A Lesson From Dr. Seuss

And no, it is not the perennial graduation, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!. Which I will admit, I have never read, nor received as a graduation gift. I know, I know—I am the exception to the rule.

I realized this military spouse lesson while reading Green Eggs and Ham to my 5-year-old the other night.

Grumpy Gus (which is the name I gave the character who doesn’t want to eat the eggs and ham), of course, needs to learn to try new things.

And as military spouses, so do we.

We have to learn to make our homes in new locations.

We may even have to learn new languages to do so.

We may even have to take this lesson literally and learn to eat new foods.

And this goes for the soldier in our lives as well. Just ask my husband when he went to meet my family for the first time and was offered Rocky Mountain Oysters to eat. Friendly advice for those who don’t know—they are not oysters.

But what of Sam-I-Am in Green Eggs and Ham? What can we learn from him?

Perseverance.

Does Sam give up as soon as Grumpy Gus refuses to eat green eggs and ham here or there?

No.

He keeps asking. He doesn’t give up. “With a fox, or in a box, with a mouse or in a house?”

That Sam-I-Am is no quitter.

And that, my friends, is the military spouse lesson I learned from Dr. Seuss the other night, and I wanted to share it with you.

Today, due to a miscommunication, I had to give nearly half of the money in the FRG account to the rear detatchment. We’ve got soldiers coming back in less than two months, and I am scrambling to find ways to replace that money so that we can have some fun welcome home celebrations for our guys.

Sam-I-Am isn’t a quitter. And neither am I.

Thanks for the lesson, Doc.