Diary of a Stay at Home Mom: February 2014

, by Sandra

As I get older, I get more emotional.....

It's just the plain truth!

Having moved back to where my children were born, and where I first started my life as married woman AND in a new country, has been a blessing, and a joy......and extremely emotional.

For so many years I envisioned coming back *home*. I even had dream after dream where we had moved back into our old house on base. Every dream a little different.

Either the house was exactly the same but the area had changed, or the house was now haunted, or it was completely changed, or I found items that I had left behind when we moved to Arizona. It was all very strange, but I think subconsciously, I was yearning to return.

And we did, and here we are.

The first time we drove back through the base, I felt this overwhelming feeling of joy and happiness, nothing I can really put to words.

But it was also very surreal, it almost felt like the past 7 years spent in Arizona had just ceased to be.

Things weren't all the same though, a lot, and I mean a LOT of things have changed on this base. Our housing area is gone and in it's place, just a trees, lots and lots of overgrown bushes and trees, makes quite a sad sight.

That was the first time that I felt a tug at my heart and an overwhelming feeling of sadness.

But where I'm noticing the biggest struggle, seems to be at the commissary. I know that sounds quite ridiculous and if I was reading this on someone else's blog I would be mighty confused, but let me explain.

When I go grocery shopping, I am right back in the commissary where I first shopped for my house as a married woman, and where I bought the first groceries to fix a meal for my husband, and where I later shopped while pregnant, and then a few months after with a newborn in a car seat, and then eventually with a newborn in the car seat and a toddler holding my hand.

So many memories, so many joys and just so many feelings attached to those thoughts.

And this is where I'm noticing just how emotional I am getting. I find myself looking at these young military wives with their infants or toddlers, young mothers doing their shopping, their grocery carts filled with diapers and baby wash and formula.......and my heart aches because I miss that so very much.

My children are no longer babies, they are teenagers and don't get me wrong, I'm very happy with where we are right now, but I still can't help but feel melancholy when I see these young mothers.

It takes everything in my not to burst into tears. Quite a sad sight if I were to give in to those feelings, I'm sure.

It just really makes me realize just how far we've come, and that no matter how much I am loving being back in this area, it never is the same, and never will be.

But that's ok, lesson here is to embrace all the changes, good or bad and to remember that just because something is not exactly how it used to be in the past, does not make it a bad thing, just makes it a different experience in our ever changing journey through life.

And now I'm going to go look through old photos and reminisce back to those days, not with tears in my eyes but with joy in my heart.