Da Goddess

The Other War Heroes

I am humbled by Da Goddess' offer to let me guest blog while my site is missing in action. In her honor, I wanted to blog something wonderful. Brilliant. I wanted to write a blog entry that would send her meter through the roof, even higher than those she's receiving from Gutdude.

But I can't. I just got back from crying at the grocery store. It has been exactly three years since the last time I wandered down a grocery aisle wiping tears off my face and hoping nobody noticed. Exactly nine months pregnant at the time, I waddled around full of the self-pity unique to a pregnant woman on her due date when her bloated body refuses to recognize calendars and dislodge the child that's been parked on her bladder for the past four months. I don't remember what I was crying about at the time. Most likely, I'd just realized that unless I delivered a 49-pound infant, I had some serious dieting in my future.

Today, it was seeing another pregnant woman that triggered my tears. You see, I'm a military wife. When I say I went to the grocery store, I mean the Commissary: that most-cherished perk of military life where the non-profit prices make it possible to feed our families on the shitty pay that serving our country earns. Somewhere between the produce section and the canned goods, I saw the true face of bravery, and it brought tears of gratitude to my eyes.

She was standing in the canned goods aisle comparing the prices of different soups. Pregnant, yes, and wearing one of those awful pastel-colored tents that mark a woman's ninth month. Two little boys played at her feet, happily oblivious to the dirt streaks on the pitted linoleum.

In one instant, I knew she was the wife of a Marine. No, it wasn't just because I was shopping at a Marine commissary. After all, I'm an Army wife and I shop there, too. It wasn't even the "Semper Fi" keychain her youngest son was gripping in his chubby, candy-grimed hand. I knew by the mere look on her face.

Kaneohe Marine Corps Base is a ghost town right now. I have no idea how many Marines are ordinarily there, but I can tell by the quiet worry rippling in the air that they are absent. The tree-lined roads are not crowded with pickup trucks. Rap music doesn't compete with heavy metal to fill the air near the enlisted barracks. There's not a throng of BDU-clad guys at McDonald's trying to wolf down burgers on their lunch break. If anything, a man in uniform stands out as an oddity now in this place where the men are all strangely absent.

I could tell that her man was gone, too. She appeared to be studying the label on the can in her hand, but the line of her pressed lips and the tear poised on her lower eyelashes told the truth. If there is such thing as a "thousand yard stare," then I believe there must also be a stare that transcends distance, that reaches across the continents and waters, to focus itself on the face of loved ones when they are worlds away from home.

She had that look. She was thinking of her man, wherever he is, and wondering when he'll be home. She knew, as we all do when we read the news these days that her husband had to go, that there is no avoiding the inevitable, that what he is doing is the right thing to do. And yet\x{2026}

And yet she is a mother of two children with a third one growing in her womb. It is always terrifying to give birth; how much more so without one's mate there to share the moment? Without knowing whether the new babe will ever see its father's face or hear his voice?

She is a wife. Once, she was so headily in love with a man that she committed to spending the remainder of her days alongside him. In the years since, she has built a life with him, a home where they raise their children, where they talk and make love, where they fight and make up and give real meaning to those words "for better or for worse." How can it feel like home when such a big part of it is gone?

She is a woman. When she goes to bed at night, weary of wiping faces and bottoms, there is no one there to spend those few precious hours of adulthood that follow the children's bedtimes. When she listens to the news about North Korea's nuclear escalation and Iraq's acknowledgement of possessing 10,000 vials of anthrax, there is no calm voice to tell her that everything will be ok. There are no arms to hold her. Where does she turn when she gets afraid?

I will never know the answer to these things. I will never walk in that woman's shoes. I am one of the fortunate: I am married to a man too old for deployment now, whose position makes him more useful and relevant here than if he were sent overseas. Yes, my husband occasionally travels to frightening places that are the stuff of headlines, but never for more than a few days, never where I can't pick up the phone and call him when life without him gets too much to take.

I tried to think up some words of comfort, a way to let her know that she wasn't alone, not really, and that everything would turn out all right. Just then, her boys began arguing about whose turn it was to pick out the breakfast cereal. Their voices escalated and the older one wrestled the younger onto his back.

She turned, and in that one brief instant her face transformed from the life-weary look I had witnessed into the cheerful countenance that all mothers possess: the "Mommy Face" that women put on to reassure children that all is right in the world, that Mom is still in charge. The face that protects boys like this, who may one day follow in their father's footsteps in service of their country, from knowing throughout their childhood what a dangerous, frightening world waits for them. The face that says there is nothing to be afraid of, nothing to worry about, that life will go on.

Those two boys will never know the maelstrom of emotions whirling through their mother right now. That is a gift that she has given them, and one that she will keep on giving each day that her husband is gone.

But I know. I know, and I am grateful that there are women like her: mothers and wives with such unshakeable devotion and strength. In their own quiet, patient way, they are heroes, too.

- Venomous Kate www.electricvenom.com
A huge thanks to Da Goddess for allowing me to make this offering.

Posted by DaGoddess at March 9, 2003 04:03 PM