Photo By Tech. Sgt. Kyle Johnson | Staff Sgt. Ryann Holzapfel, 374th Airlift Wing Public Affairs craftsman, left, and her...... read more read more
Subscribe
When I was 14 years old, at least once a week, I would have dreams where my dad would come home from his deployment in Iraq.
In the dream I would be inside our home anxiously awaiting his arrival and ready to welcome him with a huge hug. Then he would walk in the front door and I was jumping up and down with excitement.
Suddenly, I would realize he didn’t recognize me, and sometimes, he didn’t even acknowledge me. Anxiety overwhelmed my body, even though I was asleep. I felt pain in my chest and would squint my eyes like I was crying.
Finally, when I woke up, I would still feel hurt because my dad wasn’t there and I couldn’t be comforted by the one person I wanted to be there.
As a military child I didn’t realize what I was experiencing wasn’t what everyone else was experiencing.
I am a brand-new mother and a dual military spouse. My husband, Brendan, and I grew up as military children, but in two very different ways.
My husband’s father was active duty in the Air Force for 33 years, first as an enlisted linguistics Airmen and later commissioned into communications. During his childhood, Brendan lived all over the world, homeschooling and attending schools in Japan, Uzbekistan, Portugal and all over America. His dad deployed and went on temporary duty assignments for various periods of times throughout his life. Brendan saw changes in his location through various moves, distancing him from his extended family.
My experience as a military child was slightly different. My dad served as a reservist in the Army on active and reserve orders throughout his 28-year career as a logistics officer. I lived in Omaha, Nebraska my whole life.
My dad worked a civilian job while leaving some weekends or longer periods of time for training. When I was only a few months old he deployed for Desert Storm for a year and again to Kosovo in 1996, but I don’t have memories of those times. What I do remember is him deploying twice for year-long rotations.
During the times my dad was gone for deployments, things were different, we missed him and we kept going, but with a lingering feeling of something missing. Our family wasn’t complete.
We made sure to write letters and send care packages full of Diet Pepsi and compressed air cans for all the sand he encountered. Our family would go to Red Cross events where they would set up webcams so you could video chat with a heavily pixelated screen, but it was real-time – something totally unheard of in 2011! We made sure he was included in our daily lives by doing activities that people didn’t normally have to do.
With the long absences came hardships for our family, but when you don’t know what normal is, you just accept the situation and press forward. I think of how I never felt we went without or weren’t able to do something because we were in a single parent household during that time. If we did, I don’t remember it, which is not an easy feat for any parent to pull off.
I never knew I would have my own military child. My husband and I moved to Yokota when I was about eight weeks pregnant in February 2020 and we were so excited to start our family at our new duty station. This was both of our parents first grandbaby! Our families all had plans to come visit Japan when he would be born and we couldn’t wait to have all three new sets of grandparents meet him.
Then COVID-19 hit.
We went through my whole pregnancy separated from our families. I would send ultrasound pictures over messages; I would show my pregnant belly to our parents over video chat and we even had a virtual baby shower.
Not only were we experiencing our entire first pregnancy without being close to our family, but now the odds of them coming to visit our newborn baby were dwindling.
We were so looking forward to the time when travel restrictions would lift and we could see our families again. That time never came.
Elijah John Miller was born at the Yokota Air Base Hospital, October 8, 2021 at 6:32 A.M. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and we were so happy, but we could only share this happiness with ourselves. It was a bittersweet moment. Brendan and I were so happy to have this brand-new baby in our lives, but longed to share that happiness with the people we were closest to.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but my husband and I were dealt a hard situation and we handled it. A situation that felt unfair and challenging, but we didn’t halt our lives because we couldn’t manage it. I’m sure our parents were handed situations like these several times without us ever knowing, but as kids we accepted and worked with what we were given.
I think childhood gave us a resiliency we fell back on during our pregnancy and child’s birth. We see our son’s birth now as something very special just between us because that’s what our upbringing instilled in us.
Take the challenges that come, work with what you have and then look back on it as formative life experience.
Now that we are parents, our son is a military child. Brendan and I have about two years left on both of our enlistments. Conversations about re-enlisting or extending enlistments used to just be about what we wanted for both of us and now we have to include our son and what is best for our entire family.
I never considered before how being a military child is something that can really build a strong foundation for children. The challenges that come with being a military child come with so many rewards.
When you leave friends, you welcome new ones. When you leave somewhere familiar, you get to explore somewhere new and exciting. When you’re separated from family, you learn how to have an extended family through other military members. All are hardships that you spin into something positive for yourself.
Now as a parent, I can also see the way military children are shaped by their parents. I’m grateful to be able to fall back on the experiences I’ve had as a child as stepping stones to the new and challenging scenarios the military presents to me as a parent. I think all military parents should know the important work they are doing and understand it isn’t easy.
I texted my stepmom while writing this article to verify some timelines about my dad and when I did, I flashed back to those times he was gone.
It felt like it was just the other day we were all together living without my dad and thinking about it made me a little sad as a mom and a wife. Those events were hard for me, but my stepmom took on a huge responsibility and I think she did well. I think my dad took on a career that was demanding, but would not have done so if he didn’t think our family was strong enough to handle it.
I can only hope that I provide my child with the same positive experience as I was able to have. My parents shaped my experience as a military child and for that I am grateful. At the time, I did not know what I was experiencing would be something that would shape me into the Airman, wife and mother I am today, and for that -- I am grateful.
| Date Taken: | 04.28.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 05.06.2021 23:07 |
| Story ID: | 394951 |
| Location: | JP |
| Web Views: | 47 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, Raised on Resiliency: How Military Parents Shape Their Child’s Experiences, by TSgt Ryann Holzapfel, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
