When your husband decides, in his forties, that he’s going back into the Army, you’re supportive. It doesn’t occur to you to argue or tell him the whole idea is crazy. It makes sense to you. You think back to that day in 2001 when you were newly married. It was exactly 6 months since your wedding day and he had flowers delivered to commemorate your 6-month wedding anniversary. Your infant daughter was four months old and you took her to Childwatch at the gym that morning. You were running on the treadmill when the overhead television caught your eye: a skyscraper with the top snapped off and smoke billowing out like a giant chimney.
You wonder what movie is playing this time of morning and think it’s strange because you could have sworn the news was just on. You don’t have your headphones plugged into the sound, so you don’t know what they’re saying on TV. All around you, people have stopped lifting weights and halted their treadmills. Everyone is gathered around the TV screens to watch the spectacle unfolding in New York City. It feels as if the world has stopped turning as you glean details about the plane that crashed into the World Trade Center.
Family and friends are puzzled by your husband’s decision to serve. You joke that it’s his midlife crisis. It’s more original than a red convertible and an affair with a younger woman. You understand why he needs to do it and that’s really all that matters. You do your best to explain this to your daughters in a way they can understand. You also take over paying the bills, mowing the lawn, and shoveling snow. You order a life-sized cardboard poster of your husband in his uniform. The kids call him Flat Daddy. He sits at Thanksgiving dinner and goes to your daughter’s First Communion.
You don’t live on an Army base where friends and neighbors share military culture. You don’t know any other families in your community with deployed service members, but you don’t give it much thought. You attend occasional events with family members from your husband’s reserve unit and, gradually, you learn the customs and the acronyms.
You adapt to life without your husband and the kids adapt to life without their father because that’s what people do. They adapt. By the time he leaves for pre-deployment, you’ve gotten used to having him gone for weeks or months of training. You maintain routines at home with the kids and they seem to be doing fine. They have school and gymnastics and horseback riding lessons. You have work, the gym, running a household, and chauffeuring the kids around to keep you busy. You send care packages of peanut butter and instant Starbucks coffee.
You know your husband is alive and well because you hear from him almost daily. This isn’t World War II or Vietnam when people went for months without word from their loved ones. This is a new millennium. Your husband often has access to the internet. The kids talk to him on Skype once a week when the signal is clear enough. None of the other kids at school have a deployed parent. You let their teachers know and ask them to keep an eye out for signs of emotional problems. Your daughters have friends and their grades are good. They seem just like regular kids. People ask about your husband and how he’s doing. You smile and tell them he’s doing well. You actually believe this for a while. It will be years before you realized there was a problem.
Fast forward several more years, and now your daughter is wearing an Army uniform. The mixture of emotions that occurs as you sit in a chapel watching her basic training graduation ceremony is nearly indescribable; a flush of pride mixed with profound sadness. Listening to her talk sounds like an alien has taken over. It is her voice but her speech is peppered with Army acronyms and lingo that sound like they should be coming from her father. The experience is surreal. You never planned to be an Army wife. Most of the time you forget that you are one. Now you are also an Army Mom.
She broke the news in a text message a month after college graduation. You feel blindsided because this wasn’t part of the plan. She already had a cushy job lined up with a pharmaceutical company. She didn’t discuss this plot twist with you or her father. She signed on for a five-year active duty commitment and your heart feels shattered. But you’re also proud and excited for her. She has a bright future in military intelligence and you know that doors will open for her. You don’t try to stop her because it’s her life and you know she needs to do this. Because you understand that the best choices are usually the hardest.
