Moving "Home"

Whenever a unit is set to deploy a common question amongst spouses is whether to stay here or go "home". I completely understand that the couples who haven't had children will go "home" during a deployment, I mean what reason would you stay here? In fact, I think marriages might even be safer if the spouse goes "home" since there are so many Marines just waiting for a lonely married woman to walk their way. However, when you throw children into the mix things get complicated.

Take Haley for example, if Nick is going to deploy from May-Dec I can't just uproot our lives and enroll Haley in a school in Texas for half the year, then move her back here and enroll her in a California school. Well technically I can do that but at what expense? It might not seem like a huge change but it is and it would have a huge impact on Haley's emotions.

Aside from issues with school schedules there is the question of housing. I've seen families give up their homes here for a 7 month deployment to go back "home" to live with their parents, only to be homeless upon their return, living with friends for two months.

Lastly, I feel like my home is wherever I live. I haven't called my parents houses my home for many years now so the term going home doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. But it does sound much better than if I would say I'm going back to my place of origin. That's just weird sounding.

So although I understand the concept of going "home" for a deployment I never really agreed with it when children are involved. But now I find myself debating whether or not to go "home". And Nick isn't even deploying, he's going to a course for 6 weeks. I just get so lonely here. I've never been so lonely and so bored in my life. I'm always looking forward to 5 or 6pm when Nick comes home, it's the highlight of my day and the only thing that makes being here worth it because I'm only here because he's here. So when you take him out of the equation my entire purpose for being in 29 Palms, the so called oasis of the desert, is gone. So why stay? Especially why stay when I don't have to?

I found myself thinking this crazy plan this morning where we move all our stuff into storage, drive to Texas, Nick drops us off there and takes a plane back to Cali so he can go to his course, I enroll Haley is school and we stay there until December, well over the 6 weeks that Nick was gone for. By then Nick will have picked up rank and we would be due for orders any day. It's an almost perfect plan. Except for a few minor problems such as not seeing my husband for 5 months, he might not pick up rank for some reason, and I have no place to live in Texas for 5 months. Plus, I love having the Marine Corps to blame for family separations. If we did this I would only have myself to blame for being separated from Nick. And Nick would have left Alice at age 6 months to return to her when she's almost a year, that's too much time away. Now, I know Marines deploy for longer time periods and miss more of their children's lives but I can't do that to my family.

So I guess we'll be staying here after all for who knows how much longer. But I have to remember that I did this for 2 1/2 years now, and one of those years I was alone here, so I can do this. I really, really, don't want to though.