Sharing the Piled Up Weight
Each week, it seems that there are more piles.
Piles of laundry to be washed (and folded and put away). Piles of books to be read. Piles of towels on the bathroom floor. Piles of items to drag back and forth to class (maps, picnic blanket, instruments, games—the kids can’t understand why we seem to be dragging more and more stuff to the car every week).
And this week, there were piles of letters to be folded, enveloped, addressed, and mailed. Letters telling family members that their loved ones were going to deploy.
It happened to be an unusually busy week before my husband (still recovering from acute bronchitis) went out of town, and if it hadn’t been important, he wouldn’t have added to the stacks of stuff I already had to do. When he asked for my help, I was glad to give it. {True confession that my husband would violently disagree with: I often feel like I don’t do much to help him when it comes to caring for the squadron.}
When I agreed to fold, envelope, address, and mail almost 100 deployment notification letters, I was thinking of it as busy work. Anyone can fold a letter in thirds. Anyone can copy an address (though not just anyone has handwriting bad enough to get comments from the mailmen—so maybe the Man should’ve rethought asking for outside help). Anyone can slap on a stamp (more on that later).
What I didn’t think about was how hard it would be to see the words on the letter I had proofed for my husband all those months ago. “Dear ——, I wanted to inform you of my decision to task your mom…your husband…your son…your niece for a deployment.” I didn’t think about how many memories would flood in as I folded letter after letter, slipping them into envelopes that now bore the names of men and women and children whose lives were about to change forever.
I remembered being young and newly married and pregnant and dropping my husband off at the squadron with all his gear and the knowledge that his son would be three months old before he got to meet his dad. I remembered being not so young or newly married but being pregnant again (twins this time — we upped our game) and spending the nights sitting with my one year old’s head on my belly and my three year old’s hand in mine because they couldn’t sleep without Daddy. I remembered the griefs my husband couldn’t tell me about until years later.
I remembered the many men and women who got us through both deployments: kept us sane, kept us fed, kept us safe. I remembered how wonderful it was that we’d made it through, that we were still together. I prayed that each one of these men and women would make it home safely too.
My husband carries the weight of each man and woman he tasks to deploy. And for a brief few minutes, at my kitchen table, with my assembly line of letters and envelopes and pens, I carried the weight with him.
I got through two teams of deployers Monday. I told myself I’d tackle another two the following day, and the final two the day after that so that I could have all the letters in the mail before my husband got home. Monday night he repented of asking me for help and told me to just leave the rest until he got back. Being really attached to the idea of having a Saturday when I actually get to hang out with my husband, I ignored him.
And then on Tuesday, three friends came over to hang out while our children terrorized the neighborhood together. While I wrote on the mailing addresses, one of them added the return address. Another helped fold. The third stuffed and sealed the envelopes, one after another after another.
We talked and laughed while we worked, and I had to throw away four different envelopes that I’d misaddressed because they were distracting me (see how I blamed them?)…and the weight wasn’t as heavy because they were with me. They helped me to carry the load.
After they left, I threw together taco salad, and while the meat simmered and the kids bathed, I finished the last few envelopes. Today, I took them to the post office. There, I divvied out stamps, and my five kids helped me stamp every single envelope, ninety-three of them altogether. Letters that were going to moms and dads, wives and husbands, children and relatives…loved ones. Loved ones just like me. Just like my children.
And I learned that Bruiser is not to be trusted with stamps (as he was evidently playing a new game—badly—called “How Close Can I Get the Stamp to the Edge of the Envelope”). And I learned that if I ask the four older kids to do something, I’d better let the five year old do it to (or she is going to burn the post office to the ground). And I saw, again, that the pile diminishes quickly when we have help, when we aren’t doing the work alone.
There are still piles of laundry all over my bedroom. There are still piles of books in every corner of my home. There is one last week of dragging all the piles of all the educational things out so I can make seven homeschooled kids just a little bit better educated. And there will always be piles of towels on the bathroom floor, even if my mom gifts everyone monogrammed towels in an attempt to shame my children into hanging their own towels up.
But the weight of all these piles—and all the rest of the far more significant piles—lightens a little when we know we don’t have to carry the weight on our own. There are others willing to come along beside us so that we are sharing the weight together.
