"Did you know what you were getting into?"

In the community where we live, it is fairly uncommon to live a military lifestyle.  People hear how often we will move and how often Yoni is gone and to some it sounds miserable.  Especially if they see me in the moments where I am not holding it together quite so well, I hear the question, full of concern, "Did you know what you were getting into?"  The truth is, I understand where this question comes from.  It makes sense that so many have asked me this, and I am sure if I were in their position I would ask someone as well.  And to those of you that have, thank you, because you inspired me to think about it.

Did I "know" what I was getting into?

On one hand, yes.  Yoni was already in ROTC, so on an intellectual level, I knew that he was going to be in the Air Force.  By the time we got engaged, he had already received a pilot training slot, so I knew that his job would be flying planes in the Air Force.  Yet at our L'Chaim (engagement party) in Dallas, I have a distinct memory of someone coming up to me and saying, "Welcome to the military!"  And I naively responded, "I'm not in the military.  Yoni is."

So to answer the question honestly, No.  I did not know what I was getting into.  Growing up in Columbia, MD, I did not have much exposure to the concept of military.  The most I knew was that we played Ft. Meade for a softball scrimmage one spring.  So I had a pretty steep learning curve once we moved to Enid, Oklahoma and the military became our every day life.  

This realization made me question, "Had I known what I was getting into, would I have made any decisions differently?"  And of course, my answer is absolutely not!  G-d probably didn't want me to know exactly what I was getting into at that point, because I was not mature enough to understand it yet, and He didn't want me to change my mind based on a scary future.  While the moves can be difficult while we are in them, and the separation feels excruciating at times, the end of the year comes and I look back at how each and every experience this lifestyle gives us is ultimately for our best.  These difficulties bring us closer to each other and teach us how to prioritize our lives.

And the truth is, does anyone truly know what they are getting into when they make any big decisions in life? Whether it is a decision to have a child, to marry someone, or even something less permanent like starting a new job, most people embark half-blind.  Before having the experience, it is not possible to have a complete awareness of what the experience will be like.  To make these kinds of decisions, one must combine the intellectual decision with the feelings of the heart.  Does it feel right?  If so, then you need to trust that it feels right for a reason and G-d is with you in the decision.  You will have Guidance and Support along the way.

New Years Resolutions vs. Rosh Hashana Teshuva

We are now a week into the Hebrew month of Elul.  In the past week, I have been blessed to attain a pretty good perspective on the purpose of this month.  I want to thank all of those who have contributed to this perspective (Rabbi Doniel Frank, through his book "How can I change for Heaven's Sake?", Rabbi Brody's chodesh Elul shiur, and the Tiferet Rosh Chodesh video).

This month leads up to Rosh Hashana (the "head" of the year).  Generally, this month is seen as a month of reflection, and what we call "teshuva."  Teshuva is often wrongly translated as "repentance."  Repentance sounds scary, but in reality it is a very non-Jewish concept.  To repent includes feelings of guilt, regret, and sadness.  The experience of Elul does not need to include those emotions.  Instead, Elul (אלול) is often described by its acronym:  אני לדודי ודודי לי.  "Ani l'dodi v'dodi li."  This means, "I am to my Beloved and my Beloved is to me."  In an ideal situation, this refers to our relationship with G-d.  The true root of the word Teshuva (תשובה) is to RETURN.  It's as if we're saying, "Sorry G-d, I went a little off the path that I was supposed to be on this year, and I am now finding my way back to You.  I am now figuring out the steps I can take in order to return."

This concept leads to the quintessential difference between the concept of a "New Year's Resolution" and the reflection done in the month of Elul, leading up to Rosh Hashana.  It is the difference between resolutions that are made to make you feel better about yourself compared to those intended to bring you closer to G-d.     If you are generally healthy (someone obese with an eating disorder is a different story), losing 10 pounds will not have a significant effect on your spiritual ascension.  Spending 10 minutes a day in prayer will.  It's the difference between vowing to keep your kitchen cabinet organized and trying to keep your heart and mind organized throughout the year.  It is a process of reflection and resolving on a spiritual plane rather than the physical one.

I would love to hear people's thoughts on these concepts and if anyone is open to sharing, their own reflection during this month.

The weather patterns of life...

A good friend of mine brought something interesting to my attention this past Shabbat.  She mentioned that she saw my last blog post with the poem, and she couldn't think of what to write as a comment.  "It just seemed very emotional and sad," she said.  Then she recalled something from a few months ago (back in the spring).  At that time, she had been going through a difficult time with one of her children and people commented that her blogs were always very gloomy.  Someone even made the comment to her that in contrast to my blogs, which were full of happiness and cheer at the time, hers were that much more depressing...

Now, her life is filled with exciting new things - youngest child entering school, new job, etc. and my life is a little more emotional than it was 6 months ago.  Even though we live in the same city, it seems as though our lives have different seasonal weather patterns.  This analogy seems especially pertinent living in a place like Seattle where the periods of sunshine and rain are so pronounced throughout the year.  For nearly three months, we wake up to sunshine every day.  The days are long and the sun shines persistently.  If a raindrop falls from the sky during this period, it seems out of place, and we know it will soon end.  Then the winter comes.  Every day is gray and rainy.  We don't expect any different.  We accept the gray and rain and know that it will have an end in its own time.  However, if a sunny day does happen to pop in and permeate the clouds, those rays of brightness mean so much.

So it is with our lives.  Each person has their seasons of sunshine and clouds.  Thankfully, we don't go through the same weather patterns at the same times.  As friends, we all balance each other and know that each weather pattern will soon pass, leaving something new in its wake.

A poetic flair on the deployment experience...

It has been four weeks now since Yoni left.  Truth be told, time has been moving at a pretty decent speed.  In these next few weeks, we have no guests, so it will be interesting to see how it feels.

Now that the emotions of his departure are not as strong as they once were, I am working through processing the whole experience.  Last night, a friend came over for a "writing night", and she suggested I write a poem about the experience of saying goodbye.  It actually helped more than I would have thought to express these feelings in poetry.  It felt like the feeling was locked inside of me for the past four weeks, and through writing it down and sharing it with others, the heaviness of the weight in my chest lifted a little bit...

Mount Rainier on the horizon,

the plane looms near.

I await your departure

and stifle a tear.

I hug our daughter 

as she absorbs the scene;

And our sweet baby boy

is naively serene.

You slowly walk by

and I brush your hand;

While my own emotions 

I try to understand.

I want to have strength

for you and the kids;

Weakness is a trait

my intellect forbids.

But as your tan flight suit

walks further from me;

The tears cloud my vision

temporarily.

I grab our sweet kids

and I put them in the car.

How will they function

with their Aba so far?

And what can I do

when they miss you so much?
My own underlying sadness

serves as a crutch.

We'll march on through life,

day in and day out

With an ever present reminder

what freedom's about.

We pray you stay safe

So when Hashem brings you home

My heart will feel full again

and no longer alone.

On another note, next week marks the beginning of the school year here in Seattle.  While both kids are staying home with me, I am going to provide a little more structure to our days and weeks than I have during the summer.  Adina has shown interest in starting "school activities", so we are going to block off about a half hour for "school time at home" every day.  She is starting to recognize her letters and she loves counting and doing projects with different colors.  While she works on her activities, I am going to do some basic stuff with Ze'ev too.  He finally enjoys hearing books now (for a long time he did not want to sit still long enough for me to read to him).  So we will read a few books every day and sing lots of songs with body parts and animals and all of those fun things.  I think it will be a fun activity for Adina to help in Ze'ev's activities as well!

Here's to hoping that this next month "flies" by!



Translations:
Aba - Dad
Hashem - G-d

Divine Providence, Separation, and Unlikely Sources of Inspiration – a Guest Blog Entry by Yoni Goldstein

Well, I have now been deployed for half of a month, and already I have appreciated and missed (dozens of times) the strong, vibrant Jewish community and warm, supportive family in Seattle. Before beginning to record my observations in earnest, I want to express my gratitude for having the opportunity to share some thoughts on this wonderful blog. I hope that you, the dear readers, can gain something from our experience this deployment.

We arrived in our deployed location and within two hours of hitting the runway and exiting the aircraft, I met the chaplain (a fine gentleman) and he informed me that two weeks hence, a couple of rabbis planned to spend Shabbat here on base. Needless to say, tired as I felt, I nearly jumped out of my skin and became overjoyed. How rare to spend Shabbat on deployment with other Jews with whom I had a common religious bond, background, and values set! Very excited, I proceeded to contact the chaplain after the meetings ended and hosted the two rabbis – very nice guys and a real pleasure to host – this past Shabbat. We’ll revisit this topic momentarily.

My biggest concern this deployment remained Shabbat observance, since I had fairly easily figured out the Kashrut issues and I actually have a kitchen where I can cook. Last deployment, I unfortunately had to break Shabbat sometimes (not all the time, B”H) because of our combat operations in and out of theater. Although I have a heter if necessary, I decided this time to do everything in my power – now that I have a little more experience and rank/clout – to keep every Shabbat to the maximum extent possible. Thus far, with 3 Shabbatot under my belt this deployment, I have been successful! Thank G-d, we arrived at our location on Friday morning and not evening, so I had plenty of time to prepare and procure lots of drinking water (Tisha B’Av, a 25-hour fast, fell the next night) and observed Shabbat with little trouble. The next week, however, enabled me to see the Hand of G-d almost openly.

My crew and I flew to Germany for an Aeromedical Evacuation stage mission which lasted about 6 days, conducting sorties in and out of the combat zone. We alerted to the airplane the next Friday, and immediately after takeoff, experienced a catastrophic environmental system failure. We shut down the left side of the environmental system and isolated the problem, but we had to turn around and land. Long story short, we landed in Germany about an hour and 10 minutes prior to sunset and the beginning of Shabbat. We hustled back to the hotel and I got to my room with three minutes to spare, so I set my lights and lit candles just before sunset. Aside from the rushing and hectic Friday, I actually had the opportunity to again observe Shabbat. Yes, I certainly missed my family tremendously, but I saw that G-d granted me a wonderful blessing and I had a very meaningful and Torah-filled Shabbat. In truth, I was slightly frustrated at first when the plane broke and we had to cancel the medevac mission (we had critical patients apparently waiting to be lifted out) but when I realized that I now had another opportunity to keep Shabbat, I did not dare question or pass it up. Dare I say, I maintain that I bore witness to a small miracle. Little did I know that my blessings would only multiply in the next week.

When we returned from Germany on Wednesday, I had not only about 20 pounds of kosher frozen chicken that I purchased there, but I also had several emails awaiting my attention regarding the two rabbis who planned to visit our base. They travel the world every summer as part of a Chabad program supporting small and far-flung Jewish communities. Our base became their first stop in this particular country. We corresponded through email briefly, and when I met them about two hours before Shabbat, I had tears of joy in my eyes at the whole concept of having a quorum with whom to share the sanctity and experience of Shabbat. With a few of the other Jewish personnel stationed here, we had a wonderful Kabbalat Shabbat prayer, festive dinner with copious amounts of L’Chaims, words of Torah, singing, and Michelle’s recipe for honey-soy chicken. The dinner lasted until about 1 o’clock in the morning, and we did not want it to stop! The next day I hosted lunch in my little room with a cholent, homemade brownies, and we had a wonderful experience. To think that halfway around the world, so far from a Jewish community of substance, we could have an authentic, beautiful Shabbat struck me as nothing short of inspirational.

Although I remain separated from my loving, sweet family for the next little while, I find it exceedingly important to retain a fresh perspective and positive outlook on life. One of the ways I have been able to maintain this mentality manifests itself in our basic Jewish purpose: cleave to G-d and become closer to Him. In the sometimes hectic pace of my Air Force career and very busy schedule, something so fundamental slips so easily through the cracks. Here, while I am flying missions regularly and working on my master’s, I miss my family and then I get to thinking about how to become a better husband and father upon my eventual return home. Ray Charles, among others, sung that “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” and that certainly holds true. Not only have I realized how much I miss Michelle and the children, I have also come to the conclusion that I must return home a far better man. In an interesting twist, I originally was supposed to deploy and return before the High Holidays. The schedule, however, changed and I am here for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Perhaps I am supposed to take away something from this; how should I utilize my time here, with the holidays, to become that better man? Once again, Michelle showed me the way through her own example and gentle prodding, to take the initiative and draw strength from within.

I have dedicated myself to take advantage of the opportunities here to bring Torah to this place and attempted to grow spiritually. Inspired by the example of my father and brother, two of my biggest heroes, I have begun to study daily one page of Talmud (the Aramaic Oral Law that explains and governs Jewish law and teaches us analytical thinking) and hope, with the help of G-d, to continue this practice as long as I can. In addition, the Chabad rabbis have linked me with the local Jewish community and the base community to organize Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services and blow shofar (the ram’s horn used to sound various blasts and call us to repentence). I never imagined such a thing ever occurring. What a unique opportunity!

A final word, if I may. As a very enthusiastic people-watcher, I have had the good fortune to observe the people in my unit, especially my crew, endure all kinds of stressors and difficult situations, both in flight and on the ground. In “Ethics of Our Fathers,” Chapter 4 Mishna 1, Ben Zoma (a great sage who lived over 1800 years ago) said, “Who is wise? One who learns from every man.” What does this mean? Defying conventional wisdom, a wise person is not one who teaches, but who is always willing to learn. We must be willing to take away lessons from every person we encounter, and in my crew I saw the vast spectrum of personalities, character traits, and learned something from each person. Perhaps the most poignant lesson I learned is the importance of the unique role of every type of person on a crew. We had several emergency situations and during the course of each one, every crewmember approached the problem from a different angle. Through their approaches I learned about them. The analytical thinker in our crew sought to determine the root cause, while the by-the-book, methodical individual broke out the checklists and troubleshot the problem. The emotionally-minded person thought of the mission we had begun and the consequences of turning back. He immediately began coordinating alternative plans and contingencies. Meanwhile, the calmest individual just strove to fly the plane and ensure that we maintained basic flight, navigation, and radio discipline over congested European skies. A hectic 30 minutes though it seemed, I learned so much about how people come together to work well as a team with a common goal, removal of the ego, and melding of personalities. It truly exemplified the crew resource management concept and saved our plane and crew for another day. 

On a happier day... :)

In the days following my last post, I got a number of people calling or e-mailing to check in and make sure I was doing alright.  First of all, thank you everyone for caring and being there!  In a way, I started to feel bad for posting when I was feeling at the low point of the week.  Most of my week, I hadn't felt so frustrated and impatient and at wits end.  But on Thursday I did, and that's when I wrote my blog.  I think subconsciously, I did this on purpose.  As people have since explained to me, I am really good at conveying a facade of being perfectly in control of everything.  The truth is, I always want to feel put together, so even when the stress starts getting to me, I don't allow others to see it so easily.  And then the stress or overwhelmed feeling reaches a certain point where I can no longer completely ignore its existence, and by then my reaction to it is at least a 9 on a scale of 1 to 10!  Sorry for the math analogy yet again, but while my stress level was slowly rising ... 2 ... 3... 4 ... 7 ... 8... I was still putting on the happy face.  Then I hit a 9 and I felt very alone at a 9 because most of the people in my life still thought I had everything in control and I was still at a 2 or 3.

So a part of me wanted to reach out and let people know that one or two days a week, I am feeling pretty bad about Yoni's absence and I need your support.  I know asking for it directly would be best, but I am not the best at asking for things, even when it is things like emotional support.

But thank you to everybody who got the message and gave it to me.  I have to say that since Thursday night, thank G-d, I have been in such a better place.  I attribute this completely to the people in my life who reached out and took some of the burden off of my shoulders simply through empathizing.

We had a really lovely Shabbat.  Thank you Gallors for being so sweet and agreeing to do a later lunch so that my kids could get their normal nap and we could still eat out and enjoy lovely company for the seuda. (By the way, while I was waiting for Adina to wake up because we needed to go to the Gallors to eat, she took the longest nap that she has taken since Yoni left.  I ended up waking her up after over 3 hours....Go figure :-P)

Then today started out disastrous.  Libby woke me up at 4 AM because she was being taunted by a raccoon outside.  It took nearly an hour and a half to calm her down and then by the time I finally fell asleep, I spent exactly 15 minutes in dream land until Mr. Ze'ev woke up.  Then between the heat (Seattle doesn't believe in central air conditioning) and the lack of structure inherent in Sundays, the kids were both in "lovely" moods today.  It could have gotten me down.  But still feeling all of the support shown in the past few days, I dealt with each moment as it came and did not allow myself to get worked up (too much).  Then Sasha saved me from the post-nap "fun moods" by inviting us over to play in their backyard.  (Thank you!!!!)

So where am I getting with all of this?  Yes, I count the calendar each day.  Yes, I calculate how long until G-d willing Yoni will get to come home.  But when I feel support, when I feel like I am not doing all of this alone, when the littlest bits of kindness brighten each day, it makes those days pass so much more quickly and most importantly, so much more happily.  The happier we are, the faster the days will pass, so it is really in my best interest to make the most of each day and find ways to make them filled with joy.

P.S.  The two best practical pieces of advice I received last week, that have already made a big difference:
1) Close the door when I go to the bathroom and have 2 minutes of private time amidst any ensuing chaos.
2) If the kids have eaten dinner but I am counting down the minutes until bath, put them in the bath early and just let them play for a lot longer than usual.  I can even bring a good book into the bathroom and just hang out while they play and play.

Living by the calendar...

I think I have discovered the most negative aspect of having a mathematical brain.  Countless times each day, I calculate the percentage of the deployment that has passed and how far we still have to go.

On Monday, the day after my Dad left, I thought, "Wow!  It's been almost two weeks already!  That's amazing!  20% done!"
But Monday feels like weeks ago and today I find myself thinking, "Wow.  It has been only just over two weeks.  We still have almost 80% to go!"

Thank G-d, when we are in the midst of the days we are generally doing well.  I try to coordinate activities for the kids as best I can, and as long as they get their sleep and are eating well, they behave pretty nicely and make life doable for me.  Unfortunately, on those days when someone doesn't nap so well or someone refuses to eat everything I put on their plate and therefore gets hungry and cranky, I sorely miss having reinforcements!

I have decided that I for sure need to figure out a new plan for these last 8 weeks.  During the week my parents were here things went great.  But the days before that and the days since then, I find myself walking a tight rope, constantly on the verge of losing my patience.  This is very hard for me, because the parenting skill I have been trying so hard to hone in on in the past year has been my patience.  But when it is tested over and over again all day, with no one on my side, and no relief during waking hours, I would be superhuman if I could maintain it.

Now I have to determine the best strategy to maintain my emotional sanity for the rest of the deployment.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. :)