Military Mom

Bubba joined the Army National Guard this week. He's at his first weekend drill right now. In case you are unfamiliar with the Guard, and I still mostly am, they serve locally most of the time. They are the only branch of the military ruled by the state and federal governments. He will go to basic training and advanced training in Missouri for 21 weeks, but not until January. Until then, he drills one weekend a month. His term of service is 3 years. After his training is completed he drills one weekend a month and two weeks during the summer unless he gets deployed somewhere or chooses to be voluntarily deployed. I'm a little more okay with this than I originally thought I would be, mostly because by the time he's finished with training, we'll have had a new President in office for 6 months. I'm very proud of him, but especially glad that he is choosing to serve in this way. It really came down to, for him, that he couldn't stand the idea of being away for 4 years. As pissy as he gets with me sometimes, and as much as he acts like he wants to be a grown-up, there is a side of him that is not quite ready to cut those apron strings.