Jessica Scott

Getting ready for this event was beyond stressful. When I say there was crying and screaming and gnashing of the teeth, there was. It was absolutely brutal in so many, unbelievable ways. The first night there, I wanted to leave and not even bother being there.

Part of the problem was that I was incredibly nervous about meeting all the folks that supported me over the last couple years, through Iraq and back again. Honestly, meeting every single person there was a phenomenal experience that I will blog about later.

No, the best person in the entire conference was someone who didn’t want to be here, who spent most of it pissed off and irritated and stressed out because there were two tired, over stimulated kids who probably never should have come.

The best person here was my husband. Not only did he smile when I told him that the meeting with my agent went spectacularly, not only did he kiss me when I was walking out the door to go to a party while he was trying to put the cranky kids to bed, he also washed laundry. He fed and bathed and entertained our kids while I walked around dazed and pretending to have it all together and that everything was just fine when inside, I felt like I was one false word from having a fabulous shoe down my throat.

My husband has just spent a week with the kids each afternoon so that I could meet other writers, spent time getting to know my agent, and meet people after hours in the bar. My husband made me laugh when I wanted to cry and smiled when I squeeled about meeting Nora Roberts.

He hates stuff like this. He hates being in a hotel room, trapped with the kids and running around like banshees. But tonight, the kids were crying, I was stressed out because I couldn’t get my bra to look right with my dress and my husband is unhooking it with me half ready to cry because I’m going to be late. And he gets me fixed, kisses me and says good luck.

And before you say I’m setting back feminism a hundred years by thanking my husband for doing something that I do every single day, let me expound just a titch. Since we’ve been back from Iraq, it’s been the mommy show. Every night, my kids want me to put them to bed. They want me there, even if I’m just giving them a kiss and a pat on the head before I tuck their blankets around them. So when I’m not there, my husband has to deal with two babies who are not only tired but stressed because they’re not quite understanding that mommy really is just downstairs. For my hubby to step up to the plate so that I could step out, literally, to mingle with publishing people, was pretty awesome in my book.

This man is man of the year in my book. I love him even more because he went through all of this to help me have an amazing first conference. I am so incredibly lucky to have him, unhooking my bra as I run out the door and smiling when I tell him that yes, I am going to sell a book this year.

Thank you, honey, for supporting me when all you wanted to do was scream. I love you.

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My daughter nearly drowned last night. We’ve been going to swimming lessons at the Lions Club Aquatics park in Killeen and last night, my fear became reality. I was sitting about ten feet from the edge, close enough to watch but far enough that they would pay attention to the teachers and not me. Her and her sister were letting go of the edge and bobbing: all good training because they both need to know that when they hit bottom, they need to kick back to the top.

Well, the little one got pushed back to where she couldn’t reach the edge of the pool. My heart counted the beats. One. No head poking up. Two. No head. Three, and her little arms were waving in the top of the water…and mommy moved. All I remember is getting to the edge and seeing she was close enough for me to grab without diving into the water. I had her before the teachers did. I think I dove because my right knee hurts like hell this morning and I scuffed it up pretty good.

And what did I do? I snapped at her. I said this is what you get for not listening. I’d been telling her and her sister not to let go of the edge.

Really? My kid has the scare of a lifetime and I snap at her? Then she cried and I wrapped my arms around her and held on to her. And less than two minutes later, she jumped right back into the pool. It happened again toward the end of her lessons but this time, she laughed and held back onto the edge. Mommy did better this time too, except that I was getting pissed at them for not listening and continuing to let go of the edge.

That night, as they were getting ready for bed, I told her how proud I was of her for getting back in the water when any other kid would have screamed and cried and refused. She says in a small voice “I’m proud of you too, Mommy, for saving me.” And I laughed my ass off because it was cute and she was brave and she got back after it after she had the daylights scared out of her.

But see here’s the thing that I wanted her to take away from it. Never mind that it shaved another year off my life. Never mind that the old taste of panic that I had in Iraq about not being there to protect my children rose to the surface like a bad memory. She got back in the water. Something bad happened and she faced her fear and got back in the pool. She even went off the diving board.

I can’t always be around to protect my kids. Maybe it’s the nature of my life in the military that I know this but on an instinctive level, it rips my soul out to send my kids out into the world without me being there. I have to trust. I have to trust that the school will do the right thing. The swimming instructors were working with other kids and were all within five feet of her. But no one had seen her go under. Except me. I still trust that they’re doing their best, but I’m there. Think of it as risk mitigation on my part.

I have to prepare my children for life without me because when they’re in school, when they’re at their friends houses, when they’re grown, they will make decisions and have to react to things that no one will have prepared them for. And I have to trust that they’ll do something in those situations where they’re scared.

So I am proud of my little girl. She got back in the water and she still thinks she can swim even though she sinks like a stone. But we’ll keep working at it. The best thing I could have done for her last night was get her back in the water and even though my adrenaline stayed high for the rest of the lessons, she got back in.

I don’t think I can ask more than that.

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As if I don’t have enough on my plate, today I was accepted as a regular blogger over at Empowering Parents. For those of you that have followed my travails as a military mom working through deployment and reintegration, I’ve really struggled.

About a week or so ago, an old high school friend reconnected with me via what else? Facebook. It was super cool to hear from her and we were catching up. She mentioned that she worked with behavior modification techniques for troubled kids. I thought cool and tucked that info away for future use.

Except that this weekend hit and my daughter had one of her famous meltdowns. And it was a doosey. I don’t know if maybe it was building up or what but boy did she let go (otherwise the weekend was pure awesomeness). But it was significant enough that I emailed Sara and asked if she could help.

So its taken me 6 months of screaming and crying and food battles to finally admit that I can’t do this alone and ask for help. I’m okay with that. We did a decent job, but I feel like there’s more we could do to make this whole thing easier on my kiddos. Because at the end of the day, I don’t get a do over and if I can work to make things better for them, to give them a smiling mom and the tools they need to be responsible adults (more on that at another time), then I’ll be able to send them out into the world knowing they’ll make good choices. Maybe not the ones I’d make but hopefully, good ones.

So when Sara recommended that I send a post into the Empowering Parents editor and see if I would fit for their blogging team, I was initially hesitant. But then, after she and I talked and I realized that my struggles might just help another military mom struggling through some of the same things, I figured I’d go for it. So while I can’t write my book (yet), I can write here and hopefully pass along some of the things that worked and haven’t worked for me.

Amazingly enough, the editor immediately offered me a slot, so I thought that is a sign that I’m meant to be doing something along these lines. After last week’s crushing disappointment about my book on military moms, I needed a boost and maybe this was the opportunity that I was supposed to stumble across, you know?

Anyway, I’m excited to be part of the Empowering Parents team and we’ll see what I can learn about helping out my kiddos. I’ll be posting links on this site to each post over there and I hope you’ll drop by and check them out.

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Somehow this weekend, I was roped into throwing a birthday party for Jerry. You know, as in Tom and Jerry. Tom wasn’t invited.

Anyway, the mystery of how I ended up doing this was soon solved when my dearest husband came home with yellow cake mix and chocolate frosting in a can. I have to admit, while those things are good, I was planning on making everything from scratch. I enjoy baking with my girls and somehow, it seems wrong for me to pour things out of a box, add a few eggs and presto, instant desert. Part of this come from remembering baking with my own mom when I was a kid and it’s a memory I want my kids to share.

Anyway, we made the cake out of the box. Originally, it was going to be cupcakes, except that I realized I had no cupcake liners. So, a double layer yellow cake was poured into two pans. After much negotiation and laying out of the plan, it was agreed that we would frost the cake after room clean up the next morning.

Room clean up was accomplished with only marginally smaller amounts of berating and nagging. We rearranged and actually came out with more space.

Then, I could no longer avoid my fate. It was time to frost the dreaded cake. I thought I’d seen somewhere where you trim the cake so that its all the same size. This was my first mistake. As I sawed through the edges, I revealed a crumbly moist inside that was very much not in the mood to have frosting stick to it. So I figure I’ll layer it on a little thicker and it won’t crumble all around me.

Half the tub went in the middle of the cake. Then I got the brilliant idea to nuke the frosting to make it just a smackerel easier to spread. Except of course, my domestically challenged self made it too thin. So I kind of smear it around the sides, hoping the thin frosting will act like glue for the rest of the new tub of frosting I had to run to Walmart and buy.

Sadly, my little cake was more of a fiasco. My dearest husband, who put me up the whole predicament proceeded to harangue me mercilessly in the cat’s voice and then could not actually believe how much frosting I managed to put on the darn thing. I actually got upset and both girls immediately started saying stuff like, “it’s okay mommy, jerry will still eat it.” – this from the 3 year old.

So we’re standing in the kitchen and both girls have mashed 2 pink candles into the cake. We light the disaster and the four of us sing happy birthday to a cartoon mouse.

It was one of those moments that hurt my heart because it was so achingly normal. I just stood there for a second and watched my kids and couldn’t believe that we’ve been together for 5 months now. At that moment, I loved my kids and all the fighting and the crying and the yelling was gone. For one moment, we were a normal family, with parents who weren’t tired and stressed out and partially crazy.

My family doesn’t have a normal baseline. One of us has been deployed or across the country or both for the last five years. You read about those dual military couples that have only gone through 1 or 2 deployments? We’ve gone through 3 in 5 years and I know there are families out there that have even more under their belts. Granted, I haven’t been gone the whole time but I can’t help but wonder what the cumulative effect of all this upheaval in my kids lives will have.
I can’t dwell on it. I have to just take the moments like the one yesterday and hang onto them but at the end of it all, I think that’s all any of us can do, whether or not you’re in the military.

So happy birthday, Jerry. Thanks for giving me one of those bright, shining moments that has been all too rare since redeployment and for liking the cake even though it looked like crap.

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It’s hard to believe but its been four months now since I first stepped off that plane from Iraq. So much has changed and yet, so much still remains.

January and February will go down as the worst months. Lots of crying and screaming and yelling as the kids tried to figure out where they fit and what they could get away with. Lots of tears on my part as guilt ate away at my soul, part for leaving and the other part for coming home and uprooting them once more. There was the panic over my oldest going from loving school to hating it. The daily battles to get her up in the morning and the ever present food battles where my oldest proved just how stubborn she truly was.

But February ushered in March, where things got a little better. There were still bad days. Really bad ones but the distance between them grew a little longer. But we as we moved forward, each night I fell asleep hoping that tomorrow would be better, that the stress and guilt eating away at me would ease back and we could enjoy being a family for a little while, however long that might be.

I’ve focused on my oldest because, at 5, she is more like a little person. She is more articulate and significantly more vocal than my youngest on so many issues. But lately, my youngest is starting to show signs of stress. She’s always cried when we drop her off at daycare in the morning, but now, she cries as soon as she wakes up.
She’s crying for Grammy, something she has not done in the last four months. I admit to being stunned the day she stood in a crowded rest stop in New Jersey and told me she didn’t think I loved her. I didn’t know what to say or do. As I’ve written before, I was prepared for I don’t love you, not you don’t love me.

But now when she gets upset with us, she says she wants to go back to Grammy’s because ‘hers always nice to me’ and ‘her loves me’. I think my 3 year old is confused. She doesn’t know where she fits and I worry more about her adjustment than my oldest’s simply because she is so little and she was so young (just over six months old) when I first left her.

Her difficulty is also painful because she’s always just gone with the flow. She’s never been a fussy kid, always kind of rolling with whatever. The fact that four months into our transition home and she’s suddenly having issues is extra tough to deal with because she’s been so resilient up to this point.

My little girl has been through a lot. She’s three and a half and she’s been without me for half her life. The guilt I keep thinking I’ve dealt with is like an insurgent, sneaking up when I’m least prepared to deal with it, like the middle of a rest stop. I hope she’ll be okay in the long run, but the simple lack of information about long term impacts means that my husband and I are simply going in blind and doing the best we can.

For now, I try to get my mom on the phone as much as I can so my kids can hear her voice. My youngest seems to need this contact more than my oldest. I’m trying to be as understanding and accommodating as I can, but really, how many times can you overlook a roll of toilet paper thrown in the toilet before someone needs to instill some discipline.

I think she’s doing fine, over all. But its those moments when she says how much she misses her Grammy that I feel my own heart breaking. She has no other words to express her confusion about where she fits in the world.

And I have no way to really pierce through the bubble of my own guilt.

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As much as there have been some significant challenges this year, there have also been a couple of really cool things. I’ve gone on my first Black Hawk flight. I’ve experienced my first earthquake.

I’ve also gotten something that most married folks don’t get until the kids leave for college. I got my husband back.

Now, I’m not saying that it was like a reuniting or anything but when there are kids around, you’re mommy and daddy, not husband and wife. Seldom do we get time to just be us. We’ve had a whole year and you know what’s kind of cool? We still really like each other. A lot. We laugh about different things than we did when we were younger but this is the first real time we’ve had together –alone – in almost five years since our oldest daughter was born.

And it’s not like we’re spending all day every day together. We have a few minutes at lunch and dinner and maybe an hour or two before we go to bed. It’s more than most couples have and less than others, but it works for us. I’ve learned a lot about him this year, both as a husband and as a soldier. I think he’s learned a lot about me and how we’ve both changed over the last half decade. But the best thing is discovering that there’s still a whole lot of love, mixing in with a lot of like and it’s not just the kids holding us together. A lot of couples don’t get that and find themselves wondering what life will be like without the glue of the kids making them stick.

He’s seen me through some tough times this year. When the swine flu panic hit and I was a walking panic attack, he and I planned our escape route should the world go to shit and we need to get home (he was only half joking). He made me laugh when all I wanted to do was cry for missing the kids. And we laughed about the torment our kids put my mom through, knowing we were both going to want to kill them within two weeks of getting home.

It’s been a long known fact in the Army, since the war started, that deployments can make good marriages stronger but it destroys weak ones. This is my husband’s third and my first. I look to him as the voice of experience and he’s talked me through some of my fears. I’m glad I’ve gotten this time with my husband the man, not the daddy and I still love it when he plays with the kids on the webcam.

So getting to be husband’s wife this year, even with everything else that’s gone one, is at least one good thing that’s come out of being in Iraq.

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Well, it’s been a week since I left my kiddos and I’ve got to say, settling in has been depressingly easy. It’s as though the last two weeks of leave have been nothing but a blur. I wonder how the kids are doing. I’ve tried to call but Mom has been keeping them busy to keep their minds occupied, which is a good thing.

For myself, I slept a lot, trying to get back on the right time. Jet lag hasn’t been nearly as bad for me as it has been for my husband, who’s on day shift. But, if by jet lag, you mean the normal insomnia hasn’t hit, then you’d be right. It’s truly funny that I have more time for a shower and shaving my legs in Iraq than I do in the States. You wouldn’t think that being a soldier takes less work than being a mom but in my case, it seems to be true.

Slipping back into the writing thing has been tougher than I thought it would be, until the internet went down and I was forced to stare at my computer screen. Putting on some new tunes by a favorite band and digging into revisions and before I knew it, I’d crossed over the thousand word threshold. Not a lot for me, but better than nothing considering I haven’t written anything for the last month.

And the other exciting news I have to share is that I’m now part of the Mom’s Writer Literary Magazine team. You might have seen the announcement on my website, but I’ll be blogging with the gals over there as well. My first blog is due on 10 July, so I’ll be sure to post a link to it then. In the meantime, I’ve got to come up with something profound to say in my column titled “Wearing Mommy’s Combat Boots”.

All in all, it’s been all to easy to slip back into the routine. I guess I expected things to change but nothing has. We’re still here. It’s still hot and dirty and people are worried about the wrong things.

Business as usual, I guess.

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I’m sitting in JFK, waiting for my ungodly long layover to be over with. I’ve got internet and Starbucks (after an obscenely long wait and rude service) and I should be in a writer’s paradise, right? I mean, after all, I haven’t written anything on my WIP in two weeks and I’ve really only started thinking about my writing career the last few days to take my mind off leaving my kids once again.
So I should be thrilled, right? Peace and quiet. Chilling and writing?
Yeah, not so much.
My heart hurts. My youngest was up this morning at three when I was getting dressed (there was a lobster that was going to bite her) and she asked me to ‘nuggle with her. Each time I thought she was asleep and I’d try to extricate myself from her embrace, she’d tighten her arms around my neck. It just about killed me. My oldest didn’t wake up, but it was a close thing (you can hear a bug walking on Mom’s floor).
Finally made it out of the house for my brother to take us to Bangor Airport (the troop greeters were there, which is awesome). Did fine until a little guy on our flight was screaming. Most passengers were upset because the kid was crying. It worked me over pretty good because all I could imagine was my daughters getting themselves all worked up looking for Mommy and Daddy today.
God this sucks. I keep telling myself that it’s worth it to give up a year of my life to provide for my kids and in 18 years when my daughters have both of their college educations paid for that it will be worth it.
Right now, that’s a pretty cold comfort.

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The worst Night Ever

So we’re back at Grammy’s now and the girls are settled right back in. Leave has actually gone very well. The girls have had a blast and I for one, have been focused on letting go of rigid parenting (like normal bedtimes) and just enjoying my time with the girls. For the most part, the kids have done a fantastic job adjusting and slipping back into family mode

Or so I thought.

Tonight, mommy tried to get an hour of mommy time to visit with her long time high school friend. I figured I’d been nothing but Mommy from the minute I walked through the door and I had gladly enjoyed every single minute. But I also figured that being back at Grammy’s, the girls would relax a little and be a little less clingy.

Boy was that a mistake. Within a few minutes of me not being in the room, both girls were crying and screaming. By the time they’d cried it out, their little eyes were all puffy and red and I’ve won the worst parent in the world award.

My oldest wrapped her arms around my neck and said Mommy, things aren’t going to be the same without you here. Then it dawned on me. While we were in Delaware, the girls were having fun and pretending that we really were a family again. Now that we’re back at Grammy’s and not heading back to Texas, reality has struck both of them like the 18 wheeler Grammy drives: Mommy and Daddy are leaving again. Time is such an adult concept that my kids don’t have any way of really counting down other than to look forward to winter and some time around Christmas for us coming home.

It really busted me up tonight taking even that small amount of time from them because every minute is so precious. In the long run, I know that when we get back to Texas, my kids are going to have an adjustment period and life will take a little longer to slip back into whatever normal is for our family. But for now, Mommy’s going to give them their bed time and whatever other time they want.

I’ve got three days left and it’s not nearly long enough.

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It’s amazing how quickly everyone falls back into the same old patterns. The honeymoon is over and just like that, both girls once more are just kids instead of the kids of deployed parents and I’m just a mom, instead of a soldier mom with a truckload of mommy guilt. I’ve discovered a lot hasn’t changed since I’ve been gone and some things I don’t think that ever will.

For instance, I’ve accepted the fact that I will never again be able to go to the bathroom by myself. There is no way my almost 3 year old is willing to let me out of her site. She might be attached to Mommy by a very short string but she doesn’t want anything to do with Daddy, hence Mommy is on call all day ever day. And since my four year old is not too old to go to the bathroom with daddy, it’s all mommy all the time. Which leads to some long lines in the ladies room and hopefully, other mom’s understand what’s taking so long (you can’t beat a 2 year old off the pottie with a stick if she’s determined to go poopieJ).

My four year old is very much a daddy’s girl except when it comes to bed time. Then she wants Mommy snuggles. I can’t tell you how touched I was that both girls wanted me to ‘nuggle’ with them as they fall asleep at night and what’s funny is that I have nothing more important to do than nuggle until they fall asleep. I wouldn’t trade eight hours of uninterrupted sleep in Iraq for the fits and turns I get here with one ear always listening for the girls. Of course, I’ve also found the cure for insomnia: chasing two kids around non stop from 6 am til 8 pm (or thereabouts).

The biggest thing that has changed is that when my girls want my time, they get it. While it might feel like everything is back to normal with us, I know that it’s not. I have a very short amount of time with them right now and the only thing I can do to make the next five months easier on them is give them every bit of time that I can.

And that’s a change in me as Mommy that I think will get me a lot down the road with my relationship with my daughters.

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Apparently, I have a genetic predisposition to worry incessantly about something. The constant redesign of my website comes from two things: one, I want it to look like a typical writer’s website and two, I don’t want it to look like a typical writer’s website. So I continue to worry and stress. I almost had a damn panic attack about this foolish thing before I went to sleep this morning (yes, that means a new site is up).
Several weeks ago, my husband went out in sector with the brigade CSM. I told myself he was going to be fine and I was not going to worry. Yeah, right. I got to my CHU and started imagining getting woken up by The Knock. The worry that I’d open the door and see the chaplain standing there. It got so big in my head, I had to force myself to go to sleep. And when he came in and woke me up to tell me he was back, the relief that crawled across my heart was insane.
You’d think that now that I had an agent, things would settle down in my head, right? Wrong. I keep thinking that this is all a dream and that Kim is going to email me one day and so oh, so sorry but you misunderstood me. Seriously, this is the new thing I’m worried about. I mean, come on, she’s got fantastic clients like Julie Kenner, Brenda Novak and Allison Brennan.
So the neuroses continue on the writing front. Julie Kenner swears it never goes away and I’m starting to think she’s absolutely right.
On the home front, my hubby and I are going on R&R next week and I’m starting to get wound up about that. Not the going home part. Not that first hug at the airport or the constant Mommy I want your attention part. It’s the leaving part. I haven’t even gone yet and I’m upset about having to come back.
Really? Is this normal? Or am I just going quietly crazy over here, finding things to worry about to keep my mind busy?
Right now, it’s 230 in the morning. I’m going to file my nightly report and then sit down in front of my Macbook and write. I’m hopefully going to channel all this insanity into a character that will be stressed out but sympathetic and hopefully not crazy. You’ll have to tell me what you think of her, if she ever gets published.

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So my family and I are somewhere outside Knoxville, getting ready to cut across North Carolina on the way to MomMom and PopPop’s house up in Delaware on the first stop in the drop the kids and pets off for the year. 

I have to say, this has been the most relaxing trip we’ve taken so far. The kids have been angels and even the psycho cat hasn’t been that annoying and I cannot honestly recall when I’ve been this patient. It sucks that I can’t be like this all the time… Anyway, I’m keeping my mind busy and trying not to think about next Friday (The Departure) when the year away from the kids and pets and home officially begins. I’m trying to figure out how to post the donut of despair up on my website, so you all can count down with me. Otherwise, just ready to get started so I can get it over with already.

That’s all for now!

Jess

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