Deployment Lesson for COVID #1: Celebrating Small Milestones

March 20, 2020

I had a familiar feeling in my gut this week that I was finally able to articulate yesterday: it felt like we were gearing up for a deployment. It feels like a sense of impending dread, fear and uncertainty, preparing for long-distance relationships, feelings of confidence that we’ll get through it, holding it together for the kids, making plans for others, not knowing exactly when it will be over, making the best of the time we have, and more impending dread... 

So I decided to let that inform some of the ways the Fishers Five interact with this. Namely, every time my husband Jonathan (an Army chaplain) leaves for a deployment, the kids and I mark milestones: One Month Down Day was a celebration! (We never marked how many months “to go” because we often didn’t know that answer...)

Today was one week since we began social distancing as a family, so we asked the kids how we should mark One Week Down Day - their answer was brown butter spaghetti (with NO salad!) served on china. 

Whenever your one week day is, mark it with something special! We’ll do something even more special for One Month Down, every month, until this thing is over. 

As someone who has spent years of my marriage physically isolated from my spouse and has parented through long-term slow-burn trauma, it is so important to still find ways to celebrate. 

What’s your milestone plan? I’d love to hear ideas of how to celebrate without going out and with only rare trips to the grocery store!