I knew I had to quit focusing on what I couldn’t change. If not for my sake, for Faith’s. My heartache was killing the holiday, and I didn’t want that for any of us. I decided that a person can either have a pity-party or pick herself up and make the best of it.
I began racking my brain. How could I find joy in such an unhappy situation? How would I help it be Christmas for us? I knew it would be especially difficult for Shawn to get in the mood, being in a desert with no good-old North Dakota snow or traditional mistletoe. And, then, it hit me: Why couldn’t he have snow, or, at least, the mistletoe, over there?
I decided to send him a care package labeled, “The 25 days of Christmas.” There would be twenty-five gifts, each a reminder of our treasured holiday. However, there was a rule for the package: He could only open one gift each day until Christmas. That would be tough for him, I knew, but it would give him something to look forward to every day. Besides, isn’t torturous anticipation of opening gifts part of Christmas? That thought put a loving smirk on my face!
My excitement built as I began putting together his package full of Christmas touches: a pine-tree–scented air-freshener so he could have the smell of Christmas, a candy cane so he could have the taste of Christmas, a Christmas music CD so he could have the sounds of Christmas, some cotton balls so he could have some snow for Christmas, hot cocoa so he could have a sip of Christmas. . . . Well, maybe he’d have to make it chilled cocoa! And, of course, the mistletoe, with instructions pending his arrival home.
Putting together this package put the spirit of Christmas in my heart. When Shawn finally received the package and called to thank me, I could hear it in his voice, too. And I guess you could say Christmas for us was what it was supposed to be—full of joy and full of love.
I mentioned the rule that he could only open one gift at a time each day until Christmas. . . . Well, this year for Shawn we’ll have to mark “naughty” instead of “nice” for when Santa’s “making his list and checking it twice.”
Chanda Stelter
5
HONEY, WE’VE GOT
ORDERS
My address is like my shoes.
It travels with me.
Mother Mary Jones
Keep the House
Life isn’t one straight line. Most of us have to be transplanted, like a tree, before we blossom.
Louise Nevelson
My husband and I met in the army. We fell in love and got married at the nearest justice of the peace before our separate, conflicting orders put us on opposite ends of the globe. Soon, I became pregnant and left active duty, the toughest job I had known. We moved to Germany, and had two children. Gradually, my status as a stay-at-home mom made me the most important person in the world to those little people. Instead of missing the active army, I shuddered at the thought of going back.
When 9/11 happened, I was pregnant with our third child. A few months later, we were in the middle of another move. The kids and I stayed with my parents over the holidays, and my husband went on to Fort Drum, New York, and found us a place to live. I was thrilled. It was going to be the longest we had been in one place—maybe a whole three years! I eagerly started planning.
A week later, he called me. “You’d better sit down,” he said. “I’m being deployed. I don’t know where, and I don’t know for how long. But I leave in two days. Do you want to keep the house?”
We had been through deployments before, and yet I cried and cried, unable to hold it in. We had been about to get our lives together, and we had just found a new house. I considered my options. The kids weren’t in school yet; I could stay with my parents and have the baby in Colorado. At least I would have help, I told myself. If I did make the move to New York, I’d be forced to rely on strangers—my worst nightmare. But, still, I wanted to have a place that was ours, and a place he could come home to.
I thought about it all night and called him back the next day. “Keep the house,” I said.
By mid-December, I was seven months pregnant, and it had been ages since I heard from him. Each day, I waddled out to the mailbox at my parents’ house, hoping for a letter, something. One day, I pulled out a manila envelope from the Department of the Army with orders calling me back to active duty. My pregnancy exempted me, but it made me think about what my life would be like if I had to endure six months to a year without my children. Yet, my husband did it all the time. I decided that life waits for no one, and gathered my resolve to make the most of moving.
Shortly after Christmas, I packed up our van and embarked on a three-day journey to New York with two toddlers and a small dog that whines on road trips. Family and friends put us up along the way, and we reached Fort Drum on New Year’s Eve, just after a huge snowstorm. I dug out our new address and pulled up next to where the sidewalk should have been. I was looking at three feet of snow. Not only was getting in the driveway impossible, but I didn’t own any boots.
I searched the stark landscape and saw a man down the street with a snow blower. I waddled down the street toward him and introduced myself. I asked to borrow his machine to get into my driveway. Instead, he came and did it for me. I was exhausted, but I showed the kids around our dark, cold and empty house. Our furniture was on its way, but I was too pregnant to even dream of moving furniture and lifting boxes. Disheartened and lonely, I sat down and cried. I was used to being self-reliant, but I realized this was going to be a tough winter.
Over the next few weeks, however, I met some incredible people. I had neighbors who brought cookies and shoveled snow. Strangers called me up out of the blue to ask if I needed help moving things. Guys from my husband’s unit—who hadn’t even met him yet—showed up well after duty hours to move furniture around and help me get set up. Other wives offered to take the kids for a while.
A few months later, my mom flew out to take my husband’s place at my side, and I had our baby surrounded by the support and love of the strangers I now called friends. Ladies brought food and gifts to my door for days afterward, and I was overwhelmed by their generosity. I cried a big thank-you to God for surrounding me with so many wonderful friends and family. I cried in relief that I had succeeded, and for the strength of other military wives who give so much to help those who need it so desperately.
Today, I am giving back by helping new wives in our community “keep the house.” No one can do it alone, and when you are in a community of army wives, you don’t have to.
Jennifer Oscar
Honorable Gift
Love is a choice you make from moment to moment.
Barbara De Angelis
“Mama-San, stop working on your lists. I bring you a cup of coffee. The obi screen is finished so I have story to tell,” Mura-San, our Japanese maid, said.
We only had six weeks left in Japan. Time to clean out, pack up, rush to see all we’d missed and begin to say our good-byes. Terry’s three-year tour at the Naval Hospital, Yokosuka, had flown by. In June 1972, we would leave for San Diego and his retirement from the navy.
Three years ago, I was warned, “Don’t buy anything the first year. Take time to learn what you really like.”
I found I loved the fabrics used to create kimonos and their wide sashes called obis. Old fabric was a treasure, since, being flammable, most did not survive World War II. I told Mura-San to let me know if she ever heard of any antique obis for sale.
Weeks later she brought me a tissue-wrapped bundle. It contained a lovely cream, peach and pale-green floral obi. I loved it. “What do I owe you for the obi?” I asked.
“I give to you. A friend owe me a favor. She gave me her obi. You will have a screen made from it to honor the obi,” Mura-San said.
I was busy attending a university, with three teenage children, a husband and military social obligations. I put the obi in the rosewood chest and procrastinated. One day, exasperated by my dawdling, Mura-San announced that we were taking the obi to Yokohama’s Motomachi Street to visit the screen maker’s shop.
The screen maker didn
’t speak English, and my Japanese was barely basic, so Mura-San haggled, explained, discussed dimensions and timing. It would cost about seventy-two thousand yen (three hundred dollars) and would be ready in a month.
Now, on this May day, the screen stood, in the corner of the dining room, wrapped and packed for shipping.
I sipped my coffee and watched Mura-San glide gracefully as she carried her cup and a box of tissues to the table. Japanese women her age, trained in childhood to walk in wooden geta, walked like swans skimming a pond. She was short, solid with middle age and wore her gray-streaked black hair in a simple pageboy cut. She could read and write English as well as speak it. I knew very little of her life; she had never married and she lived alone in a small house on a narrow, winding lane near downtown Yokohama.
We often sat together discussing menus, shopping lists and the children’s schedules. She knew the details of our daily lives while I knew little of hers. I depended on her to help my husband and me keep our lives running smoothly. I could not have attended Sophia University in Tokyo, two nights a week, without her help at home.
She wiped her eyes, sipped the coffee she loved, took a deep breath, and began: “I was sixteen years old and still in school when my father decided it was time to arrange a marriage for me. He chose a twenty-year-old man named Yoshi. Our families were friends. My father would not have forced me into marriage, but I liked Yoshi. Girls were expected to marry and have grandchildren for their parents. We were taught that love and devotion came after marriage.
“Yoshi and I became engaged, which pleased both families. My mother and aunts spent much time shopping for new clothes for me to wear to all the parties and dinners planned for Yoshi and me. We made many trips to kimono makers and obi shops. There were elegant silks for dress up and cottons for everyday. We wore kimono whenever we went out. My favorite outfit was the one I wore to the formal engagement party. It was in mid-August 1941. I was very hot in those layers of clothing, and I was so nervous I perspired. I was afraid I would ruin my new kimono and obi. The wedding was planned for the next spring at cherry-blossom time.
“Yoshi was called to join the air force in February of 1942. When I told him good-bye, I knew he might not return.”
Tears welled in her eyes and her hand trembled as she took a sip from her cup. “Maybe you would like to tell me the rest later,” I said.
“No, I have to tell it all now,” she replied. “When the bombing planes started coming over Japan, my father decided to move to an old farm in the country that had been his parents’ home. He told each of us that we could bury some treasured things in a cave at the bottom of the bluffs of our property. I chose my favorite obi. It was woven in Kyoto and was cream color with coral and green. It had some sweat stains and a small tear, but it reminded me of Yoshi. I rolled the obi and squeezed it into a large glass jar with a screw-on top. In the night, as the bombers roared overhead, Father and my two elder brothers took our treasures to the cave. They rolled rocks and dirt over the opening.
“We lived on the farm for two years. When the war ended, we returned to Yokohama. One of my brothers was killed on Okinawa. Yoshi’s plane went down during a sea battle. We learned the Americans had leased our land to build housing for their people. The land right under this house will someday be returned to my family. Father had to get permission from authorities to walk on his own land.
“One day, I went with Father to the cave. Our treasures were there. I cried when I took the obi out of the jar. I cried for all the young women who would never marry and have children. I never again wore the obi. Now that you have honored the obi by having the screen made, I tell you its story. I will miss you, Mama-San. I will miss Tracy and Duncan and Kerry. They are like the children I never had. I will miss the commander. He is a good husband and father. I send the obi to America so you will still have me with you.”
We stood. She bowed from the waist, “Sayonara, my friend.”
My arms ached to hug her but I knew I must not invade her dignity. I bowed in return, “I am honored. I will remember you every time I look at the screen, and I will carry you in my heart. Domo arigato gozaimusu, Mura-San Matsuzaki.”
Marilyn Pate
Part of the Navy Means Saying Good-Bye
Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family.
Barbara Bush
For most military families, a moving van idling in the street is both a regularly occurring event and a dreaded sight. It’s daunting when the van is sitting outside your own house and men are carrying your dismantled belongings to the truck, but it’s downright depressing when the van is waiting outside the home of your best friend.
My best girlfriend moved last week. Darcy’s husband was transferred across the country to a new branch of service. I find this hard to believe, and it is difficult to accept that she is gone. But what’s confusing and sad for me is traumatic for my two-and-a-half-year-old son, Ford. For the past two years, he grew up with my friend’s children. Her youngest is just two weeks older than mine, and her eldest is four. I call them “The Crew.” They were always together, as good as second families for one another while our husbands were deployed.
Darcy lived three houses away from me. Sometimes, while our husbands were gone, I felt like I was back at college. I would run down the street in sweatpants, with a stack of DVDs under my arm, ready for a night of girl talk and movie marathons.
How many times did I dash between our houses for a cup of milk for a recipe or to cry on her couch? I cannot be sure, but I know it measured in the hundreds. I wouldn’t be surprised if I had worn a groove in the pavement between our two homes. She was my confidante, my buddy, the only programmed number on my telephone. She was even the one who drove me to the hospital when I was in labor with my second son. Without her, this street suddenly seems entirely too lonely.
For my son—who, in many ways, knew my friend and was around her more than he has been with his own father—she and her children were his world, his regularity. His daddy came and went on detachments and deployments, but the Joneses always lived a walk away. Now that they are gone, he is just old enough to understand we don’t see them anymore, but still too young to know what “moving” really means. Every morning he asks to go play with The Crew, and when I take him to the babysitter, he still thinks he is going to Darcy’s house. After all, that is what he did for the past two years.
The day my friend moved, my son and I walked down to her house to say good-bye. The furniture was already packed, and the rooms were empty. My son cried out, “Where’d the couch go? Where’s the table?”
As we walked back home, my son wept and I realized then just how crazy this military life really is. I can’t think of any other profession that allows grown-up families who aren’t related to become so close. The fact that military families endure so much together brings us closer and makes us family. Over the last two years, to celebrate Thanksgiving dinner or the Fourth of July without the Joneses was like ostracizing an aunt or an uncle or a brother. We had bonded in a way that is so unique to military families. We had bonded through hardship, tragedy and long, lonely months.
Yesterday, my neighbor across the street moved. Her family is civilian, and we were pretty close as far as friendship goes. Our children played together, and she and I had several lunch dates and movie nights. But her departure hasn’t affected me nearly as much as my fellow navy friends’. I never suffered through six months alone with my civilian neighbor. I never ran to her door crying or called her at two o’clock in the morning because I heard a strange noise in the kitchen. I never spent an entire Saturday with her; I never shared a holiday with her family. Monday through Friday, and especially Saturday and Sunday, my civilian friend had her husband and children at home.
With Darcy, my military friend, there were times when she and I only had each other. We’d sit alone on her back patio and listen to noisy neighbors celebrating the Fourth of July with a family picnic and fireworks. We spen
t Easter with our kids, hunting for eggs in my backyard. And at 5:00 P.M., when husbands and wives were rushing home to be together, she and I could usually be found yakking it up at the park, watching our children play and laugh . . . totally sheltered from what a “normal” family life is like.
This morning, my son asked, “Why did Darcy move, Momma?”
I paused, not sure how to answer in a way he could understand. “Honey,” I explained, “Darcy and the boys moved away because their daddy got a new job. They won’t live down the street, and we won’t go to their house anymore. Somebody new lives in their house now.”
I could tell that he still didn’t understand. But I couldn’t give him a better explanation. I don’t understand why the navy brings such special people in and out of our lives. I don’t understand why we have to leave a place just as soon as we get comfortable there.
What I do understand, and what my son will eventually realize, too, is that we never would have become this close with Darcy and her children if it hadn’t been for the military. And now, for the rest of our lives, there will always be a guest bed waiting for us at the Joneses’, wherever the military moves them next. And when we go there, we will always be welcomed. Like family.
Sarah Smiley
Discomboobled Military Mate
Self-expression must pass into communication for its fulfillment.
Pearl S. Buck
If you stay married to your military mate long enough, you’ll eventually end up stationed in Europe. When my husband and I first moved to Bavaria, we were delighted to rent a small apartment in a quaint, little farming town near the American military post. I was ready for culture shock, but I was completely taken aback by the linguistic “discombooblement” I experienced. Culture shock implies a surprise at one’s new surroundings. I wasn’t shocked, I was bewildered, mystified, discomboobled, thrown into a state of confusion and feeling like a boob. I had tried to prepare myself for moving to a new country by listening to a “You Can Speak German in One Easy Lesson” tape. Being able to count to ten in a foreign language is helpful but, obviously, not enough. It is easier to eat crackers while whistling the national anthem than it is for an English speaker to make ich and ach sounds properly.