Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Nicole's Promise

“I, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

This is the oath that my little sister took just over a year ago. It is also the oath that she will be fulfilling in 5 days when she ships out on deployment. When I first heard this oath it was at her basic training graduation and I was so proud I could hardly stand it. These were the most eloquent, powerful words I had ever heard because she was saying them.

Now they are the most difficult, damning words I’ve ever seen for the same reason: she has said them and now she will honor them.

I’ve discovered a different kind of pride in her. At first it was a nebulous sort of pride; sure I was proud of her for enlisting, but it didn’t extend to all the unknowns that come along with military life. I was just proud that she made it through basic.

Now my pride is extending to the fact that her strength runs deeper than just surviving pushups and sleep deprivation. She’s approaching this deployment with much more coolness than anyone else in our family. She’s so nonchalant about it that it’s had a sort of numbing effect on the rest of us. Sort of like “Yeah I’m deploying, and…?”  She talks about it like it’s a brief business trip she’ll be taking instead of active duty in a rather hostile country. It’s made the rest of us stop freaking out before we even get to start. (If you had met my mom you’d realize how big of a deal that is.) Instead of reaching out to everyone else for strength she seems to have an excess of her own. She’s even lending it to the rest of us.

She isn’t facing her deployment with brash over confidence, just courage. The kind of courage that doesn’t know what’s coming, but knows that it will be faced head on according to duty. She is doing this because she must, it’s as simple as that.

So I will endure knowing that my sister is very far away in possible danger for the same reason: because I must. I take too much pride in my sister’s strength to tarnish it with my fears. The original giddy pride I had for my sister is changing into something much more substantial and intense: Respect.

Read through the Airman’s Oath again and realize the meaning behind the words and promises in it and realize the kind of person it takes to agree to this oath and then uphold it. More people than just my sister have taken that oath and more than just she deserve the respect that should go hand in hand with it.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Reader's Wrist

I have trouble falling asleep. It's not uncommon for me to stay awake long enough to count down my alarm clock's set time like I'm ringing in the new year.

When I was younger, I'm sure my mom thought I had massive digestive issues, but really all those long late night bathroom sessions we me sitting on the floor reading until  I got tired enough to drop right off to sleep. Otherwise I would lay in the dark of my room with a thousand thoughts trying to be heard all at once. Growing up hasn't changed it either. If anything it's compounded the issue because now I have a job, bills, a dog ( a blog....) and a husband to think about.

Many's the time when my husband will wake up to me reading a book very, very late at night. I probably look normal, but I feel like my eyes are bulging from my skull, dry and irritated with Einstein like white hair sticking up all over my head. I usually imagine a tick involved somehow, but it manifests itself differently each time. But always I am clutching a book like I think he's going to snatch it away from me. He hasn't yet. He's probably afraid I'll bite.

I'm rapidly developing Reader's Wrist. My term for the mind boggling-ly painful condition that comes from laying on my side while holding my book upright with only the strength in my wrist. This demands that I hold my wrist at a nearly 90 degree angle away from the bed so as not to bend the pages, but also make it amenable to page turning. It should be an Olympic sport. Or at least demand its own branch of medicinal study.

Reading myself to sleep has become my version of drinking until I pass out. I can feel the relaxation creep up my spine as the dialogues in the book replace the one in my head. My head gets droopy, my movements are sloppy and my speech is slurred. My eyes burn and it becomes a physical chore to keep them raised. Finally, finally, I can slip off into empty, think-free, reading induced sleep.