I'm sure we've all heard the same thing about military spouses about how it's the "hardest job in the military." We are uprooted from our homes every few years, leaving our friends behind. Our children are pulled from schools, their educations taking a hit in the process since different school systems have different graduation requirements from others. Spouses are forced to leave their careers over and over again to follow their service member spouse across states and countries, all in service to our great nation. Then there's the deployments, oh, the deployments. Our service members leave for months, even more than a year, at a time. Our service member spouses go to the field for weeks on end to ramp up for deployment. There are early mornings, late nights, staff duty, CQ, working through the weekend because a critical piece of equipment has gone unserviceable and needs to be up and ready to fulfill the mission. Contact is intermittent, there is a loss of intimacy, "single" parenting, etc. Take ALL of those things and send the spouse hundreds or even thousands of miles away from family. It's even harder if you just relocated prior to your spouse being sent down range. What happens at home?
For a stay at home spouse, yes, it's frustrating. You're taking on the full load of household duties instead of working together as a team because your service member is not home. However at a stay at home spouse, things are a little "easier". You're available for sick days for your kids, routine doctor appointments, school pick ups/drop offs. Yes, it may be inconvenient sometimes. You had a mountain of laundry to tackle, but that can wait until tomorrow. Today, you can nurse your child back to health. You can take your toddlers to the park and playdates. You can have coffee with girlfriends at 1000 because the kids are in school until 1500. You can run errands without worrying about businesses closing at 1700 because you can plan your day around those errands. Things are still difficult, but it's manageable because that is your job. You stay home and care for the house and children. I've been there, and to say that stay at home spouses don't work is a HUGE insult. But there is another side of the coin. Cue the work (outside of the home) military spouse.
OMG y'all, we do all of the things the stay at home spouses do: the cleaning, the cooking, taking care of sick kids, running errands...and also a full eight hour work day. Here is a GOOD day as a work-outside-the-home military spouse:
You need to wake up two hours early to make yourself presentable for work, get kids up and dressed for school/daycare, pack lunches, make breakfast, and do school/daycare drop offs. Whew! Glad that part is over! Work a full day, using lunch to run errands or make important phone calls. Get off work and go to the gym (that precious hour of "me" time). Rush to daycare/after school program to pick up kids. Fight traffic across town and then finally arrive at home for the evening. Sorry, girl, your job isn't done yet (*sweating and breathing heavily* what? I feel like I just ran a damn marathon!) There's still cooking, after dinner clean up, laundry to wash and put away, run the dishwasher, homework for the school agers, bathtime, five stories, three songs, and 10 hugs and kisses per child (because the first NINE weren't enough!)
That's a GOOD day, mind you. What happens when things DON'T go as planned?
Little Timmy forgot his lunch and the lunch account website is down...rush to school to drop off a sack lunch (good bye lunch hour!) Sally ran out of diapers at daycare because in all of your organized chaos you missed ONE detail. Rush to store, drop off diapers, work through lunch TOMORROW to make up time (or should you burn an hour of sick leave...hmm, decisions.) What about that dreaded phone call...the one from school or daycare that says "Ma'am, your child is sick and needs to be picked up. They cannot return until they have a doctor note and are symptom free for at least 24 hours." WHAT....THE...F*CK?! As if you didn't have ENOUGH going on, now you have to explain to your supervisor, AGAIN, that your spouse is away and the children are sick. You burn through ALL of your sick leave and any paid time off, you even lose pay because your other leave is gone and you can't make up time (end of week, end of pay period, crappy supervisor?) You're far away from home with no support system so there is literally no one else to watch the kids for you to return to work. Friends don't want to help because they don't want your kids infecting theirs. What are you supposed to do?! This sh*t SUCKS!
Now, I'm not saying that work-outside-the-home military spouses have it any harder than stay at home spouses, but we definitely have a unique set of challenges. My overall point is that the life of a military spouse is hard, really hard. It's not for everyone, hell, I don't know that its for anyone, but they're our partners, our loves, and the ones we have chosen to spend the rest of our lives with. They make sacrifices to serve our country, and we make sacrifices because we love them.
The lesson: If you're a military spouse, especially one that works outside of the home, you're not alone. We have all been where you are at one point or another. Try to find a friend to lean on and vent to. Invest in wine and coffee because, girl, you're gonna need it!
If you're not a military spouse but you know someone who is...ask them. Ask them if you can take the kids for an hour or two so she can run to the store or take a shower in peace (hell, use the toilet without the kids wrecking the house!). Insist she gets a sitter for an evening and plan a ladies night, dinner and a movie. Most of all, be patient. Until you've walked in those shoes, you will probably never fully understand what she is going through.
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