Running on Fumes
It is October 31st at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. My spouse is at Jungle School, where they have no cell phone contact for three weeks. We are also in the middle of command, so even if he *wasn’t* at Jungle School, he would still be at work by 4AM and returning home at 8PM. Maybe he’d be home at 5:30PM just today so that he could come trick-or-treating with us. The kids are at preschool and PreK. I am furiously typing away at the kitchen table, drinking my lukewarm coffee, and running on fumes. If I am lucky, I might get 30 minutes at the gym. But there is a good chance that I actually missed my workout this day based on my to-do list.
The inside of our house has been covered in fall decor for weeks. The front porch is a different story…
Christmas, Still?
Last year’s Christmas lights are still up on my lanai. This is rather unusual for me. Normally, around October 1st, the majority of the outside is also decorated (fun and whimsical- not spooky for my littles!) for the holiday. At least I had the decency to take my Christmas wreath down last January. Glancing at my to-do list, I had set aside 30 minutes to take down my icicle lights and put up some kind of Halloween landscape from my outdoor decoration box, and another 30 minutes to carve out the pumpkin the kids picked out from the Commissary a couple of weeks prior.
Pro tip for living in Hawaii: always carve your pumpkin on the day of Halloween, never before! It will become a moldy science project by the next day!
Somehow, I did manage to take down my Christmas lights from LAST year, put together my mid-level Halloween yard scape, and carve a mid-sized pumpkin in that hour I set aside. I got the kids from school and made dinner (that they did not eat!) in time for some trick-or-treating fun.
But this story is not about me deserving some kind of award.
This is validation that you are doing the best you can. And your best is allowed to change from year to year and through each holiday season.
Life and Holiday Seasons
There are seasons of military life where I feel like I am cutting it close every day. My cup is empty before my feet even hit the floor each morning. Then, there are times when I have to pinch myself that we are getting so much time together as a family. The dishes aren’t piling up in my sink, and I walk in from work, where my spouse has already started on dinner.
With the holiday season upon us, we generally find a way to lay on the parental guilt if we don’t have the means (financial, physical, emotional, or a combination of any) to pull out all the stops for our kids. The societal expectation for us to have a porch full of pumpkins, a Thanksgiving meal from scratch, or a full-sized tree in each room is generally out of reach for the typical American family. And even more so for a military family that just PCS’d or with a spouse that is deployed, on rotation, training, or TDY. If going “all out” from September through December each and every year feels out of reach, that’s because it is.
Maybe this year you don’t carve a pumpkin.
Maybe next year, you and your spouse carve four.
Maybe this year winter holiday lights don’t even make it on the roof.
Maybe next year you can go chop down a Christmas tree together.
These, and everything in between, are allowed.
