I feel like a traitor. Here I am a military wife — one, in fact, who writes a syndicated column and books about being a military wife — and lately I’ve flirted with the idea of not being a military family. I have said those words — you know, the unthinkable ones for people in my position: “Honey, are you ever going to get out?”
My husband has only nine more years of service before he can retire and immediately collect the military’s relatively decent pension for the rest of his life. Therefore, he usually “answers” my question by leaving it completely unacknowledged, as if I have just asked him if he will run for president tomorrow.
I understand his position. He has trained, worked and sacrificed (as have I) for 11 years. It seems crazy to throw it all away now, when his “20 years” is actually in sight. A military retirement means literally money in the bank and health care for the rest of your days.
So how can I possibly ask my husband the dreaded “are you ever going to get out” question?
To know, you’d have to understand my position, too.
During the past 11 years, I lived in eight different places. I planted countless trees and shrubbery that I never saw grow to maturity. I left behind pets (dead and alive). I made friends, left them, made more friends and moved again. I had so many different mailing addresses, my alma mater no longer knows where to send their re-quests for money. (Not such a bad thing, come to think of it.) I sold and purchased real estate seven times. Our old coffee table has a row of different-colored moving stickers stuck to the bottom of it.
Most upsetting of all, however, is the fact that I measured my sons’ heights on four separate closet doors, always painting over the markings when it was time to move again.
Just the other day, I looked at my son Owen, 6, and realized that the jeans I bought him in August already are hovering 2 inches above his ankles.
“Wow, you’ve really grown,” I said.
“How much?” Owen asked.
“Let’s measure you and find out.”
I took Owen and his brothers Ford, 8, and Lindell, 2, into the bedroom that Ford and Owen share.
“We’ll mark your heights here,” I said, opening the closet door.
“But how will we know if we’ve grown?” Ford asked. “Our last measurements are on the closet door in Florida.”
It was a good point. But I couldn’t think about it right then, or else I might start to cry.
I stood each boy against the back of the closet door and marked his height with pencil: “Ford, Jan. 2009; Owen, Jan. 2009; Lindell, Jan. 2009.” Owen’s and Ford’s heights were — and always have been — exactly 2 inches apart. But there was quite a bit of white closet door between Owen’s marking and Lindell’s.
“Someday, I bet Lindell will catch up to us,” Owen said.
But will it be on this closet door, I wondered.
The kids got back to playing “Star Wars” and I went up to my bedroom to think.
I’m tired of moving my children from one place to another. I’m tired of marking their heights and then painting over it. I’m weary of making new friends; now I just want to keep them and grow old with them. When my boys go to college, I want to find comfort in my friends who knew the boys when they were going to kindergarten and every grade in between.
I want roots. I want my boys to say, “This is the street I grew up on.”
I want one closet door to be covered with the markings of children’s heights.
Of course, I could always mark their heights on something more transportable than a closet door. Or I could take the closet door with us.
But, well, that isn’t really the point, now is it?
Maine author and columnist Sarah Smiley’s writing is syndicated weekly to publications across the country. She and her husband, Dustin, live with their three sons in Bangor. Sarah Smiley’s new book, “I’m Just Saying …,” is available wherever books are sold. She may be reached at sarah@sarahsmiley.com.