Finding Power in Choice, Maybe

Okay, so here is what has been on my mind constantly lately.

To completely over-simplify things, this summer we have a choice. We can either move back to the bayou for the next four years (until my husband's retirement). Or he can deploy for a year and we can stay here.

Now remember, he'll be getting back from his current deployment in the Spring (I'll optimistically say it would be mid-March). And he'd have to head back out again for a year in June or July.

I say this is a complete oversimplification because it is. The powers that be might not really let him choose. They might decide they absolutely need his ass in the wilds of Alaska or in the middle of the ocean. There's never really any telling what the powers that be might do.

Two years ago, I would have loved to move back to the bayou. It was the devil I knew. But now I would hate to. If it were just me, I'd probably be okay with it. I do have a lot of friends there and the cost of living is cheap.

But the idea of taking my children back there makes me want to cry and cry. To the point where I was actually looking into boarding schools for high school. (It sounds crazy, but my daughter would be half way though high school when we would be able to retire and get the hell out of there.)

On the other hand, living without their dad for a year, right on the heals of living without him for six months can't be good for them either. But it would only be a year. And the rest of their lives would stay the same. Same school. Same great neighborhood. Same opportunities to become adults in a really wonderful area of the country.

Let's just say that I can't explain it all, but to me, this is a complete and total fork in the road of my children's lives. And there are no good choices. And we might not be allowed to make the choice at all anyway.

After sixteen years I must say, I am over being a military wife. I used to be so good at it. Now I feel like we have so little power over our family's future.

It is a very bitter pill for this over-protective and overly passionate parent to swallow.