Military Families, Being All They Can Be!
May 26 '00
The military way of life is by far, not an easy one. I am married to a GI who has been a member of the US Army since September,1993. We have endured a tremendous amount of struggles, not saying they are any more than a civilian's life....just different. My husband and I were married for three years before we decided to come into the Army. When our son was three months old, he came in and said, “We need to talk.” That was when he told me he had talked to the recruiters..all of them, and liked what the Army had to offer. We discussed it and decided this was a good idea.
We thought we had a pretty good idea of what we were getting into, but truth be known, we weren’t exactly prepared. My husbands job is within the Special Operations Command and for the first three years, took him away alot. When I say alot, I mean 6 months, 8 months, and finally 10 months, consecutively for three years. He still deploys, but not near as often. It was tough, I will not lie. We saw many marriages fail and we saw alot of marriages in trouble. We also saw marriages that were able to rebuild and we saw alot of marriages become stronger than ever. Luckily, we became one of the strong ones. I believe that we were able to maintain such a strong relationship because we both had a good attitude. I didn’t feel I could be anything but strong, I had a child to think of and a husband that depended on me. My husband says he just focused on the task at hand to get the job done so he could get home to us.
November, 1995, my husband had just returned from a deployment to learn they were going to Bosnia. He didn’t know when, he just knew it would be before Christmas. And it was. He left December 12, a day I will never forget. My son and I went home to Texas for the holidays. I remember standing in our church on Christmas Eve, barely able to hold back the tears, with my parents at my side. Meanwhile, my husband was thousands of miles away, uploading his vehicle and equipment onto a train in the freezing cold and snow somewhere in Hungary. I didn’t know this until the 8 month deployment was over.
How have we been able to hold it all together? We have worked together. We have come up with several activities to do and different ways of communication. Of course, now that we have a computer, email ROCKS! Other than trying to keep the kids and myself busy, we make a chain from construction paper. We cut out strips of colored paper and the kids decorate them with colors, markers, and stickers. We cut out enough strips of paper equal to the number of days Daddy will be gone. Next we connect them together with tape to make a chain. Every night before bed, we take a link off for that day. Sometimes I wait until it is closer to the time for Daddy to come home before making the chain so I don’t have this long chain running through the house.
I also have maps on hand to show exactly where Daddy is. While we look at the maps, we talk about why Daddy is there and what it is he is doing. My son was just about to have his 3rd birthday when Daddy left for Bosnia. Explaining a deployment like that was tough. I did my best to explain that Daddy was there to help the children and to help the people there not fight anymore. This was good enough for a little while. Then he began asking, “Isn’t Daddy through helpin’ those children yet?” His understanding of deployments has changed now that he is older.
We invested in two micro recorders for long deployments. We used them for the Bosnia deployment as well as a few others. My husband would talk to our son and myself on the recorder and mail the tape home. Our son loved to hear his daddy’s voice and would make a tape and send it back to him. He also has a small photo album of his very own filled with pictures of his daddy and him together. He and I sat down together with all of our pictures and he hand-picked every picture that now has a home in his little album. Not only does it contain pictures of Daddy, but of other family members far away. He really enjoys getting his album out and looking at the pictures with me. It seems to help him a lot especially when he is really having a bad day.
All in all, I agree wholeheartedly with clicker’s editorial, Praise the Military Family! It is possible to have a strong family and be in the military, and/or deployed a great amount of the time. We have learned alot through the deployments and I believe it has made us stronger as individuals, as well as a family unit.
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Epinions.com ID:
Kymm027
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Member: Kim
Location: Hawaii, from Texas
Reviews written: 44
Trusted by: 109 members
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