The second day of our roadtrip is over. We made the 500+ miles from Barstow, California to Holbrook, Arizona in roughly seven hours. Luckily, when you're on the road with the two people who mean the most to you in this world, it doesn't seem that long. Not that me leg didn't go numb, my sciatic nerve went psycho, and my nerves were a little fried by the time we rolled through Meteor City, but as I sit here now with my daughter fast asleep in her travel crib on my right and my husband fading fast on my left, I can't help but feel content. If a man, a woman and a 10-month-old can make it across this country in a U-Haul cab, there's nothing they can't do together. Trust me. It's a little intense.
We chose to make this trip together, rather than letting the Navy move us for one reason: we love eachother. And we want to spend as much time together as possible. Without the eight days Lucas was given as leave to relocate his family, we wouldn't have this time together. It's borrowed time, time that will count against him and that he will have to make up in the months to come. But it's worth it, I'd say. It's bringing us back together after the time he spent at basic training and helping us re-establish our family together.
Since Lily was born, we really haven't had alot of time together. One of us was always working so the other could be home with the baby. There is nothing that bothers me quite like the idea of giving birth to a baby and then handing her over to a care giver that isn't myself, my husband, or an immediate family member. We chose to have a baby so that we could be parents, not so that we could squeeze her into our hectic work schedules with the hope that we could make it up to her someday. I understand that there are millions of families that do not have the same luxury; day care is the only way to make ends meet. But I'm thankfull that we were able to live as we did, even though as husband and wife, our lives together were distant. I would wake him up when I left in the morning and stare at the TV with him for an hour once I got home that night. The kind of schedules we had to cope with while one of us was working was not conducive to a loving, stable marriage. I thank God every day that our lives have changed as they have, when they did.
So, back to the present. Traveling with a baby isn't so bad. Nothing is all that terrible as long as I have Lucas by my side. We left our home state, California, at exactly 11:35 a.m. this morning, leaving behind the only place that we had ever known. The Bay Area and Sierra Mountains were ingrained in our DNA from birth; the cold foggy mornings, the gentle breeze stirred by the ocean, the fat tailed squirrels and tiny brown ants. This is all we have ever known. Every significant member of our family lives within 100 miles of San Francisco, and help was never more than a phone call away. If the baby was sick or we wanted to sneak off to the movies for a date night, there was always a grandmother more than willing to watch our daughter. Now it's time for us to be a family apart, an independently functioning unit. I'm ready. I have been from the start.
As we barrel down Highway 40, chugging up steep grades and gliding down smooth off ramps, I look over my daughter to my husband and see his smile. Saying that I adore him is putting it mildly. We started a life long love affair when we 18 years old, and I can't wait until we are able to celebrate half a century together, with our children and grandchildren all around us. We are fitting our lives together in a way that is so intimate that even God himself will have trouble telling us apart when we are done.
Everyone is asleep now except for me. It's time for me to hit the sheets. I have to drive because it's the only way that I don't get sick, especially if I had to keep Lily entertained and fed and happy, all of which involve taking my eyes off the road. I will tolerate almost anything to avoid puking, and that includes driving until my ankle turns blue and my hip feels like it's going to pop out of it's socket. I'm nuerotic, I know. But it works somehow!
We're heading into New Mexico tomorrow. Come back to read more about the heat and desert and adventures of the Peterson family.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Coming Up For Air
How do I begin to recap the past twelve months? It would be like trying to describe an internal combustion engine to a three-year-old or pantomime open heart surgery to a Labrador Retriever. Almost every major event that usually happens through out the course of ten or fifteen years to a young couple has happened to us in the last year. Intense is as close as I can come to encompassing all that has transpired without writing a novel on this computer screen. This blog is about where we're going, not where we've been. Bits and pieces of our history will be woven into the fabric of my stories, but only give pertinent background information or to explain a personality quirk.
To better understand my current state of being, our recent history must be considered. It is all a matter of numbers. Ten months ago, I gave birth to our first daughter. Three days after that, we were legally married in our living room with six witnesses. Six weeks later, my husband was unemployed. As our family fell on hard times, I became the bread winner. I let my milk dry up and put my uniform back on, working every day but Friday to make ends meet; that's six days a week, for anyone who doesn't like to think too hard about these things. This insane schedule continued, with a small baby sporadically crying in my ear at night and a husband asking what was for dinner, for months.
After nearly half a year of insanity, I was ready to break. At just twenty years old, I had already handled more than most women my age could even dream of handling. My then fiancee and I had gotten pregnant, I had moved out of my mother's house, I decided to put school on hold and we moved into our own place. For some reason, I was in an awfully big hurry to grow up before I could even get legally drunk. So much for drinking Champagne at my own wedding. Actually, I wasn't trying to grow up. In truth, I would have been perfectly happy to have finnished school, started my career, saved a little money, and then gone on with babies and marriage and so on. The order just got a little messed up. I've never had a good memory; I guess I just forgot how things were supposed to go.
Now, I'm a Navy wife. As I left for work one morning, I was exhausted, smelly and irrational. I told my husband, tersley, that I wanted him to go online and find a job before I got home for the evening. The last thing I remember hearing him say had something to do with waste management or driving the city bus. When I got home, he said he wanted to be in the Navy. More specifically, he wanted to be a SEAL. I was raised as an Air Force brat and felt deeply at ease with being a Navy wife. The Department of Defense [DoD] typically takes care of it's dependent wives and children. Families are always welcomed in to the Army, Navy, Air Force and Reserves. But a SEAL? To me, it was like hanging a bull's eye around his neck and handing out AK-47s. SEALs are single men, with nothing at home but a dog and a stack of Playboy's. My husband had me and our daughter; what did he need a big gun and a swamp for? And how can a souless, heartless machine like the United States Navy make me so damn jealous, make me glow green with envy like a spurned teenager? Ugh.
My husband is coming back to the Bay Area tomorrow night. Then, we're putting everything we own into a seventeen foot U-Haul, rolling the Honda on to a trailer, and driving across country to our new home in Charleston, South Carolina. It is literally the other side of the country. I'm actually starting to regret all of the times I wished that I lived in the East Coast, that I had 3,000 miles between me and my mother. It's amazing, the things that we think of when we're young and angry and aimless. At that point, New York City sounds like heaven. But now, I wish we weren't leaving the state. And then I can't wait to go.
To better understand my current state of being, our recent history must be considered. It is all a matter of numbers. Ten months ago, I gave birth to our first daughter. Three days after that, we were legally married in our living room with six witnesses. Six weeks later, my husband was unemployed. As our family fell on hard times, I became the bread winner. I let my milk dry up and put my uniform back on, working every day but Friday to make ends meet; that's six days a week, for anyone who doesn't like to think too hard about these things. This insane schedule continued, with a small baby sporadically crying in my ear at night and a husband asking what was for dinner, for months.
After nearly half a year of insanity, I was ready to break. At just twenty years old, I had already handled more than most women my age could even dream of handling. My then fiancee and I had gotten pregnant, I had moved out of my mother's house, I decided to put school on hold and we moved into our own place. For some reason, I was in an awfully big hurry to grow up before I could even get legally drunk. So much for drinking Champagne at my own wedding. Actually, I wasn't trying to grow up. In truth, I would have been perfectly happy to have finnished school, started my career, saved a little money, and then gone on with babies and marriage and so on. The order just got a little messed up. I've never had a good memory; I guess I just forgot how things were supposed to go.
Now, I'm a Navy wife. As I left for work one morning, I was exhausted, smelly and irrational. I told my husband, tersley, that I wanted him to go online and find a job before I got home for the evening. The last thing I remember hearing him say had something to do with waste management or driving the city bus. When I got home, he said he wanted to be in the Navy. More specifically, he wanted to be a SEAL. I was raised as an Air Force brat and felt deeply at ease with being a Navy wife. The Department of Defense [DoD] typically takes care of it's dependent wives and children. Families are always welcomed in to the Army, Navy, Air Force and Reserves. But a SEAL? To me, it was like hanging a bull's eye around his neck and handing out AK-47s. SEALs are single men, with nothing at home but a dog and a stack of Playboy's. My husband had me and our daughter; what did he need a big gun and a swamp for? And how can a souless, heartless machine like the United States Navy make me so damn jealous, make me glow green with envy like a spurned teenager? Ugh.
My husband is coming back to the Bay Area tomorrow night. Then, we're putting everything we own into a seventeen foot U-Haul, rolling the Honda on to a trailer, and driving across country to our new home in Charleston, South Carolina. It is literally the other side of the country. I'm actually starting to regret all of the times I wished that I lived in the East Coast, that I had 3,000 miles between me and my mother. It's amazing, the things that we think of when we're young and angry and aimless. At that point, New York City sounds like heaven. But now, I wish we weren't leaving the state. And then I can't wait to go.
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