When we finally sold our home and were able to join my husband at our new posting, I had exactly 18 hours to plan and leave for our House Hunting Trip. The sold sign went up at noon on Wednesday and by 2 pm, my flight had been booked by our moving company for Thursday morning at 8 am, from an airport 2 hours away.
I really, really didn’t want to leave at 4. So I sent a message that looked like this: “Hey… So I sold the house today and I leave for HHT early tomorrow. Can I borrow a couch?”
And the return message was “isn’t our life ridiculous? When can I expect you tonight?”
The truth is, life’s been an adventure and I’ve slept in a lot of guest rooms these past few years. Bordon. Toronto. St Jean. I’ve had friends watch the kids while I was working in Petawawa. I’ve crashed in Ottawa for flights more than once, and they’ve even left at 0 dark stupid to drive me to the airport and pick me up. I’ve showed up at friend’s homes for breakfast at 6 am after a red eye. It seems lately I get around, and the funny thing is, I have needed very few hotels. The beauty of military friendships has meant I’ve had a bed all over the country.
This time last year, when Remembrance Day loomed during yet another deployment, I decided I wanted to spend it at the Capital with the kids. And after a few emails asking about times for the service, we found ourselves invited to stay with friends who not only gave us a bed, but a sense of family. Family that stayed up talking until the early hours, that woke up early with my kids and made chocolate chip pancakes before I was even dressed, and who drove us to the ceremony and hung out with us downtown after.
And when I stood at the Afghanistan memorial to lay our poppy at the stone that marked those lost, I did so with the spouse who had stood right next to me when we watched them laid to rest.
There’s a kind of friendship that outlasts distance and requires very little contact. In fact, years might go by without a message or a call. It is forged not only out in the desert with our spouses, but here at home, too. Through attending prenatal classes together when the instructor wonders if you might be partners, through emails that come when the news speaks of casualties and say ‘my door is open and coffee is on.’ It is built sometimes without words but instead silent presence and a commitment that you are there, whenever you might be needed and no matter how long it’s been.
I’m grateful for the military community that we’ve built. I’m blessed by the opportunities I’ve had to be that strength, and I’m infinitely fortunate for the ways that strength has surrounded me at the hardest of times. More than a spare bed, it’s proved itself time and time again that when I’ve needed it, it has been that soft place to land until I can get up again.
Kim is a military spouse of over 16 years, to a Canadian soldier in the Armoured Corp. As a family they have seen the other side of 4 combat deployments that served as a break between the steady schedule of training and courses. Together they have 3 children, 1 dog and a great adventure.
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