Avalune is standing by for the Wednesday discussion of this week’s military life post. (Leto, too.)
I could tell you my adventures – beginning from this morning, but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then. – Alice in Wonderland
We’re making our way to the back of a nondescript beige/brownish rectangular building that could be picked up wholesale and dropped into any military base in any state without anyone batting an eye. The interior is just as vague as the exterior, with endless airplanes, pictures of smiling airmen in uniform forming a pyramid of chain of command, and flyers for base services. One such service is the reason we’re winding our way towards the light in the back of the building – a Hearts Apart Meeting.
Hearts Apart was formed to keep families connected while the military members are serving abroad. Services include things like video teleconference “morale calls” in a time before everyone carried a multitude of video chat services in their pockets. They also provide a four hour babysitting service called “Give Parents a Break,” a free oil change and safety check for your car, and a monthly support group.
Dinner and a chance for the children to play are the primary selling points and the reason I can feel the stink eye being directed at me by “The Boy.” Dinner is cow beef burgers and cheese pizzas, neither being things The Boy can eat due to dietary restrictions – restrictions explained to the group leader prior to the meeting which were met with the polite equivalent of “too bad, so sad.” [As dietary concerns have increased over the years, these groups do a much better job of addressing this now]. He doesn’t care about being able to eat but he very much cares that the children he’s expected to play with are significantly younger and he was perfectly happy playing video games at home before I dragged him here. I tell him sorry dude with my eyes and turn to the women gathering in a frazzled half-circle on the other side of the inedible food.
If this were a 12-step program, the steps would be something like complain, bitch, gripe, kvetch, cavil, carp, deprecate, fret, whine, lament, grouse, and bewail. There are plenty things to complain about during a deployment. It’s a well-known fact that all the things the deployed spouse is uniquely qualified to fix, break within five minutes of their plane leaving the tarmac. Significant health issues prefer to reveal themselves mid-deployment. Children sense weakness in the pack and attack.
I stopped attending after that first meeting and met with other Hearts Group Adverse spouses instead. We didn’t want to sit around complaining – we had things to do. We distracted ourselves by learning new skills like quilting, sewing, knitting, and other arts. We took college courses. We got jobs. We laughed about how we “put the weed eater in the yard but it wasn’t eating any weeds,” and cracked jokes about how many appliances the spouses needed us to show them how to operate, rather than the reverse, as suggested by the deployment checklist.
We learned to improvise. When CE (civil engineering) refused to cut down the tree branch before it crashed through the front window, I found a way to do it myself, involving lot of jumping and chopping with a rusty pair of hedge clippers. Instead of single parenting in a medicinal stupor, I used avoidance to mitigate my chronic cold urticaria. When I couldn’t bend or lift due to severe degeneration and arthritis in my back, I shoved the television, which stopped working immediately after his departure, as if on cue, down three flights of stairs and worked through the pain to prepare the household goods for the moving company. I bought our first house. I never acted on my impulses (and therefore avoided being arrested) to shout at couples in the park holding hands or dads pushing laughing children on swings. Do you know how lucky you are? Do you?
Your relationship is in limbo. It isn’t divorce or death (you hope). You can’t stuff it in a box and push it down the stairs and move on with your life. Part of you is on pause while simultaneously your lives hurtle forward in time and space being rebuilt cell by cell and unshared experience by unshared experience. You grow accustomed to the middle of the bed, the quiet in the morning, doing everything by yourself. You figure out how to live without him but here he is, and you are glad, but what do you do now? And here he is ripped from his routine, his world which was small and contained but also vast and uncharted. Here he is watching the side of the road for IEDs and everything is too loud and everyone is talking too much and there are too many food options. He is a stray dog you are approaching.
The military offers marriage retreats for returning spouses. A nice stay in a hotel, filled out with workshops about communication, utilizing the same 90s videos and training you experienced 20 years ago at the beginning of your marriage. Videos that don’t age well and feature women who “need a translator because they just never say what they mean!” and men who apparently only exist to watch sports and scratch their nuts – simpletons who can’t pick up on social cues. The military also offers other counseling which varies in quality. Their semi-useful attempts at training for reintegration give you somewhere to start and you figure it out – or you don’t.
Over the years, the prevalence of means of communication, except in the most remote situations, help to lessen the blow and close the distance between you. Now you don’t have to turn your life upside down and live his schedule in your time zone so that you can sit by the phone in case they get a 5 minute call. MMRPGs like World of Warcraft, allow couples to spend virtual time together – although much of the time is spent listening to them complain about their latency and how you’re doing the daily quests in the wrong order and messing up the system – look bud, I’ll “Remember the Sunwell” my way and you remember it yours ok? Google fu provides tutorials or resources for fixing that broken thing.
It still isn’t easy. You still want to at least growl at couples playing kissy-face. There is still a distance between the military member and the kids – still missed birthday and anniversaries and sports/concerts/dances etc. They still grow and change on their own separate trajectories. You still feel like there are places inside them you will never see. But that’s true of all of us isn’t it?
InternetDragons
Just wanted to say that this is beautiful writing. Thank you.
Avalune
@InternetDragons: Oh thank you!
WaterGirl
@InternetDragons:
“Just wanted to say that this is beautiful writing.”
I see that I am not alone in my reaction to Avalune’s writing! I was so tempted to write that very thing, but I wanted to see how others would respond before I said anything.
Avalune just drops us right into her life, doesn’t she?
Avalune
So close. Bahahaha
WaterGirl
@Avalune: erghhh!!!
If I type Avalune 100 times (not on the blackboard) maybe autocorrect will learn it. Or maybe it was my typo, but I know how to spell your name, so ?♀️.
Avalune
@WaterGirl: Could work! Autocorrect thinks I mean shit EVERY time I type shut now.
WaterGirl
Please tell me you had to use a thesaurus to come up with at least 2 of your your 12-step words? If not, I will have to wonder whether you are a mere mortal.
WaterGirl
@Avalune: I can see how that could be a problem!
Avalune
@WaterGirl: I’d forgotten about cavil which is a pretty perfect word in this context.
I could have used piss and moan, or whinge without the Big Red Synonym Finder. Apparently, I know a lot of words for complaining.
WaterGirl
I am curious about the amount of time the military spouse spends away from home and family vs. time spent at home. Are there rules for that kind of thing? What’s the typical time apart? What’s the longest time apart that is permitted? Or isn’t that even a consideration?
WaterGirl
@Avalune: How did I not know “cavil” until now?
“petty and unnecessary objections”
I am so stealing that.
@Avalune: a good vocabulary, especially for complaining, is highly underrated!
Avalune
@WaterGirl: In the height of the conflict, average was 12-14 months overseas. During that time they might only get 6 months between these long tours but they figured out that was too problematic and started pushing it to a year. This is why you started seeing a lot more AF going over to do Army work because the Army were burning through their troops.
Outside of that 4-6 months is more common. If they are gone for the long haul, they usually get a mid tour visit home.
Leto was in Saudi when 9/11 happened. Delayed his return home.
Leto
@Avalune:
You don’t say… :P
You develop a very large lexicon for describing the same thing during your time in the military. It can make for some comedy gold when you transition.
Avalune
@WaterGirl: In some ways the short tours were always harder because they barely seemed long enough to really go into “deployment mode,” so your focus was almost always on how much longer.
MOMMY ARE WE THERE YET? WE THERE YET? How about now?
Omnes Omnibus
@Avalune: At least no one assumes that your ‘nym has something to do with public transportation.
Avalune
@Omnes Omnibus: One transports down an Avenue though…which is a common misspelling of my name – so I disagree. Haha!
Betty
This deserves to be shared more widely. Lots of honoring the troops, not so much their families.
Louise B.
Just wanted to say I’m really enjoying this series. It’s a window on a world I have no experience with. As others have said, beautifully written, and very moving. Thank you.
Ruckus
Very well done Avalune.
There are always 2 sides to every story, and military separation is one that makes each side very distinct and yet at the same time very much the same. I was single while in the navy but had several friends who were married and saw the other side as an observer. Young people, not having been married all that long, separated for months is hard on both sides. I imagine that life in the military today is worse than it was 50 yrs ago, simply because there are more separations.
I’d also imagine that the increased communications would help. In the navy guys had to find the telephone exchange when we got to port to make a short 2-3 minute phone call back to the states. That and write letters. I got and wrote family letters but they could take quite some time to reach either end.
Jager
@Avalune wonderful piece of writing.
I grew up 16 miles from a SAC Base, went to school with the AF Brats. My first girl friend’s father flew B 52s, he got promoted to full bird, they packed up and moved to Incirlik. He told my dad “I won’t have so far to go to get work anymore.” Annie graduated from HS at Incirlik. The brats were great resilient kids.
WaterGirl
@Avalune: I laughed at that, but with tears in my eyes.
Avalune
@Louise B.: Thank you!
@Betty: Thank you! We tend to feel rather awkward about it for a number of reasons; such as, not wanting to appear to be “wearing our spouse’s rank” trying to suck up attention when we’re home more or less safe. Or other spouses are away on business, what’s the difference (unless your spouse is a drug kingpin, there’s a pretty big difference but, ok)? Or “you knew what you were signing up for…” (well yes sort of but do you really know before you are in it?) do your patriotic duty!
JPL
Thank you both for sharing your stories and you should consider writing a book. Your writing is so compelling and now I’d love your son’s viewpoint.
Avalune
@JPL: I laughed thinking about that, primarily because he’s monosyllabic unless you are talking about a game at the moment but now that he’s been in the military himself for about four years – it would be interesting to see his perspective on it from that particular lens.
MomSense
Wow. Brilliant writing, Avalune. Ok if I share some of these posts with clients?
Avalune
@Ruckus: Yeah, more frequent deployments don’t quite balance out being able to talk to them more often does it?
That old nostalgia for the letters from combat/from home is still kind of sweet though. Just trying to imagine the voice overs for a documentary of communications now…
“Dammit Avalune, I’ve mapped out the most efficient way to complete these quests, why are you going that way!” – Technical Sergeant Leto.
Avalune
@Jager: Thank you!
Avalune
@MomSense: Certainly! It’s in the public sphere – it doesn’t belong to me anymore. :D
JeanneT
Oh my. I’m now astounded how ANY military families at all stay together over the years. I love how you (and your cohorts) chose the path of doing instead of the way of kvetching. Your life obviously wasn’t spent on hold, even when you might sometimes resent the situations you had to deal with. I admire that!
Avalune
@JeanneT: Unfortunately, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes the gap is just too far to bridge.
I have some other thoughts on the mil spouse divide that I’ll be taking on in future posts.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
I know this was not directed to me, but from my experience (20 years in the Navy, 16 of them married to another Navy person, it depends on the service branch, where you are stationed(shore duty or sea duty for instance) and it also depends on what ones job code is. Even before 9/11 people on ships in the Navy deployed about every other year for long deployments(WestPac, Med Cruise, RIMPAC exercises, etc) and also all during the year for shorter training cruises and port visits. Different types of vessels have different schedules, the submarine Navy is it’s own challenges for instance. What you do for a living also makes a difference, if you are for instance a Fleet Marine Force hospital corpsman you will be attached to a Marine unit, very often in a forward deployed , combat unit.
Elizabelle
Excellent essay, Avalune. Moar of this, please.
Being a military brat (USMC), this makes me wonder about my mother’s experience (Viet Nam war era). Although she is no longer here to share the essay with.
Resilience. That is a word for you and other military spouses. Cannot survive without that quality.
Avalune
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: These are good points. I obviously only speak directly from Air Force experience though I have some vague understanding of other branches from mil spouse friends. Thanks for the clarification on Navy.
As you say, some jobs are more frequently deployed for sure, regardless of branch.
Avalune
@Elizabelle: Thank you! Oi that era is a whole different ball game. While the deployments were frequent and the worry real – for the most part he was always reasonably safe.
We still have two more topics coming up! We’ll have plenty of time to think about it while we’re isolated – assuming we survive the plague!
Leto
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: I definitely agree with everything you said here. The Navy by it’s very nature is a constantly deployed force, which is a persistent challenge. Navy spouses are made of stern stuff.
SiubhanDuinne
I suggested last week that this series of co-written posts and comments would make a wonderful book, and I’m even more convinced of it today after reading your moving (heh, what I did there) account. Please, seriously, I hope you and Leto will consider doing this.
Added: Glad to see I’m on the same wavelength with JPL, and not for the first time!
Leto
@Elizabelle: Did you stock up on crayons for the upcoming pandemic? :P
(For everyone else, it’s a service to service joke: we joke that the Marines are bunch of crayon eaters :P )
SiubhanDuinne
Anyone else remember a M*A*S*H episode that focussed on some of these very issues? Actually, spousal separation was a theme in a lot of episodes, for a lot of different soldiers, but in particular I’m remembering one in which B. J. Hunnicutt went berserkers batshit crazy because his wife Peg was coping just fine on her own.
Jager
I had a neighbor, his Dad was an Okie Army lifer. His Mom was Chinese. They met in Panama when his Dad was an instructor at the Jungle School. He told me that when he got to college, he was amazed that his roommates didn’t immediately make their bed minutes after waking up in the morning or keep their dresser drawers neat with everything folded the “Army Way”. He said his old man inspected his room every morning and insisted on white sidewall haircuts. He said his mother was so frugal, he didn’t know chickens had breasts until he was in high school. His Dad retired as a Sgt Major. I met him a few times, in his late 60s and as hard as nails. Super proud of his FBI Agent son.
Avalune
@SiubhanDuinne: Thank you! I watched a lot of MASH but I can’t say I remember much of it. I was a kid then though with no mil experience, I wonder how I would relate to it now.
@Jager: Here in the modern AF, we were lucky to be able to walk through The Boy’s room without killing ourselves stepping on something. I took pictures of his bed when he graduated Basic Training as proof he knew how to make one.
Those kind of military are a special breed for sure.
dexwood
Terrific writing. You put my size 13 feet into your shoes. Now I need a foot massage. Great series Avalune and Leto. Thanks.
Avalune
@dexwood: I don’t do feet.
Thank you! We’ll see ya next week.
Avalune
One thing I didn’t mention learning was the ocarina because one might never know when one would need to play The Prelude of Light.
Elizabelle
@Leto: LOL. Had never heard the “crayon eating” comment. Will have to look that one up, unless you have a link to explain it.
We did have a neighbor’s pup at Camp Lejeune who ate crayons. FWIW.
Avalune
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: You know you actually hit on something else here too – I’m always slightly afraid to share my experience because I know it is not necessarily shared across branches or even across spouses within the AF and I hate appearing as if I’m speaking on behalf of a group of people. Every time I venture the topic I always kind of feel like I need to affix a declaimer about “your experience may vary.”
Avalune
@Elizabelle: No 3
https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/the-13-funniest-military-memes-for-the-week-of-aug-5
Unrelated to crayons I snorted at No7
Also googling marines eating crayons is kind of hilarious.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Leto: Thanks! I am always surprised my husband and I stayed together through everything. 35 years so far. Deployments were hard, the worst was having my second miscarriage about 3 months after the start of Gulf War I (Iraq invaded Kuwait) my husband was in the Persian Gulf by then and I had to fight to get someone to come out to help me for a few days. Husband had come home on bereavement(his father died) for a couple weeks just as the shooting war started, and we had been trying for a baby.
Leto
@Elizabelle: It’s just a meme commenting on how “dumb” the Marines are. Same spirit as “Chairforce” :)
Avalune
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: Oh man, sorry to hear that. That’s tough. They kept sending him away every time we thought about having another one, so The Boy is forever The Boy.
I always tell him I kind of feel bad he doesn’t have a sibling to share taking care of the olds with but he assures me he’s dumping me in a nursing home so it’s fine. Lol
Leto
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: Aww man, I’m so sorry. I’ve had to help a few of my people with bereavements, including while being deployed. They never get easier but I like to think I got better at greasing the gears to get them where they needed to be.
Leto
@Avalune: He knows the will is contingent upon us not going into one, right? Oh well, lets give him one final surprise :)
JPL
@Avalune: I still remember your first post and how frightening it must have been for you to see your husband’s battered body. So glad that you stayed and continued to post.
Avalune
@Leto: Yeah but he also knows we don’t have anything. Lol
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Avalune: Ha! sounds like my girl, who is now and will forever be the Spawn. She used to be sorry she did not have siblings, but when she was 6 we moved close to my Mom for awhile and my Mom babysat 2 younger kids all day in addition to watching my daughter after school and in the Summer. Cured her of wanting younger siblings REAL quick. Funny side story(I hope I am not upsetting anyone..): my mom enrolled my “raised as an atheist” 6 year old in vacation bible school at the local Catholic church. My daughter kept getting in trouble for questioning EVERYTHING…I told my dad she would have made a good Jesuit or a lawyer.
Avalune
@JPL: Yes! Jeez, I mean we joke all the time that he deployed to war zones X times and comes home safely to just about be taken out by a school teacher trying to get to work. For all the deployment stuff, his motorcycle accident was way more visceral – made deployment look more like a mere inconvenience.
Avalune
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: Lol! Yes, being around other kids on the regular does cure one of wanting a sibling I think. That’s hilarious about the vacation bible school.
Mike in NC
The day my ship deployed (way back in 1984) the woman I had been dating for six months helped me with my baggage. I suspected by the time we cast off all mooring lines that she would be my “ex-girlfriend” and I wasn’t wrong.
We had one young sailor who had recently gotten married try to hang himself a few months later. He was medically separated and flown home.
Leto
@Mike in NC: I think that’s one of the benefits of technology that’s helped so much, the instantaneous ability to talk with someone half way across the world. There’s pluses and minuses to that of course. Some spouses understand that you can’t always talk, you do when you can. They schedule FaceTime dates and such, drop little texts/emails here and there. And some spouses kind of demand that the member be there for them all the time, answer their texts/emails all the time, as if they aren’t deployed working halfway across the world…
Tech school romances are still a funny thing. A good portion of them are people getting together just so they can try to move out of the dorms. Some really think they’ve found their forever person, though after about six months that’s iffy. Some do go the mile. But you’re still basically giving full reign to 18/19 year olds and saying, “Have at it! Welcome to adulthood!”
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Mike in NC: I always worried about the people in, for instance Boot camp, who met someone who was also in Boot camp (Orlando was a mixed base even in 1980) and they got engaged as soon as they graduated. 18 or 19 years old and thinking they were ready to settle down, a very few were but I saw so many short unhappy marriages. The ones who had kids right away fared the worst I think. That is so much pressure on anyone, much less a teenager. I was just turned 23 when I got married and I still look back occasionally and say what the hell was I thinking! The young girls who married their Navy high school boyfried as soon as he got out of boot camp sometimes made me sad, here they are stuck in housing or an apartment all by themselves in a strange place, maybe a different country and their husbands ship deploys, they know nobody and it’s the first time they are away from home. The woman who eventually nannied for me basically adopted me as her second Mom when she arrived in Guam.
Avalune
@Leto: You weren’t supposed to tell everyone how demanding I was dammit – we agreed!
Avalune
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: At least during overseas deployments, there are usually some more veteran spouses who reach out and help with the transition.
Avalune
@Mike in NC: Heartbreaking.
It’s def not for everyone.
RSA
Wonderful writing, Avalune; I can imagine expansion to a full-length memoire that I would love to read.
It’s perfectly timed, as well. Online I’m talking with (non-military) people who are isolated from their loved ones because of travel restrictions, self-quarantines, actual quarantines, and so forth. There’s something of the same life-in-limbo feel, at least it seems to me, with possible disaster lurking.
Avalune
Jokes aside, we won’t talk about how many handwritten or typed letters I sent Leto about how I was going to strangle his mom while he was in basic. If I had it to do over again, I’d write them and then burn them in the back yard and dance around their ashes or something. She can be a very vexing woman. Ha!
Yutsano
You were like my mom. She didn’t do any sort of outside help or mourning. She simply got a back problem every time my dad went out to sea for a week or so, then she was back out working. She even tried the good Navy spouse thing of staying home with her boys and HATED it. She told me flat out she wasn’t cut out for being a housewife. So she left instructions for me on how to cook dinner at night (keep in mind I’m not the oldest, but my older brother refused to do it) and she’d come back long after we were asleep. My parents just made it to 50 years last September.
Avalune
@RSA: The uncertainty is the hard part I think – more than the distance. Everyone’s getting a little feel of deployment right now kind of!
Thank you!
Avalune
@Yutsano: Leto would be happy to tell you I do not make a very good housewife either. :D
I tried to do the “good spouse” stuff but always found it infuriating. I was told I wouldn’t make a good officers wife. Probably because I’m not condescending enough – ba dum tish!
SiubhanDuinne
Am wondering once again how the experience differs (and is the same, for that matter) when the deployed partner is female and it’s the guy who’s left at home, doing the stuff, taking care of the kids, etc.
Avalune
@SiubhanDuinne: I do know a few of those. I imagine much the same except they also have to deal with a lot of added BS from other people because they don’t meet the common expectations and are “cuckolds” and because people just expect them to suck it up because they are a man! Be a man! Man up!
And the women get to deal with a lot of BS because people STILL don’t expect THEM to be the veteran. They are supposed to be the dependapatomus wearing their husband’s rank around, not the veteran themselves.
SiubhanDuinne
@Avalune: I was kind of afraid that would be the case :-(
We’ve come a long way, baby, but we still have a long way to go.
pamelabrown53
@Avalune:
Wonderful essay, Avalune! Would you mind discussing the initial readjustment period after Leto returned home from a deployment?
This past year we moved cross-country, then after a few months my very elderly parents were in a bad car accident returning home after evacuating for Dorian. I then flew to Florida for about 7 weeks where I made a gazillion decisions, both small and large on my own. When I returned home, we definitely had a few days of weirdness before we readjusted to a partnership from being Lone Rangers.
Feathers
Thanks for this. Wonderful writing.
My grandfather was in the Army, finance corp, so definitely a REFM, but my grandmother still did move in with her sister in Jacksonville, FL for help with the children during WWII. It amazes me how long people were separated. They were reunited in Vienna after the war when families were allowed to be reunited. We have the photo taken for the local paper of them reuniting. I tease my mother that she and my aunt don’t look enthused. Apparently it was the middle of the night and they had just been woken up. Some of the best stories were about the basically empty troop carriers taking the women and children back across the North Atlantic in the middle of winter. They were designed for a full load, so apparently the trips back to Europe with the crew and some families were a very rough ride.
Yutsano
@Avalune: Of course, after my dad retired, my mom never had a back problem again!
I think your son was too old for this to happen, but one time my dad came back from sea and I didn’t remember who he was! This is my anecdote because I don’t remember it, but it tore him up. My mom didn’t take it well either. She took it upon herself to make sure he kept his memory alive in us after that.
Avalune
@Yutsano: The Boy was 4ish the first time. They have an estranged relationship. Some parts personality clash and some parts being apart I think
I do think that stress magnifies Physical ailments.
bemused senior
@Avalune: 71 year old Air Force brat here. My dad was a pilot. We moved around every 3 years as was usual in the 1950s and 60s. I remember my mom saying there were af wives who did well and enjoyed moving to new places and ones that never adjusted to being far from the family they grew up in. It was the latter group she felt ended up with marital problems. We kids (4 girls) were very close to each other because when you move and leave all your friends, you still have the siblings as playmates. Your series brings back memories, even though things have changed a lot.
Avalune
@Feathers: Thank you! That’s an interesting story. Not enthused! I mean they could have chosen a more respectable time right?!
Avalune
@pamelabrown53: It’s kind of like dating again but you are married to the person and supposed to just jump back where you left off. Happy they are there but also dammit they are annoying you! It’s hard to know what is off limits and heck they are still processing themselves.
Some spouses kind of like drop the kids in their lap like I just had the last 12 months it’s your turn but no one knows what to do with that. Is it best to cold turkey it that way? Or ease in? Who knows! They didn’t come with a manual and according to the counseling they just need some football. Lol!
It is a weird social experiment for sure.
Avalune
@bemused senior: I’m going to talk about that dichotomy a little in next week’s post about moving. Another reason I sometimes feel guilty the Boy never had siblings.
Ruckus
@Avalune:
I once, a few years ago looked through some of them. Nothing really of any value in them, other than the real concept of having family, people you know, someone waiting. Which really is the entire point.
Ruckus
@JeanneT:
Strong partnerships can last through a lot. And do every day. Weak ones can fail over the littlest things. And do all the time.
Ruckus
@Avalune:
@Leto:
The navy is of course built to be mobile, and out of touch for long periods of time. Satellite communications I think has taken care of that a little bit. But 50 yrs ago you could be completely separated for long periods of time, even out of a combat zone. Surface ships didn’t do this as long as subs but long enough. Refueling/restocking at sea meant that you could be underway for a very long time. And that meant no communications, no real rest, no real respite from the daily grind/watches, the boredom, the repetition. I once spent weeks without seeing the sun or sky. And I was on a destroyer. The difference was the room on board. And having served as a part time tour guide for a WWII sub in San Diego while attending training, I can say that space was a significant difference but you get used to it. Sort of.
Ruckus
@Avalune:
Glad to see you raised him with a good sense of humor. Life is much better when you are laughing.
Ruckus
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
Reminds me of me.
I am the youngest of 3 and have 7 cousins, all were close as kids and all of them younger than me. We would stay at each others houses fairly regularly, for that big family feel. But I also got to watch a lot of them and change a number of them… I’ve never told the ones that I changed that I’d done that. Better left unsaid I think.
Ang
As a 20+ year Army wife (enlisted side) this is the best piece I have ever seen on deployments. The bit about the out of date 90’s training videos is so true. When I was first married a family member gave me a guide book for military spouses – the book insisted that it was very important that I know the rules for what social functions required exactly what types of hats and gloves. This was in the 1990’s. And calling cards – not phone cards, but something similar to business cards – you would leave one with the housekeeper if the lady of the house wasn’t home when you stopped by for a social call. Not exactly valuable advice for a private’s wife in 1991. I was never gonna be Jackie Kennedy lol.
Pre-deployment for the Army we rarely saw our soldiers as well. Training and equipment prep meant 2 or 3 months of 14 to 16 hour days so they were really only home to leave dirty laundry on the floor and sleep.
I always tried to warn the younger spouses about what I called Happily-Ever-After syndrome. Especially as women we were raised on fairy tales where Prince Charming shows up and then everything is rainbows and glitter and they all live happily ever after. Don’t spend the year your soldier is gone telling yourself how wonderful everything will be once they get home. You are setting yourself up for failure! You have both changed and grown – in good and bad ways. Readjusting to each other is hard every single time, even from easy deployments, but especially with combat and if the unit has lost soldiers. (And for current military spouses a warning – retirement will be the same kind of transition.) I say I’ve been married to 4 different men – he just had the same name the whole time.
It’s been one heck of a ride, but I’d still be first in line to buy a ticket if I had it to do all over again.
Barb 2
Navy brat, dad was a lifer. He was a!so Navy air. Sometimes different bases for the three Navy – Hawaii for example and then in the Puget sound. There are lots of retired military in this area. Active duty spouses work as nurses, sub teachers,clerks etc.
not a whole lot has changed in Navy life – reintegration of the dad (or mom) back into the family. Dad took a tape recorder with him while he was deployed to Japan. We recorded messages to him. He picked up a lot of Japanese words while deployed. I understood and as Hawaiian live in English which has also incorporated Japanese words.
There was a lot of domestic violence in some families when dads returned. My sources tell me that the violence still happens. There is an on base culture that many Navy spouses don’t want to put up with. Often when we were moved to a new base we had to live off base until housing was available.
My cousin was an air force wife. Her perspective is different from my brat experience. I enjoy interviewing the military dependents. Making use of my degree in Cultural Anthropology! The submarine service is very different from my experience as a brat growing up on Navy Air bases.
Sister Golden Bear
@Avalune: Hoping you see this despite this being a dead thread.
First, your writing is beautiful and brilliant.
I have similar problems when I write about trans stuff because the trans communities are so diverse. To the point where I’ve actually included the following: “Standard caveat: when you’ve heard one trans person’s experiences/opinions…. you’ve heard one trans person’s experiences/opinions.”
WaterGirl
Avalune is standing by for questions and conversation.
Avalune
And the post rose from the grave (ominous music)
@Ang: That – all of that! That’s part of why I wouldn’t make a good officer’s wife. My mother-in-law drove me crazy with these antiquated ideals of how I should behave. Ugg! And 100% re waiting around on him to ride back in on his white horse. Yes, yes, yes!
@Barb 2: Domestic violence is definitely an issue.
@Sister Golden Bear: Thank you so much. Also glad to know that I’m not alone in feeling a bit uncomfortable expressing my experience for the described reasons. But we should! They are valid!
Avalune
I’m also standing by for other animal requests – even though I’ve got quite a list. And some homework for Watergirl. I was so annoyed by the thing with my mom that it put me off track for a bit.
Next topic is moving btw! From the early marriage do-it-yourself, to the later marriage WHY THE FUCK DO WE HAVE SO MUCH STUFF! And foreign countries and the gulf coast which is close to foreign.
hitchhiker
dayummmmm, but this blog is full of quality writers.
thanks for this — sharing w/my daughter, who endured 2 consecutive deployments about 12 years ago.
i know she’ll laugh and nod like a motherfucker.
Avalune
@hitchhiker: Thank you kindly! (DUDES NAME THAT VIDEO GAME REFERENCE)
I hope you’ll let me know what she says.
Yutsano
@Avalune:
YOU DIDN’T TELL ME THERE WAS GOING TO BE A TEST!!! :P
Avalune
@Yutsano: Gotta keep people on their toes. And I guess technically the quote is “would you kindly” but you know – close enough for government work?
(Government work – also upcoming topic bahaha)
NeenerNeener
@Avalune: The pupcake you did for the pie filter is awesome and cuter than a bug’s ear.
Avalune
@NeenerNeener: Awe thank you! I’m working on a surprise one now – just having a fight with my actual ability vs my intended result lol!
Villago Delenda Est
What I find so amazing in Ava*e*lune’s and Leto’s posts is how far the military has come along with family support. They talked about it a lot in the 70’s and 80’s, but they’re really walking the walk here. I think the framework was always there but the reality of extended deployments after I left the Army in ’90 has brought it together and it’s something that has existed for some time in the past but never to the extent it is now, when the ramifications of an all-volunteer force become obvious to even the most lunkheaded flag officer. Always more to be done, of course, but the right track is being traveled.
Avalune
@Villago Delenda Est: Always room for improvement but I appreciate all the effort – particularly in the AF, as they tend to be a little better at being family oriented
Thanks for leading the way! :D
WaterGirl
@Avalune: I didn’t mean to make it hard for you! :-)
Avalune
@WaterGirl: Ha you didn’t. I do that allll by myself.
WaterGirl
@Avalune: We have that in common!
Yutsano
@Avalune: Friend is at Altus. Just had his third kid. Says without the Air Force he wouldn’t have made it in more ways than one. Hell they’re keeping him in even after a cancer diagnosis. So yeah in some ways a definite improvement over how it used to be.
Avalune
@Yutsano: Well that’s very good news! Always glad to hear when the AF takes care of someone well – I wonder did they cure him with Vitamin M?
FelonyGovt
Just wanted to say that I am reading and really enjoying your and Leto’s posts, even though it always seems here on the west coast I’m behind on commenting. You really bring the experience home in a beautiful and personal way. I think those of us who are not veterans or from military families need to understand these experiences.
divF
Reading your essay here, I had to take a deep breath as memories of my adolescence came back to me. My father (an NCO) had three unaccompanied tours in east Asia 1965-1971 (Korea, Vietnam, Korea). I was a teen living at home for two of them (I left for college in Fall 1969). He also was separated from his family for another year (1969-1970) by virtue of being assigned to a military hospital in Pennsylvania to recover from tuberculosis, apparently picked up in the first tour in Korea, but not detected until he got back from Vietnam.
The means of keeping in touch were much more primitive. My mother would let us read the letters from my father (some of them at least). Just seeing his handwriting and reading about his daily existence kept us going.
The logistics of his deployments were difficult. He would always be assigned when he returned to the same place outside of DC, but when he left we had to move off-post to small apartments, and then when he would come back, get on a waiting list to get on-post housing. Eventually, my parents were able to afford to buy a townhouse in 1969, so that problem went away.
My mother had to become a much more independent person. Learning to conquer her fear of highway driving was essential, and a major step for her. In one respect it was easier for her than for some others – she had always handled the family finances.
Even though the details are very different, much of what you wrote was achingly familiar. Just the act of living apart for such a long period of time got my parents out of the habit of living as a couple, and put strains on their marriage that they never had a chance to fully recover from (my mother died in 1980).
Avalune
@FelonyGovt: Thank you! That’s why we have the Wednesday revisit – to give our westies a chance to play!
@divF: Ah! We only had to manage a few deployments with what I’ll now refer to as “ole timey” communications. It must have been very hard for that to be the entire experience. In some ways, having to become independent is good I think – especially for women – but also hard – particularly then when an independent woman was still a dangerous thing.
I think people (even military sometimes) just don’t realize that time doesn’t freeze! It’s not just like it was when they left. Not for the married couple. Not for the kids. It picks up somewhere else entirely.
Glad I was able to evoke that time and hope it was more nostalgia than pain.
Leto
@FelonyGovt: We try to stay a while in these threads to pick up all the
slackersWest Coasters so don’t worry about getting to it late. Also that’s what these Wednesday threads are for: any follow up people might have had from the weekend. :)divF
@Avalune: Thanks, it was mostly nostalgia – we had a happy childhood. The letters from Dad are a really vivid memory I hadn’t thought about in years. I became a little sad about it only as an adult and I came to understand what the experience was for my parents.
ETA: your comment about women becoming independent was quite on point for my mother. She had those capabilities in her initially – she emigrated from rural Newfoundland in her early 20s to the US. This experience more fully developed them in her, but as I said, at a cost.
@Leto: And thank you both for hanging in until late for us West Coast slackers.
FelonyGovt
Being a slacker is the reason I’m on the West Coast and didn’t stay in New York City- I think
Avalune
@FelonyGovt: lol – I’m on the wrong coast!
Yutsano
@Avalune: Hahaha that probably would have let him be deployable! It was in his mouth so it had to be removed. It apparently turned his senses inside out!
Speaking of Vitamin M, another friend is an Army medic. He also gets deployed. A. LOT. I have a couple stories about him too.
Mary G
Another West Coaster here getting to threads super late. Just wanted to echo how beautifully you write, Avalune. So vivid. Thank you.
Avalune
@Yutsano: So he’s a professional in Motrin!
@Mary G: Very kind of you to say! Glad you are here! I do try to check back with these for a couple days after they post for stragglers but the Wednesday catch up is nice.
hitchhiker
@Avalune:
She loved it. This:
in particular. He was deployed while she was in college, and then got a second mission just after she graduated. They got married and he left pretty soon after. He was an interrogator in Iraq the first time & hardly left the base, but the second time his unit spent a lot of time outside the wire, looking for people. Scary times.
I encouraged her to share what you wrote. :)
Avalune
@hitchhiker: Scary indeed! I’m glad she enjoyed.