Back in November, a video made the rounds on Veteran's Day. It was a nice little video about how "deployment" isn't a casual word for those who have to use it. There was the usual mishmash of teary dads in uniform hugging their toddlers goodbye, and wives sighing into the camera about how they miss their husbands every day. Despite my jaded tone, yes, the video did give me all the feels. However, videos and articles like that--however well-intentioned--always leave me a little frustrated, too. It's not all pining over your spouse and looking bravely out your bizarrely immaculate windows.
For starters, there's a lot more vomit.
Ever hear of Murphy's law? Simply put, anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, and always as soon as your spouse is unavailable to take their share of the crap. Cars break down repeatedly, or suddenly need crucial maintenance. Obscure but urgent paperwork pops up that requires a scavenger hunt of signatures and a Power of Attorney (never let them leave you home without one--or two, just to be safe). Your kids turn into diva martyrs afflicted with all the injustices of the world. At some point, every room in the house looks like it was hit by a tornado. The cat develops some kind of indigestion that can only be cured by barfing under your bed.
And then there's the sickness. It's a thing. Since Rick left on his mandated work-cation in August, I have taken various kids to the ER for stitches, the flu, pinkeye, and to remove a bead from a nostril. Several bouts of the stomach flu have occurred, which is impressive considering how unsocialized my kids are. Strep and Influenza B followed, even for my kids who were vaccinated. That's just the nature of deployments. The last deployment several years ago involved strep, ear infections, severe eczema, scarlet fever, and two bouts of pneumonia (one of which required hospitalization)--all in a three month period when I was six months pregnant. Good times.
This deployment the fun continued as we went from four pets to one in just under six weeks. One hamster died from old age, one cat turned yellow and vomited blood all over the laundry room, and the other hamster sprouted throat cancer and a prolapsed colon and had to be put down. My search history looks like an amateur serial killer's. (Silver lining: The surviving cat has been a model citizen ever since.)
To top things off, we found out Rick has been getting underpaid--for over a year.
Another challenge of deployments is having absolutely no idea what the heck is going on. The army classifies an obscene amount of information. Some of it is definitely necessary--exact dates of movements, details about upcoming operations, etc--and that's basic op-sec, but so much of it seems to be classified because some higher-up has a fetish for secrecy. You learn to roll with it and just don't make commitments.
It's still annoying.
Then there's the emotional stuff. If your spouse's deployed life is interesting, they can't talk about it; if it's not interesting, there's nothing to talk about. After about a month, you both fall into your respective ruts. Sometimes you fight because there is nothing else to do. You miss each other, but you also dread the reunion because you'll have to learn how to live together again. On Rick's last deployment, we were still a one-car family, and I reveled in having the car to myself all the time. I could go wherever I wanted whenever I wanted, and I could do it without collaborating with another adult or getting two kids up at 4 am to take him to PE. Sharing the car again--and the remote, and everything else--was a challenge.
Carrying your emotional baggage is also taxing. You become, in effect, a neuter for the time they're gone. There isn't a lot of physical contact, which is apparently something most humans need. There's often a lack of reassurance, because you don't want to seem needy or, worse, be an inconvenience. If you have kids, then you have to juggle their emotions as well as your own--their joys and triumphs, but also their fear, anger, sadness, doubt, insecurity, social awkwardness, and hormones (oh, dear Zeus, the hormones). It can be overwhelming for everyone. Sometimes there's a lot of screaming. A lot.
On the off chance you forget your spouse is vacationing in a war zone--and sometimes you do--something always manages to remind you. It was an unpleasant start to the new year to hear about the strike that killed General Soleimani in Iraq. There were waves of emotions to navigate--satisfaction and justice, concern over the fallout, shock at the unexpected event. While Iran howled about vengeance and blood and pundits quailed and whimpered and Trump tappity-tapped away on Twitter, I and many other spouses waited and watched. It's strange how calm you get in those moments when you face down the possibility of explaining to your kids their dad isn't coming home. To this day I don't like seeing soldiers in dress uniform except at formal functions, because the dark side of those uniforms is that they dress their best to tell you the worst. When we were in Savannah I would get red-line calls every couple of weeks--calls passed through the spouses to let us know if someone had been hurt or killed. It sounds horrible, but I was always relieved to be getting a call--if I got a call, it was because somebody else had opened the door to dress uniforms on their front step. The relief didn't stop me from sobbing for two hours on the way home from the Jacksonville Zoo. It wasn't me--this time.
This got a little heavier than I intended. I'm sure this all sounds a little self-absorbed and whiny at a time when our entire world is wading through a pandemic that is literally shuttering cities and disemboweling our economy. It's not meant to be. It's certainly not meant to paint military spouses as some kind of martyrs or heroes--that vast majority of us aren't, and I can say that without diminishing the challenges we face. Honestly, I'm not sure why I wrote this, but I am annoyed that I feel like I have to justify it. That's the world we live in now, where we have to qualify our feelings and experiences...but that's a tirade for another day.
Anyway.
So what gets you through the rounds of plague and the cars crapping out and the incessant but well-meaning questions about how your spouse is doing? Some of it's luck, some of it's stubbornness, some of it's personality and a dark sense of humor. Most of it is the people around you. I've been lucky enough to have been buoyed up the last seven months by an incredible army of friends and adopted family who have bullied me into accepting help when I needed it and kept a watchful eye on me and the kids when I didn't. Friends dragged me out to lunch and made me feel useful and made me laugh with mostly appropriate jokes. That's how we all get through anything. The people around you help you get through the hard times--and then, when you're on solid ground again, you in turn reach out to others who are stumbling.
My theology teaches that we all chose to come down here together, and I know in my soul that we are here for exactly that purpose, to help each other out and cheer each other forward. The last seven months have been really, really, really long. A lifetime, even. With current events, the next couple aren't going to be any easier--for any of us. Together, though, we just might make it.
Unless there's more vomit, in which case I'm out.
