A Hard Reality

Any time a phone call from your son starts with "I have good news and I have bad news", you know it's going to be tough. That held true with the phone call I got from Adam on Sunday night. I really wasn't expecting to hear from him at all. He had warned me that he would be really busy and that he may not be able to call until Tuesday when he was released from MOS. It was a happy surprise when my phone rang and I saw his face come up on caller ID. It WAS until I got the good news/bad news phrase. He told me he had been one of the four men that were up for company honorman. It was nice for him to be recognized, even though he didn't make the title! However, he's also been placed on Grad Hold which means he's not graduating with the rest of his platoon. Something about not having all of his paperwork ready, blah, blah, blah. Not something that really surprised me. He belongs to the military now so snaggles are inevitable! Then I asked him point blank if that meant he wasn't going to make it home for Thanksgiving. Yes. My eyes welled up almost instantly with the sting of reality. I knew this COULD happen, but I guess I didn't want to think it WOULD. He kept telling me it was really looking like he would be making it home for the holidays and I actually started to get excited. I should not have done that.

This Thanksgiving is going to be my hardest. It will be the first one in so many years that we are not "going to Grandma's house". No biggie. We are all actually looking forward to having a quiet dinner at home. BUT, it was supposed to be the SEVEN of us. Adam was supposed to be here. He is my chef buddy! I can't cook without him! Who else will have a cooking throwdown with me? Not his brothers. I love them to death, but they are just not Adam. HE is my chef. We work so well together in the kitchen! We share the same ideas and methods. How am I going to get through it without him? With a lot of tears probably. He was supposed to be home.

I know this is only the first of MANY holidays he's going to miss. This first one is the hardest though. It's so hard to swallow the reality that my boy is all grown up now. I can't seem to remember where all the time went. I also realized that all the bad things we went through (mainly through his teen years, ha ha) have just disappeared. They no longer matter. He is the man he is meant to be. Still. It's hard. He promises a cooking throwdown at Christmas, but it won't be the same. Thanksgiving was OUR holiday. Something that no one else fully understood. I hope they at least are able to give him some turkey at the air base where he's headed. It won't be as good, but he needs to have SOME! I want to get excited about Christmas, but I can't yet. Too many "snaggles" can happen between now and then.

I can't even think about where he will spend Thanksgiving and Christmas next year. I'm not ready to go there yet.