Army Brat

As long as I live, I will never forget driving down East Waverly Place Court that day, watching my son heave and sob in the back seat of my car, listening to his agonized screams of “I hate moving!” punctuated by animalistic cries that belied actual physical pain. I will never forget the stabbing pain in my own heart, the nauseating twisting in my stomach, as I cried along with him – both because I felt his pain and because I knew there was nothing I could do to right the traumatic wrong that was causing it.

We were driving away from our best friends – our family, really – after seven years together. It was gut-wrenching for me as an adult who has moved every few years all her life. I could not fathom what it felt like to be a child moving away from the only two people who’d been part of his life since the day it began, the little girl who knows him better than anyone … maybe even better than I do.

We had talked about it for months leading up to the move; we tried to prepare him. But as it turns out, there is no preparing for what it feels like to actually drive away. When you love someone that much, when you spend that much time with them, it is not as simple as keeping in touch and missing them from time to time. You don’t realize until later that that person was part of you to such an extent that you genuinely feel unsure of yourself without them. Even with all the shiny and the new and the happy in the new place, you feel a bit lost, a bit off, a bit sad. Again, I was feeling all of this as a grown-up able to identify her feelings and process them. It frightened me and depressed me to watch my little guy try to wade through such heavy emotions without understanding that it would eventually feel better. It was the first time I’ve ever seen him powerless and truly sad.

For a while, I could sense this in him even when he was smiling. And as if to confirm my fears and suspicions, he would randomly confess things to me when we were alone – things that reminded him of her, things that he wanted her to see, things he wanted to tell her, things that made him sad. Things that in turn made me sad. It was a complex heart-break – his pain compounded by my own compounded by the infuriating fact that there was nothing I could do for either of us except wait for time to form a scab over the wound of being ripped away from the people with whom we’d shared deployments and homecomings, birthdays and milestones, triumphs and failures, and a million every-day moments that made them our family.

And then one day, as we rode our bikes through our new neighborhood on a beautiful sunny day, he announced very matter-of-factly that he was “over” his sadness. He still misses her and she’s still his best friend, he said, but he decided he doesn’t want to cry and feel so sad anymore. As he pedaled past me, I watched the straightness of his back, how high he held his head, how confident he suddenly seemed, and I was in complete awe of this little person.

I had worried and fretted and cried, wondering how I could ever help him cope and adapt to what is truly the hardest thing he’s experienced in life so far. And yet, even with all my wisdom and experience, it was that same little boy who had to remind me that, sometimes, all you can do is suck it up and drive on.