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