Elysia left today for a 2-week training at the Army JAG school. It is the first time she has been away from Citrus since coming back from deployment. Now that our daughter is two and a half, we think she understands what is going on at least in a general sense:
Mommy is going to work?
She has other people’s car?
Mommy is going away for a while?
It will be interesting to see how she handles this short period of time. Will she act out a few days from now and make this a rough two weeks? For some odd reason I keep thinking of my cat during college who would stop using the litterbox and hide in the closet if I was gone too long.
At the command pre-deployment briefing for families in Norfolk last year, someone from the Fleet & Family Support Center gave me a Sesame Street DVD for military families. It features Elmo, whose dad who is ”going away for a while”.
It is a great video but it is also depressing, particularly if you are watching it with your kid and it sinks in that they are singing about you. If you really want to wallow, there is a section for adults only. The main advice in the video for military families everywhere is: KEEP BUSY. You can watch the full DVD, “Talk, Listen, Connect“ online or save the files to your computer.
Elmo receives a lot of reassurance that all of his friends are “going to be here for you” and there are short interviews with military families, as well as two catchy songs. I think I alternated between feeling sorry for us and feeling much worse about the other families who are facing much greater hardships. Wouldn’t you know it was Citrus’s favorite video, so we had to watch it about a thousand times.
During deployment Citrus sang along with the video but I could not figure out if she identified with Elmo using a webcam. Apparently it not only sunk in, but it has really helped us explain Elysia leaving tonight. Today all I had to do was say “Mommy is going away for a while, like Elmo’s daddy” and she got it. She was thrilled to give her Mommy a stuffed animal to take with her, like Elmo did with his Daddy.
Now we’ll wait and see if she pees in the closet.
2 Responses to “Going Away for A While”
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good luck, Mitja!
It always amazes me that kids love the saddest stories. When I was a preschool teacher I had to read ‘I’ll love you forever” about a gazillion times and it crushed me every time. The kids were always wondering why I was crying.
Here’s to pee-free closets!
Maybe you should set out a litter box just in case.