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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. Lily's entry is first.
Hello, Sophia and Alison:
While we’ve never met in person, after having read each of your books, I feel I’ve got two new friends and sisters-in-crime already. We are all military wives who never expected to find ourselves in that particular role. Sophia, you are married to an Army reservist and a cop in Oakland, Calif. Alison, you are the wife of a career Navy officer and fighter pilot. Despite the dissimilarities in our husbands’ career paths (my husband served 20 years as an active-duty Army intelligence officer), the three of us have much in common. We’ve weathered deployment, big moves, small-town living on base, and the enormous challenge of culture shock as we left the civilian world to marry the military, as it were.
At baseline, what our life stories have in common is the “I never thought I’d marry a military man” plotline. Alison, you describe yourself as a studious feminist from a boisterous but loving East Coast Jewish family. Sophia, you are a former activist who was once arrested protesting South African apartheid while at Stanford. I blasted out of suburbia with purple hair and piercings to spend my early adulthood bouncing from New York to San Francisco, and back again, a margin-dweller all the while. Relatively speaking, we all married late—in our 30s. The vast majority of military wives are under 35. Over the next few days, we’ll surely be discussing the ways in which the military wife life both grates and satisfies. Take off the white gloves, girls (not that we wear the white gloves these days—but those times are not too far behind us).
When I moved to West Point with my husband Mike, which was the first time we'd lived on post since we wed, I had to transition from that autonomous, margin-dwelling life to one of receiving lines, spouse coffees, and “mandatory fun,” like barbecues, potlucks, and holiday parties hosted by the commanding officer (and, of course, his wife). At the buffet during the orientation for newly arrived personnel at the academy (not mandatory "fun" but mandatory nonetheless), I was ambushed by a Colonel’s wife who looked this little ol' then-major's wife up and down, and asked, "So...where did you meet your husband? In a bar?"
It was my first time encountering a wife who "wore her husband’s rank"—that is to say, viewed her husband's higher rank as a means of inflated social currency. Good times. Thankfully, she proved the exception to the rule—most wives, used to moving often and therefore having to mobilize quickly to make friends and form a support network, proved so outgoing, I was sort of shocked. During one of my walks around West Point, one wife pulled alongside me in her car, and asked if I wanted to go to the gym with her! I was thinking, "Dear Lord, this woman doesn't know me from Adam! I could be a serial killer!"
Comments
Very good post. Made me
By: Jerico | Mon, 01/23/2012 - 14:42
Very good post. Made me realize I was totally wrong about this issue. I figure that one learns something new everyday.
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