I: The military spouse

Monday afternoon found me alone with a book in my friend Amie's living room, waiting on a washing machine repair man.

I've known Amie for almost a decade since our husbands were stationed together at the same squadron in Maine. Now our paths have crossed a second time and we get to be neighbors again.

Amie's husband is currently away on a long deployment, and while most everything is going well on the home front, at all kind of fell apart over the weekend. Amie's washing machine broke, her kiddos got sick and someone broke into Amie's car during her son's soccer game and stole her purse.

Today Amie had to decide between taking her children to the doctor or waiting at home for the washer machine repair man. I told her I'd love an hour to myself on her couch waiting for Mr. Fixit while she shuttled her ailing cherubs in and out of the doctors office and pharmacy.

It occurred to me, as I cut short my long-anticipated afternoon away from home while Nick stayed with our kids, that I didn't even think twice about helping Amie out. I knew not only that she would do the same for me in a heartbeat, but she probably already has in some way, at some point in the history of our friendship.

We all have bad days, but I knew without the relief of a spouse swooping in to help at the end of her hard workday, the absence of a healthy washer machine to clean all of those germy clothes might bring her to the brink of insanity.

These are the favors we do for friends. Whether we're single parents or ones whose spouses travel a lot for work, we rely on friends and family to come aside and help patch holes in our oft-sinking ships.

We military wives are excellent at this. We certainly don't have a corner on the market of single-parent suffering, but we've learned to become fierce in the face of it none-the-less.

We are vigilant hot-meal deliverers, baby-sitters, 911-callers and stand-in labor coaches. We do all of this for our brothers and sisters in deployment mode because we rely on them to do the same for us.

At the outset of my adult life, when I was starting college, plotting my career and dating boys, I vocally opposed the idea of ever hitching up with a member of the armed services.

I didn't like war. I wasn't very patriotic. I saw the sacrifices wives had to make in those types of marriages and I was certain that life wasn't for me. Rather, I believed I wasn't cut out for that life.

Then I met someone I knew I'd never be able to live without -- and he was betrothed to the military. It took about three years before I was ready to swallow hard, take a deep breath and brace myself for the future that choosing him might hold for me. Then I jumped in with both feet.

In our eight years of marriage, I've never had to make a single career sacrifice against my will, but I had to pick up and move six times.

I learned how to survive a deployment, but I also felt the thrill of watching the love of my life step safely off a plane on Independence Day after he spent five months in and out of harm's way.



I learned the importance of clinging to friendships when family is thousands of miles away.

I'm still helping my daughter cope with leaving her best friend and the only home she remembers a year ago when Nick's job relocated us to a new squadron.

I'm trying to figure out how we'll stitch together an education for our children if we stay in the military for years to come.

I've come to embrace the unpredictability of this life and to relish in the kinship we share with other military families all over the world. I never would have chosen this life at the outset, but it's what I know now. This be I -- a Navy wife.