Sad For My Dad And Our Family example essay topic

The contemporary American family is one that shows a picture perfect lifestyle of happiness and normalcy, but this normalcy can be challenged by anything. The present war our country is engaged in is one factor that has changed the lives of many families since it began. Husbands, sons, and sometimes even mothers and daughters are leaving their homes to fight in the war with Iraq. If the traditional American family consists of a husband, wife, and two or more children living in suburbia, my family could once have easily represented it. However, when our country went to war, my dad's military-career transferred him thousand's of miles across the ocean disrupting almost every aspect of our once, near perfect household. Most of my life I have had a very comfortable, no worries lifestyle.

I was raised by both my parents in a nice home just outside of a pretty big city; we lived there almost eleven years of my life until we moved to a bigger home in a different side of town. My mom became pregnant after we moved into our new house and we soon celebrated the arrival of my sister. After my sister was born our family seemed to change in some ways. I noticed my parents were becoming more involved with both of our schools and doing more parental things. Both of my parents really settled down what little wild youthfulness was still left inside of them; our family was becoming very contemporary and more of the picturesque family most view as normal. My mom didn't work, but rather stayed home and did the housewife thing while raising my sister and I. My dad has a job in the military, which often times calls him to placed around the country for a few days at a time but never for long.

I remember the day I found out my dad had to leave for Iraq. It struck me with different emotions. I was sad for my dad and our family, but I was also shocked because I had never thought this was going to happen to me, to my family. My mom did not take it well.

She was very upset because my dad was going to have to leave. Although we knew that my dad, being in the position he is in, would probably avoid much combat, we were still scared, angry and confused as to why this was happening to us. We understood that our country needed my dad, but at that moment it was hard to find much patriotism. We had a few weeks left before my dad left. We didn't know when he was coming back or what all he would be doing, all we could think about is how our dad was leaving and how our lives were about to change. Normally, our household would do everything together.

Our routine was set. My dad was a very important part of our lives, he wasn't like some dads who either was always gone or didn't care. He took us to school, read my sister stories, made dinner alongside my mom, he was just always there and it would be very different without him. He left right before school started, near the end of summer. It was the start to a pretty bad fall.

Fall was already depressing enough with school starting and summer ending but now my dad would be leaving, it seemed that nothing else could go wrong. My mom couldn't handle everything as well as my dad could. She just wasn't the same without my dad around. She did her best to help us out in whatever my sister and I needed, but we all were hurting without my father around. It really affected my mom more than anyone. Most mom's prepare for their children leaving or when they are old their husbands dying, but my mom, like the rest of us, never really expected my dad to be shipped off for a war.

Even when the war was going on there still was no sign of my dad having to leave. It came very spontaneously. We still received my dad's paychecks plus some for him being gone, but money was definitely tighter around our house. Everything was taking its toll on us. My mom was having a lot of problems, she never has worked, she was dealing with my dad being gone and she had to get a job.

Our family really did not seem right with my dad being gone and my mom having a job. Our lives at one point seemed to be flipped upside down. Gone were the days of my family gathering for breakfast, my mom greeting me when I got home from school in the afternoon, the dinners where we would all share how our days went, nothing seemed right anymore. After a few more months my family seemed hopeless.

It was winter now and Christmas just didn't seem the same. My mom continued to balance out the money situation, work her new job, and try to raise my sister and I. It was a lot on her part because she just wasn't used to all the responsibility. The role my father usually played was now taken over by my mom. I guess you could say that my mom had always been one of those typical housewives that many feminists fight hard to eradicate, but she always had enjoyed being a stay at home mom. When spring came things finally began to look better.

My mom was really doing a great job raising us, my dad was still doing okay, and things just had a much better outlook. It took a while, but we had become accustomed to our dad not being around. This is not to say that we didn't miss him or anticipated his return, but our family had shifted to a single parent family, momentarily, and it was something new and uncharted for us. Summer was here and we received the news that my dad was going to be able to come home. It was an unexpected but wonderful surprise. When my dad returned things almost immediately went back to the way they were when he was around, which was good, but at the same time my mom was doing things that she had really never done before.

This change in my mom continued even when my dad was back. He had some trouble at first adjusting to my mom's new career, but everything worked out okay. The experience I had with my dad leaving is one that many families face. Not every family is as lucky, being so that their father leaves the family to go fight in a war or for some other reason, most are just deadbeats and leave for their own personal reasons. My dad leaving at first turned our family upside down, throwing what we had always known into something totally different, but as time wore on we came to realize that things would be okay. We grew to accept that this experience was difficult, but out of it came positive things.

My dad's leaving challenged my mom's role as a simple housewife, which then challenged my mom to take over our household. She raised us alone, got a job, and found more self-confidence within herself. My family's change did a lot of good..