go into this blind. He enlisted after we were married. It was a choice we made. I am not unhappy with the choice. It is just one of those weeks. The weather is gloomy. The girls are having semester finals and we miss daddy. Oh, and I will be fifty. A day above ground is a good day. I will remember that and be grateful but it may take me until next week to accomplish it.
