A boy without his dad is like a..well…a train without an engine

Mommy is absolutely critical in the day-to-day operating environment that is my son’s life. If I am not standing in the same room as my son, within minutes you can rest assured that “Mama!” or “Mama?” will issue from whichever room my son is in that I am not. Sometimes it is in the form of a question, like “Mama, where are you?” other times there is more a panic tone in the call “Mama, I need you!!” Sometimes it sounds more like a game of Marco Polo and I find myself wanting to answer “Polo” to his request for “Mama!” Regardless of his reason for the call, I answer or go to him to reassure him that I have not left him. Because right now, he doesn’t deal well with people who leave him and the most difficult part of the whole thing is that he just doesn’t understand why. It doesn’t matter who it is, the separation usually results in an albeit brief but very vocal temper tantrum that involves stomping of the feet and wailing (my son has learned to jump, so while heartbreaking for him, it’s almost comical to see him jump up and down with his little fists clenched tight and his face beet red). This happened last night when his grandma left to go home after a very brief visit. It happens regularly when the nanny leaves every afternoon. And the first time it happened was when his Dada left in the middle of June.

Dada hugged us both with tears in his eyes (this goodbye was for him the hardest thing he had ever done). As Dada pulled away with his trailer and the boy realized somehow that this was a different kind of leaving than Dada had ever done before, he began to run down the sidewalk after the trailer screaming until his poor little body just couldn’t keep up anymore and he fell. It was truly the most heartbreaking thing I had ever seen in my life and an image that will remain with me forever. If you have ever seen the movie “Hope Floats” and the scene where the daddy leaves the little girl behind, you know what my son looked like. And I, like Sandra Bullock’s character, went to my boy and scooped him up and tried to tell him it was going to be ok, though right that moment I don’t think either I or my 22-month-old son believed that.

But time heals some of the pain and we have settled into a bit of a routine. He asks for “Dada?” regularly and I tell him that Dada has gone to work with the Army and he seems ok with that. But every request for Dada is punctuated with a question mark, a desire to know where Dada is. And I tell him Dada will be home soon from work even though soon holds no context for a 22-month-old. Our new bedtime ritual is 15-20 minutes of watching the videos Dada sent us of himself playing the guitar and reading books. Sometimes we watch it once, other times we have to watch it two or three times or more before he is content to go to bed. Sometimes he dances to the songs Dada is playing and singing or he actively reads the book Dada is reading. Other times he sits quietly in my lap just watching Dada’s face, occasionally pointing to the screen, asking “Dada?” as if he just needs me to reassure him that that is in fact his Dada.

I, like every military spouse with a deployed service member, attempt to fill the void left by the missing parent. I try to become mommy and daddy—giving him the nurturing and love and softness that is mommy while also making sure he gets the roughhousing and wrestling that is daddy. My son is all boy so there is a lot of the latter that is needed. He loves to be tickled and picked up and swung around and chased and bounced. All those ‘daddy things’ that his Dada does so well. Tummy “noms” are his favorite and can send him into paroxysms of giggles for minutes at a time (and he has the best giggle!). I do all of those things and more—I wear buckets on my head, play cars and trains, hide under blankets, build forts, and bang on pots in the style of a marching band because that is what Dada would do. I try to do these things regularly but I know that it just isn’t the same as daddy. But the lil’ man still giggles and laughs and runs and plays so I know he’s going to be fine. We both will because it’s what we do. Because this is what I signed on for when you love a man who is committed to his country and his chosen profession as a Soldier. It may not be what my son signed on for, instead it is the life he has been born into—but we, both my husband and I, will make sure that he has all the love and support he needs to overcome the challenges that are the life of a military child as well as full access to all the excitement and opportunities that are this world.

It looks like mommy is needed right this minute as my son is creating something worthy of Picasso with his hands, peach yogurt and Cheerios on the kitchen table. And from the looks of the earthquake that hit train table in the playroom, I will be daddy in a few minutes as I reconstruct the train set. This is our life and I wouldn’t change a thing!

My initiation is complete…Now the real work on this membership begins!

So I joined the “Army Wives Club” in 2006, and officially gained all rights, privileges, challenges and obstacles contained in this membership. But my initiation wasn’t complete…until now. The early days of my membership have been easy. My husband spent most of the first 2.5 years of our marriage in school here at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. We didn’t really worry about deployment. We knew it would come, but it just seemed so far off. Well, the time has come. My husband left for a deployment overseas in mid-June, driving himself and a trailer to Ft. Lewis, Washington. Five days ago he hopped a flight to the sand box. I have now joined the ranks of the thousands of wives waiting. And today, for the first time since we married, I have no idea where he is right now nor any way to contact him directly. In an emergency, there is always the Red Cross and of course I can send him an email. But he may or may not get the email in the next several hours, I just have to wait and see. Hard to believe I am inpatient for an email to get to him in a few hours when you think back to earlier wars—WW I, WW II, even the Korean War and Vietnam, when spouses had to wait days, weeks, months or even years for news of a loved one. How did they do it???

My son misses his dada very much. He and daddy are close. But tonight my son got to hear his daddy read him a book and play guitar and sing for him. Daddy sent us video tapes and new books to read before bedtime. I think the lil’ man could have watched the videos over and over until he passed out from sheer exhaustion! It brought tears to my eyes to watch him watch his daddy over and over. The tears were also probably because I miss my husband very much, or maybe I am just over emotional! That is probably it.

Back on the Blog

I started this blog some time ago but never kept up with it. But now, with everything happening in our lives these days, I can use this to keep friends and family updated about what is going on with us. I hope that you appreciate reading a little about the life of one Army family in the craziness that comes from a country at war.

Enjoy!

My entrance to this club

I entered this new world when I agreed to marry my fiancé, a wonderful man who was at the time living in Seattle and stationed at Ft. Lewis. I was living in Illinois where I had spent my entire 35 years up to that time. I had honestly believed that I would never leave my hometown, much less find someone to marry and start a family with. But I met my future husband and all bets were off—I quit my job as an executive director of a statewide trade association where I had been for eight years, sold the most adorable first and only house I had ever purchased on my own in this great little neighborhood, packed up several tons of possessions that made my fiancé, the non-packrat, cringe in horror as box after box after carton after piece of furniture filled a 26 foot super-mover U-haul, and carted one very large dog and one screaming and howling cat to Leavenworth, Kansas. Leavenworth, Kansas, a place I had heard of but one I had to look for on a map to figure out where my new home actually was! I found a new job before the ink was even dry on the loan papers for our new house, not because I needed to, majors in the Army make pretty decent money for a couple without kids, but because I was compelled to contribute. I had been up to that point a woman who offered to pay for dinner on dates and popcorn for two at a movie (probably explains why I had been single up to that point in my life!) But not only did I feel the need to contribute, I was pretty sure that I would be bored out my mind if I did not find something to do with my days. 

 

I look back to my move into this Army town, and I blush with embarrassment at my naiveté as I stood on the threshold of my new life and what I saw as my new status—I was going to be an Army wife! I had high expectations, which looking back on I have no idea where my expectations came from.  But in my mind’s eye I had this lovely picture of welcoming women trailing young children, flocking to my front door with pies and cakes and cookies. They would eagerly ask lots of questions, wanting to know where we had come from and what we were doing here. I had my speech prepared like some self-absorbed Hollywood diva thanking the academy. I would smile grandly, laugh self-consciously, asking for forgiveness for the mess–”Oh, you know how it is when the movers come through” I would say, with my hand pressed to my heart. We would share a knowing laugh as we oohd and ahhhd over the capriciousness of their children frolicking through my boxes and packing cartons. They would all smile sympathetically because we were all sisters in this private club called the Army. We were the women behind the men. 

 

My early days as a member of the Army wives club were pretty lonely. There was no welcoming committee with pies and cakes and frolicking children. Despite the fact that my neighborhood was made up largely of active duty and retired Army families, it would be several months before I was able to peer through the windows of the private clubhouse and a few more months before I would be invited to cross the threshold. But soon I had my feet up on the couch and a cool drink in hand as I made the clubhouse a place I wanted to be and my new friends and comrades-in-arms, my fellow Army wives, people that I knew would be with me for the rest of my life.  

 

If you are looking for sex, keep looking

This is my first foray into the world of blogging. Frankly I have paid only limited attention to the whole concept. Yeah, I know where have I been for the last few years? As a writer I should be a seasoned blogger long before now. Well that is perhaps a different story for a different day. But before I travel much further in this brave new world, I should probably clarify what I mean by the title “Secret Lives of Army Wives”. If you are looking for hot steamy discussions and gossip about some dark underbelly of the Army and its subculture of spouses, keep on clicking that mouse my friend. Those secrets are not mine to tell. Instead, what I hope to be able to convey is that what most people don’t see. What people know about the Army is limited to what has populated the news media over the last several years. The media focus largely on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the men and women who are there fighting. But for every soldier ‘in the sand box’, there is someone waiting for them, who’s life has been turned upside down. Wives, husbands, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, spend months and years separated from loved ones, living under the constant fear that the knock on the door will one day come and the person on the other side, silver badges glittering in the sun and a look of lingering dread in his eyes, will reach out a hand and ask to come in. This often unspoken fear is just one of many secrets kept closely guarded by Army families. The lonlieness of long deployments and short training exercises, the separation that is just a part of growing up an Army brat, the moves from school to school, the demands of making new friends are all challenges Army families face every few years. But there is also the excitement of a new place, sometimes a new country, new people, and new traditions, and perhaps most importantly, the network of friends that no matter how far apart you may find yourselves, you know that one phone call and they would be by your side in heart beat. All of these things are a part of the secret lives of Army families. They don’t talk about it, because it just is.

I began my journey, and yes I see it as a journey (isn’t life a journey?) as an Army wife in September of 2006. I do not kid myself. I know that my introduction to the life of an Army wife has been cake compared to many. But already I find I have my own little bag of secrets that I look forward to sharing with those of you who are interested in “the Secret Lives of Army Wives!”