Arts

He's Home, But It's Not Nirvana

I dreamed of museum trips. He works on weekends.

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, Alison Buckholtz, author of Standing By: The Making of an American Military Family in a Time of War, and Sophia Raday, author of Love in Condition Yellow. This is the sixth and final part of their conversation. Read part one here, part two here, part three here, part four here, and part five here.

Dear Lily and Alison,

Dessert! The marshmallow I’ve been waiting for—when the military (and for us, the police) commitments slow down and I can have life the way I always wanted it, right?

Believe it or not, I’ve come to the conclusion that dessert’s a mirage. At first I regarded the end of Barrett’s recent deployment as my marshmallow, and I said goodbye to him with the implicit deal that when he returned, he would pay me back by morphing into an idealized family man that I’ve always carried around in my head, while I’d turn into the next Pam Houston, an award-winning writer known for her love of tough men and adventure. But deep down, I knew that expectation set us up for a fall.

In order to survive the time he was away, I had to find a way to have a full life without him. While he was deployed, I followed my own dreams, got a wonderful babysitter, and wrote the crazy, hard, wonderful story of making peace with my warrior husband: Love in Condition Yellow.

And anyway, our being the fantasy couple was never meant to be. Ultimately, something that frightened me the most—my husband’s leaving our family for deployment—made me appreciate our unique relationship more. It taught me that our love stems not from Barrett’s being at my side to “complete” me, but rather in my loving him while also pursuing my own best and fullest self.  

Oddly, he has become more of a family man. The time away did change him, but I don’t think it would have happened if I’d spent the whole deployment tapping my watch. Dear marshmallow lovers, did you think Barrett’s coming off active duty would mean we now have the weekend outings to museums that I’ve always craved? Nope, now that he is home and off active duty, he works every weekend at the police department! And did I think I would breathe a sigh of relief because he was out of harm’s way? Well, having four Oakland officers killed on March 21st washed that possibility away.

Yet I don’t resent his being a soldier and a police officer the way I did before he was deployed. What does make me sad is the separation I see—culturally, socially, experientially—between many Americans and the people who risk their lives to protect them: service members, police officers, and their families. 

For example, a civilian friend recently commented to me that “people are sort of over the war.” Really? Because last I checked, the war was still going on. Two wars, in fact. We are still sending husbands, sons, daughters, wives, fathers, mothers out to fight, and for some of those families, the impact of the war will never be over.

Tags: afghanistan, Iraq, marshmallow test, military spouses, Military Wives

Sophia Raday Sophia Raday is the author of Love in Condition Yellow and was a founding editor of the online magazine Literary Mama..

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