3. The Military Comes First!
And of course this is the military we’re talking about. PCSing isn’t the only issue that makes scheduling a challenge. Deployments, schools, field training and just plain lack of accumulated leave makes it hard to pick up and go whenever you want to. I’m lucky that I come from a military family. My father understands that it takes time for me to have enough leave to make a trip worth it. He knows that some commands require you to keep a set amount of days on the books, unusable, in case of emergency.
I’ve worked with people who use every single leave day they have and then when something awful happens back home they aren’t able to be there with their families because they have no time saved up. It’s hard for people who don’t understand the military to grasp how our leave works sometimes. Try and break it down for your family and explain that it’s not that you don’t want to come home but that if you come now you won’t be able to come for holidays, upcoming weddings, graduations the next year, or whatever it is you have those days planned for. If they hear it put in a way that makes they understand you are planning on coming home, just not now, it might soften the blow a little.
No matter what the reason is that you can’t make it home this summer make sure you’re keeping the lines of communication open with your family. If you’re new to the military community this might be the first time you have to have this conversation with them but I promise it’s not going to be the last.
And just think of summer vacations as practice for when your spouse retires and you have to explain to the family why you aren’t coming home for good.
