CLIMB ON

As conditioned as military families are to look steadfastly forward, it is at times when change is imminent when this military spouse tends to dig my emotional heels in and duck; in a metaphorical refusal to take the next step — a climber who can't stop looking at the ground, which impedes the purpose.

Sort of like when young children don’t want to go somewhere (no matter where that where might be) — they tend to hold on to their parent with dear life. Extracting them takes gentle and sometimes extreme measures of force.

That’s how I feel.

For surely, come the new year, the Greszlers will find out what the near future holds, and it involves a move — somewhere. Whenever that happens, no matter how frustrated I am with the oven that never quite works, or the windows, which seep all weather through the year, everything takes on new significance.

Change is hard, no matter how schooled we are in executing it.

It’s cyclical. It takes a year to gain one’s bearings, find doctors, make the latest location into one’s own; another year to get involved; and maybe one more to really feel part of the community. Three years is just long enough to grow roots. Not the shallow ones, which are easily removed with one tug, but the ones with supporting anchors, which take a bit more force to uproot.

I’m on that cusp between holding on and letting go.

Friends and community are so important. And while we maintain connections with friends the world over, it is those people who play roles in our daily lives, who hold immediate significance. It’s hard to look past that — over the cliff of change.

Once you let go and begin the slide down, everything sort of slips into this single lense, long-range focus. Forward looking sometimes gives me tunnel vision. It becomes more difficult for me to see what’s going on in the periphery of life.

I hope recognizing this somehow helps me balance on the precipice between now and then.