My Husband Is Deploying Again

Welcome to "Threeway," a regular Double X discussion feature in which three contributors dissect politics and culture from distinct points of view. Our second discussion is among three women who have written memoirs about their experiences as military wives: Lily Burana, author of I Love a Man in Uniform: A Memoir of Love, War, and Other Battles [2], Alison Buckholtz, author of Standing By: The Making of an American Military Family in a Time of War [3], and Sophia Raday, author of Love in Condition Yellow [4]. This is part two. Read part one here [5].

Dear Lily and Sophia,

Funny you should mention Stepford Wives, Lily [5]. Three days after my husband Scott and I got married, I moved with him to Japan, where he was serving in a naval aviation squadron based in metropolitan Tokyo. The only hiccup in the honeymoon? You, Sophia, and all the other military wives out there already guessed it: he left. The squadron was usually away, engaged in training and workups, or deployed on an aircraft carrier. This was the Shock-and-Awe era, and I certainly found my new life shocking. Growing up in a nonmilitary family, without any exposure to servicemembers’ spouses, I brought that image of the Stepford Wife with me to Japan—and I searched for her everywhere, certain that identifying her would be my antidote to becoming her.

But this is not a seek-and-you-shall find kind of story. Living on base, within butter-borrowing distance of scores of other wives who were also left behind, I too found myself stopped by strangers—fast friends who asked how I was doing, offered me rides to the mall, or, after I became pregnant, even hinted that they would coach me through the delivery if my husband was still away. A transplant from the anonymity of urban living, I was taken aback at first, but grew to love the sincerity of wife culture, and the easy way newbies were welcomed. These women became my social safety net during my husband’s frequent absences, both in Japan and in our current home in the Pacific Northwest—and especially during the squadron’s seven-month deployment last year.

But I am leaving them, perhaps at the worst possible time; Scott has been “voluntold” for a 14-month assignment in Baghdad. Although we love our small town, we decided to relocate to the Washington, D.C. area, where our extended family lives, so that the kids and I can have the benefit of family support during this painful separation.

I never dreamed my decision to move to a nonmilitary community would be controversial, but several of my military friends here in Washington state cautioned against it. They worried that our civilian neighbors, teachers, and colleagues would simply not understand what my children and I were going through—or worse, that my single-mom status would alienate me in a suburban scene of shared-partnership parenting. I hadn’t envisioned the sort of damning judgment that my military spouse friends believe I may receive from nonmilitary acquaintances. Sophia, you write movingly about your return home to Oakland after a stint living on base for Army War College, noting the irony that your neighborhood, adjacent to Berkeley, “an area where people like to pretend that the war doesn’t exist, was born out of the struggle to win the Second World War. Of course, that was such a different war: everyone was impacted by it, not just a minority of soldiers and their families.” That resonates for me, since I’ll be living just outside of the nation’s capitol, where elected officials decide every day how to run a war that affects me personally. I’ll be one of the very few in my neighborhood and town whom it impacts, however.

But irony is not the most prominent feeling I have as I prepare to send my husband off to war again. It’s dread, an underlying, sickening sense of dread, as Scott and I count down the time we have left. First it was eight months, then six months, then eight weeks, and now we’re down to six weeks until his departure. We’re trying to fit in everything we want to do, but all we want to do is be together. To complicate matters, he’s been away with the squadron on a training exercise for the last month. I can’t help but feel we’ve been robbed of the time we deserve. This upcoming 14-month assignment comes on the heels of a demanding three-year sea tour and a deployment that ended less than a year ago, so actually, I feel that the children and I have been robbed, period.

Our family’s situation is far from unique: The most recent Department of Defense data shows that out of the 1.9 million Americans who have deployed since 9/11, 876,000 are parents. Of these, 245,000 have been away twice, 91,000 have been away three times, and 48,000 have been deployed four or more times. It’s hard to put a positive spin on long, repeated, and unpredictable deployments. This is one of the few times I yearn to be a Stepford Wife, to whip up a situation so winning (“a year of tax-free salary!”) that my nonmilitary acquaintances could only wish they were lucky enough to have a husband in the service.

As we prepare to live “on the outside,” with friends to whom I’ll have to explain everything, I’m wondering how you both walk the line when you’re feeling uncharitable about how the military has affected your family relationships. Do you share your thoughts, however raw and uncensored, with your civilian friends? Or do you allow shades of Stepford to seep in, because sometimes—let’s admit it—it’s just so much easier to ignore, evade, and deny these domestic disruptions?

Best,

Alison