Cause You Gotta Have Friends

I really thought that my tear bursts in random places around the base ended a while ago.  I felt like after being here for almost 5 months, getting into a kind of groove and feeling mostly at peace with being here that things wouldn't set me off like they did when we first got here.  It's actually been a relatively tear free few months, until today.  Today, a little trip to the playground down the street from my house made me really miss my friends.  For the first time in a long time, I felt lonely and a sense of longing.  Why?  Why would a visit to the playground make me sad?

Don has been working nights all week, so all of our schedules are a little out of whack.  Don gets home from work around 8 each morning, visits with me and Price and then goes to bed and sleeps most of the day, waking up in time to spend a little more time with us before heading back to work.  It's hard, but I've tried to keep us quiet so Don can get his much needed sleep.  I've also tried to keep us out of the house since we spent so much time inside last week thanks to illness and Mother Nature (total aside here, but we had a "cold front" blow through last week.  It got down to 75, I wore jeans and my legs didn't sweat- it was a big deal.  The locals aren't used to it being so not hot cold here, leaving the BX as the cold front was blowing through, I actually heard a cashier tell a fellow co-worker to "be careful, it's chilly out there."  I had to turn away so she wouldn't see me laughing).  So, this morning we went on a walk and noticed there were some kids who looked to be about Price's age at the playground.  We wrapped up our walk, dropped the dog at the house and walked back over to the playground.  And the other moms instantly packed up their kids and left.  Well, they left as soon as one of the kids came over and threw a shovel of sand in Price's face.

In my head and my heart, I know they didn't leave because we got there, I'm sure they had been there for a while and it was getting close to lunchtime.  But they didn't even say hi or smile or acknowledge us when we walked up.  And it hurt.  It  made me miss my friends.  It made me realize how much I miss that I am not in Texas or Ohio celebrating the arrivals of new babies, that we aren't with friends to celebrate important birthdays and accomplishments.  I miss that for the second year in a row, I didn't get to see my two besties at our annual get together.  I miss having friends who, had their child thrown sand in Price's face, I could have said something to both mother and child, but probably wouldn't have had to.  I miss being able to walk into a place and not only people not leaving, but being happy to see me and staying a little while longer to catch up and visit.  I miss being able to pick up the phone and call someone right when I want to without having to do a formulaic equation to figure out if it's too late or too early to call.  And that's why, I shed a few tears on the playground today.