I know. I am supposed to be the silently pining wife, checking the doorstep every day for that awful moment that no family member of a deployed soldier ever wants. My life is supposed to be like either a Norman Rockwell painting or that of a character in a TV sitcom living crisis-to-crisis complete with close-up moments.
But being a milspouse is not quite that way. While we miss our loved ones a lot, in fact they cross our minds constantly, life goes on. And if I can be even more precise, life is good. The reactions I've had when people learn my husband is deployed have ranged from gratitude to verbal lashings, but the worst are those who become weepy. The reason I say it's the worst is that there's nothing I can say or do to convince them that we don't live our lives as though it were an impending tragedy.
Getting on with life means learning that the dog can walk up to 90 minutes a day for several miles. One cat can tear through 12 pouches of food in a week if you listen to his lies. I've also gotten used to feeding teens by buying large bags of food, not once but several times a week. I've discovered that the equivalent to kibble for teens is cereal. Holding the fort alone also means saying "no" to most of the fashion shows I used to cover because it's hard to be gone from 8 am to midnight every day during Fashion Week. Not having him here also means helping the kids learn to drive, helping with their homework, taking them to summer camp, to visit relatives in other states — all of on my own. But truthfully? I can't really complain; after all, single parents have done this through the ages. My situation is only unusual in that my husband is at war.
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