Transient

Recently a friend commented on having a "forever house" and I began to feel a little nostalgic that we won't have a "forever house" for at least another 10 years and in that 10 years there will be at least 4 or 5 "right now houses".

One of the most difficult tasks in the Marine Corps is to make every single new living space into a home. Fighting the battle of knowing that you'll only be there for 2 years or so and wondering if it's worth the effort to decorate just to turn around an undecorate as soon as you have it tweaked to perfection. It is totally worth it, otherwise you will always feel that nowhere is truly home and that prospect depresses the hell out of me.

I love being a Marine Corps spouse, but it does lose a little something when you bring children into the mix. The more I think about what our life has in store for us as far as moving and experiences, the happier I am that we chose to wait to have children. The current plan* is that Chris will retire at 20 and our daughter will just be starting middle school. Being settled during the most unsettled part of her life gives me hope for the road ahead of moves, training cycles, and deployments.

A lot of people would consider me liberal in my thoughts on a traditional family home, afterall I chose to work a stressful job (which I absolutely loved and would do again in a heartbeat) when my husband could support us, we chose to wait to have children until our mid-late twenties, and I admittedly don't fill the current roll as "woman" in our house...I am not a maid or a chef. I clean and I cook sporadically. I never considered being a stay at home mom, always planning on going back to work. Actually, if I'm being honest here until two years ago, I never really considered being a mom. I pictured Chris and I as one of those childless couples who ate out and got take out all the time. I thought that is what life would be...and then we went and flipped it upside down.

It is this liberality that I'm slowly losing as the birth of our daughter gets closer and closer. I have been "nesting" for 4+ months now and I am excited at the prospect of staying home and making a cozy place for my husband to come to at the end of the day, of keeping the house clean and a hot meal at the ready. These are things that I want to do as I'm faced with motherhood, things that are important to me, things that will make me happy. The remarkable thing is that I have no outside pressure to be any of those things, everyone supports me in whatever decision I make. I never thought I'd be "that kind of mom", and I still don't think I will, I just know that I'll be happy and content making a forever home in a temporary location.

*we all know how "plans" go...Chris was only going to do 4 years and get out...he's now at 9.