The Potato

05/01/2011

With all the stress leading up to a deployment or getting re-integrated to living together post deployment, we're all bound to have the pre/post-deployment-crazy-way-of-thinking. I was lucky enough to receive a pre-deployment package in the mail and it explained to me that the spouses who are left at home tend to bottle up their feelings about the upcoming tour and eventually take it out on our spouse. Any time my husband and I get into something (it doesn't happen often but when it does, it's usually a big one) I have to keep telling myself that if he weren't deploying or if he didn't just get home, we wouldn't be arguing about it. If I count to five and take a deep breath I can usually calm down and get over whatever it is. Sometimes it's something as simple as clothes on the floor, or watching the fights instead of spending time with me. Really, just little things that don't mean anything at a normal time.

A friend of mine asked me the other day what it's like when the husband gets home from a tour. Her fiance recently came home from a Afghanistan and she was finding it really hard to get back into a normal routine with him. They found themselves arguing more and getting annoyed a lot easier. Since I've been through this before, I decided to share a story with her...

A couple of weeks prior to my husband deploying, we were having supper and getting a list ready for the week's groceries. He asked me if I could pick up potatoes, reminding me that he really loves them and hasn't eaten a lot of them since he met me (I should mention here that I really don't like eating potatoes because I think they only taste good if I add a bunch of butter and salt). He went on to talk about how much his eating habits have changed since we met and would really like a simple meat and potatoes meal sometime. I, in my pre-deployment-crazy-way-of-thinking, took that as "You're a bad cook  and I want to start eating good food, not all these salads and new recipes." Yup, a simple "I'd like more potatoes" got spun into my loving husband completely insulting my culinary skills (which he didn't) and complaining that he's being deprived of the food he likes. I started to cry and got mad at him for insulting me and stormed out of the room and didn't talk to him for a good forty-five minutes. His request for a potato turned into a screaming-crying-door slamming argument. While I was crying and hiding, I realized that my pre-deployment-crazy-way-of-thinking had obviously chosen to consume mind and had to swallow all my pride and go apologize to my husband for literally freaking out on him. So, I went to him, kissed him, and said, "I'm sorry about the potato."

And made him potatoes for supper the next day.