Week 38

I remember the first time Joe came home from war. We had bought our house before he left for Iraq and I hand moved in without him. He stood in the doorway, "should I take off my shoes?"

"I don’t know," I said with a laugh, "it's your house."

Re-acclimation to stateside life has its laughable moments, but generally speaking it’s a time of grounding. Most husbands are at least remotely aware of what type of behavior is expected of them, but after a year (in this case 15 months) away from home, rules and roles change. I loved my husband for gently inquiring about how to proceed.

While home for the next year we devised a fairly evenly distributed division of labor. I assigned tasks and he completed them. I cleaned the house and he did the dishes. I cooked and he ate. I did the laundry and he folded it. At four o-clock in the morning, we both hunted uniform socks down together.

Joe has been gone exactly three and a half months today and I have finally begun to settle into an empty house and a routine of my own. I was perplexed by having to clean gutters out on my own, get cars fixed, and lug garbage. I relish in my independence and mourn my co-dependence simultaneously.

When Joe comes home next year, at least I will know what to expect. I will courteously and gently return some of the household duties to him once he has relaxed and settled in. I will dote on him so that he knows how glad I am to have him home. I will greet him with open ears, an open heart, patience and pineapple upside down cake.

Fear Number 6

I was with another Army wife when I heard the chaotic reporting of the Fort Hood shooting. This, like learning of any systematic and yet completely irrational killing feels like swallowing a giant gumball whole. It makes you choke and it causes great pain as it sinks from the back of your throat down into your lower abdomen.

I know the feeling well. It comes with every helicopter crash when I know Joe is traveling throughout Iraq. It comes with every car bomb in Joe's region and it came the day I was on the phone with him when there was an explosion. While I knew that Joe was safe in Iraq on the day of the Fort Hood shootings, the knowledge of the horror experienced by those families who were at home on that base was enough to render the same sickening feeling I get with the knowledge that there is a possibility that Joe is in danger.

Army families deal with the possibility of death each day, but strangely the immense fear of death associated with deployments somehow diminishes real-life dangers that everyone experiences including car accidents, diseases and apparently now the violent wrath of lunatics as well.

I'm not an advocate of paranoia. I do however mourn the loss of one more space of safety. Whether that space of safety was real or not for military personnel and families is beside the point. Beyond the loss of individual lives, we have collectively lost another space that previously offered freedom from fear and fear number six is the unfortunate and yet universally common thread in the fabric of military life.

I remember the first golf war in vivid snippets. I was in kindergarten. Occasionally I slept in the bathtub for two reasons. The first reason is that because if war was anything like basketball, eventually they were going to be on our side of the court. The second reason was because the bathtub seemed to be a natural place to hide from bombs. That was the first time I lost my freedom from fear. I was in my own house and in my own bathtub.

As an Army wife I believe we are facing two main questions. The first is from the military or governmental perspective and questions how we can create actual safety. The second is as a civilian and questions how we can help ourselves to feel safe or perhaps simply safe-er regardless of the actual level of safety.

Week 39

Today started week 39. I can't remember what month comes in like a Lion, but surely November comes in like a Polar Bear. Thanks to hurricane Ida, North Carolina has been mercilessly bombarded with needle-like rain that comes at you from the side and gusty winds that left me wondering if my steering wheel had become unattached from the rest of my vehicle.

Last night was the Festival of the Trees, which was beautiful albeit responsible for significant cognitive dissonance on my part as the festival of the Turkeys has not yet been celebrated. The early onset of the Christmas holiday has left me feeling apathetic.

I spent last week in Boston visiting colleges with my cousin and staying with a friend from high school. I felt a bit nostalgic parading around college campuses, wondering if I had the best possible undergraduate experience. Could I have gone to a better school? Could I have made more friends? Could I have appreciated my time more? Momentarily throughout the weekend I wished that I could go back and do it all over. Of course, repeating the experience would be of no use unless I could take the lessons learned from the first time around with me, and yet then it losses its wondrous appeal.

Arriving safely back in North Carolina, I was brought to my senses concluding that my college experience was just as good as any. It was filled with apprehension, failed romances, many fake friendships and just two good ones, priority setting and personal growth. I traveled all over the world in college and on the way I learned to trust myself. I would not give up that trust for all the keg parties in the world - as fun as those may have been.