The Long Way Home

by Scott, Jessica

  Love: The Ultimate Forgiveness

  January 10, 2010

  IN THE ROMANCE GENRE, we have a significant challenge with loving a whore. The whore can be the slutty best friend, the whore can be reformed.

  In part, this is because of our society’s struggle with female sexuality. Too many “real” authors have dismissed romance as simply “porn for women.” In some cases, they’re right. The books they refer to have little to no plot and are simply a loose series of events surrounding various positions and bodily orifices.

  But when you get a romance novel that is truly incredible, the argument that it’s porn for women falls completely flat. The fact is that even though romance novels often have sex scenes in them, the door can be either open or closed, but the best sex scenes involve the character’s emotions, solidifying the thought that the way to a woman’s heart is through her brain.

  But, we still have the problem of sexuality to deal with. A romance heroine cannot be a slut. Too often a woman’s sordid past is explained away as a misunderstanding or a vicious rumor. Infidelity is also usually a misunderstanding that can be resolved with “the talk” that clears everything up.

  Books that stick with me, however, challenge these stereotypes. In Sherry Thomas’s Private Arrangements, the hero and the heroine had been unfaithful but manage to reconcile despite it. There was no easy way to explain away what happened. They had to work for it. And in Victoria Dahl’s Lead Me On, Jane really had been a teenage tramp.

  Jane is the inspiration for this post. She was not transformed from her trashy ways by a man. Actually she was, but that man was her stepfather, not her hero. Jane did not need to get forgiveness for her sins as a teenager from anyone else. She had to be able to look in the mirror and accept that who she was today came from what she’d grown up as. She’d walked a hard road and had survived because of who she was, not by explaining her past away. And the man who loved her did so even knowing about her past.

  Looking at either of these books, I would have been disappointed had there been an easy explanation for the sins of the past. I liked the fact that these characters were genuinely flawed. I liked the fact that these heroines had to accept that someone else could love them for who they were.

  I think a lot of romance readers read for escape. We want the fantasy of having our own sins erased or the daily trouble in our lives overshadowed with the certainty of a happy ending. I think Jane’s happy ending was incredibly satisfying for me because she finally got over her sins on her own, with Mr Right waiting there for her to simply accept herself.

  And that is what we should all strive for. Being able to look in the mirror and love ourselves for who we are and what we’ve done. Easy explanations for what we have done cheapen the value of us as individuals.

  Writers who can capture the value of their hero’s and heroine’s flaws and enable the reader to relate to them create characters that are truly memorable but also teach us something.

  Something powerful.

  Becoming Mom Again

  January 6, 2013

  THREE WEEKS AGO, I became a mom again. I walked into my mother’s foyer, greeted with cries of “Mommy, Mommy,” and hugged my daughters close for the first time in over six months.

  In that moment, I was mom again. I know that sounds off. Just because I deployed didn’t mean I wasn’t a mom, I was just gone. In my heart and soul, I still worried about my kids, I still missed them. But I didn’t have the day-to-day things that make me mom in my kids’ world.

  When my husband deployed before this tour, both times he came home to little strangers. Our oldest was three months old the first time he came home. She didn’t know him but she adjusted easily. Our youngest, though, was a year old before he came home the second time and their relationship has never been quite the same as his relationship with our oldest.

  But my husband has never had to sit back and watch his child crawl toward another woman, saying “Mama, mama.” They might not have known him but they’d never replaced him in their hearts.

  I have. When I left for Officer Candidate School, my youngest was just shy of seven months old. I was in Fort Benning, GA, my kids were in Maine, and my husband was in Iraq. It was my first taste of what life in the Army as a mom was truly like. I thought my first taste of leaving my children prepared me for deployment but I had no idea how hard it was going to be to come home again. I knew my mom was taking great care of my kids. I was not prepared for my baby to crawl after her, calling her mama. In that moment, I had a taste of the true heartbreak that military moms go through.

  I’ve always been an emotional parent. But this week when I took my oldest daughter to her first day at school, she clung to me, sobbing that she didn’t want me to leave her. It was only school, but in her world, it might as well have been another year. She cried. I cried. And I looked at her teacher, a woman who just met me the day before, and admitted through my tears that I did not know what to do.

  It’s a hard confession to make. What kind of parent doesn’t know what to do when their child is upset and crying? Me. The mom who just got back from Iraq doesn’t know how to deal with her child’s separation anxiety.

  The mom who just got back from Iraq was prepared to hear “I don’t love you” or “I want Grammy” when her kids got mad at her. The mom who just got back was not prepared to hear “I don’t think you love me” at a rest stop in New Jersey.

  What kind of mom doesn’t know what her kid’s favorite food is or what to do when they’re acting out? The guilt I feel for leaving my kids is coloring my decisions on how to interact with them and I know there will be consequences down the road.

  When most dads come home, mom has been there holding things down. There’s a transition period but life has only been missing a single piece, instead of being uprooted entirely. In my kids’ case, we not only left them with my mom, we took away their home and their pets, their daycare and all the reminders of what their daily life was with us. Coming home this time around is not as simple as picking Daddy up on the First Cavalry Division’s parade field. Coming home this time involves figuring out what it means to be a parent again. A mom who has uprooted her children’s lives once more and left them with an aching insecurity that Mommy and Daddy are going to leave again.

  I’m not saying that dads who deploy don’t have transitions to make when they come home. But when both Mommy and Daddy are gone, the impact is different. It’s harder on me emotionally in some ways because I’ve been the stability in our children’s lives for the last two deployments. I always knew what to do with them.

  But now, I’ve stood in the hallway of an elementary school, surrounded by seventy five year olds and cried, because I didn’t know what to do.

  For thousands of moms who are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, they will feel the pain of their infant children calling someone else Mommy because they were babies when their mom’s left. They will feel the helplessness of not knowing how to handle a tantrum and the awkwardness of not knowing what their child likes to eat. And, if they choose to remain in the Army, they will feel the fear of the next deployment, knowing that as soon as they figure out what normal is, their families will be uprooted once more.

  I know what it feels like now to become a mom again. And I know the fear of deploying again. Of taking my children from their home and uprooting their lives once more. It’s the life I lead, the life I chose. The life of a mom who is also a soldier.

  My choice, however, does not make today’s pain any easier to bear.

  Trying Something New: Asking for Help

  January 14, 2013

  IT’S BEEN STRESSFUL THESE last few days. The oldest didn’t want to go to school because she was being referred to as “the new girl.” Then, to top it off, she hasn’t eaten dinner in like five days now. She has to at least try everything, which she’s doing, but a single bite of lasagna that she spits out isn’t really going to hold her until morning. But I refuse to be a short-order cook and I refuse
to make peanut butter and jelly for dinner. So we’re working through that, but as a result of her not eating, the littlest daughter is skipping dinner.

  The end result of skipping dinner? Bed time is an absolute nightmare and mornings are even more fun. They’re hungry, they’re tired, and they’re not even close to enjoyable. So at the end of my mind, I called my friend Tamara, who also just got back from a deployment. I needed help. I needed to confess what was going on and ask how the heck is she doing it.

  You know what she told me? She said you need to wake up every morning, and pray and be grateful. You have today to love those little girls and be with them. You need to ask for help with being patient and just be grateful that you have today with them. She really got me with that one. Tamara knows me. We went through Officer Candidate School together and each of us dealt with missing our kids and we’ve helped each other through our respective deployments. Our daughters were so happy to see each other at school.

  That’s the kind of friend you need at a time like this. At a time when you’re ready to pull your hair out, instead you sit on the bathroom floor and talk through it. You can talk about what’s really bothering you and your friend will tell you to pull yourself up and get over it. If you don’t like it, change it.

  So I did. The next morning, I rolled out of bed and made a change. No more yelling. Getting down on their levels. Smiling and hugging instead of worrying about being late. Enjoying the fact that I’m home, that I have my daughters back and, surprise, they still love me and my husband.

  And it worked. Last night, no major outbursts. No yelling. This morning, there were tears, but for the most part, we got through it with hugs and smiles.

  You wouldn’t think that coming home would be that stressful. You’d think it would be a panacea of happiness. It is. But it also isn’t. There’s no one here to run interference for my husband and I, except each other. The best part about our year in Iraq was the fact that we grew closer as a couple and are able to talk through stuff that before, we’d argued about.

  So the challenges continue with our coming home and I’m sure they’ll keep on. But at the end of it all, I spent a year longing for this. I will appreciate today, because I might not have tomorrow.

  Thank you, Tamara, for being the friend to tell me straight and let me lean on you.

  A Night in the Life of a Soldier, Mom, and Wife

  January 20, 2010

  I CAN’T SAY THIS week has been easy. It hasn’t. Monday night, I was in tears.

  I lay awake, bawling because of the strain of my husband moving to Fort Bragg without us and a myriad of other worries and stresses that decided Monday night was the night to let it all out.

  The night kicked off with my oldest coming back from a sleepover. She was overtired and hungry, because you know that child won’t eat. She wailed and cried for three hours straight. We finally got her to sleep and then the little one wouldn’t settle down. For children used to going to bed at 7:30, 10pm is insanely late.

  But the crying, overtired kids was only the start. It really hit me that my husband is moving to Bragg. No biggie, right? Yeah, except that he’s at Bragg and the girls and I won’t get there until January of 2011 because I’m going to my advanced course. We’ll make it work, we always do, but pressing on my chest that night was the dread that my daughters could be without their daddy for three years. Because what if we get to Bragg and then he deploys. Really? This is the choice we have to make?

  I’m not blaming the Army here. I accept that the needs of the Army trump the needs of a family any day of the week (notice I said accept; doesn’t mean I like it). But when the people on high look down at the micro level, at the individual soldier and say, well, sometimes you’ve got to take one for the team, I feel like saying...well, it’s not fit for the public but use your imagination.

  The reality of it is that my husband has not officially moved from Fort Hood since 2003. Never mind that he’s done three combat tours in Iraq in that time period, plus his advanced schooling so he’s been physically at Fort Hood less than twenty-four months out of that entire time period. I, on the other hand, have moved because of my officer training.

  The Army says, “you have dwell time.” which is the Army's way of saying it's time for you to move somewhere else. Well, what good does dwell time do when you move someone ninety days after they return from Iraq and you don’t consider that he is part of a family with children. Three schools in the first year of kindergarten? So no, I have to stay in Hood until summer time.

  I’m not telling you this to demand you write to the powers that be or anything like that. This is our situation and we’ll deal with it, just like we always have. I’m sharing this because sometimes, the magnitude of the impact on my kids gets to me. I keep telling myself that they’ll be all right. They’re with me, we’ll get by. But they love their Daddy. And you know what? I love their Daddy and damn it, I don’t want to spend two years without him.

  So it hurts to be faced with these choices. It hurts a lot but these are the consequences of our continuing to serve. And sometimes, the consequences and the weight of it all keeps me up at night, letting it all out, so I have space to put it back inside and get through the next day.

  So that’s it. A night in the life of a worried soldier, mom, and wife who’s no longer in combat, but sometimes, just as worried.

  Social Networking Part 2: Twitter

  January 21, 2010

  PEOPLE THINK OF TWITTER as that little bird icon on people’s websites or a small blue T, but if you don’t use it, you might be confused as to what it is. For an author, it can be a crucial tool or make you look like one.

  Think of Twitter as a stream. If you have an account, you’re at least standing on the side of it. If you pop in periodically to announce that you’ve done this or that, you are, at best, standing on the shore, throwing rocks into it. This is not a way for you to gain followers or to fully exploit that which Twitter is.

  To maximize your social networking time, you need to fully dive into the Twitter stream and that means entering the conversation. How do you find people to follow? I went to people I knew of, such as @smartbitches and @deirdreknight to see who they were following. I looked for people who were industry folks, not friends of theirs, though in some cases they were probably the same, and I followed them. Then I repeated the same for other folks, expanding the network of people who I follow. It’s a wide web but when someone, say, @laurakinsale followed me, I about fell out of my chair. It’s a small thing, but it’s pretty cool from a fangirl perspective.

  Twitter etiquette is that if someone follows you, you should follow them back. I don’t auto-follow. There are also bots out there that auto-follow everyone then you somehow end up tweeting blow job links to little kids in Brazil, which is Not. Cool. Or legal, but that’s another discussion. So you have to watch your followers and block the spammers (though for the life of me, I can’t figure out why people Twitter spam).

  Once you have a list of folks you follow, pay attention. Read it. Yes, this is a time suck, which is why I do not have a Twitter client installed on my laptop. I only use Twitter on my iPhone because when I sit down to work, it’s time to work, and keeping it on my iPhone is one way of keeping my usage under control. Though I’m approaching four thousand tweets so whether it’s in control or not is up for discussion.

  But Twitter isn’t always about me and if you’re on it, you know the authors who only show up to promote their book. This is not a good way to maximize your time because you’re only having one part of the conversation. The part about you. After a while, people will stop listening. Some authors have huge fan bases and people will follow regardless. But to truly have impact, you have to converse and that means retweeting. The retweet means that you take someone else’s tweet about them or something other than you and pass it along. I routinely look for my favorite authors’ stuff and pass them along. If I see someone say something great about a book I enjoyed, I pass it along. Same goes
with good news. Make Twitter about the stream and the people around you and people will notice and follow you.

  That’s not to say that I don’t have my Wordpress blog set up to automatically tweet when I have a new post. You still have to tell people your good news and hope they’ll pass it along. It goes a long way if you’ve done the same for others in the past. I try to maximize the social networking time I do have and so I have almost everything tied in together, so my blog and Twitter both feed to Facebook. Which is another drawback to Twitter. If you feed into your Facebook, you still need to take care of that page, too. But that will be Part 3.

  Being social means talking about something other than yourself. Follow people and they will follow you back. Or maybe not. I don’t unfollow people who don’t follow me because then I miss out on what they’re saying and then I’d be missing part of the conversation.

  And the conversation works because once more, I look for common tweeters. Fellow Twitter users have entered onto my keeper bookshelf because I discovered their stuff through Twitter and I might not have learned about them otherwise.

  But it’s about the conversation. About getting in and making it about something other than yourself. And if you’re not on Twitter in the conversation, you may be missing the point.

  PBS POV Blog

  January 26, 2010

  AS YOU MIGHT HAVE seen on Twitter, I received an invite to be part of PBS’s POV blog and their discussion on women in the military. I’m thrilled to be a part of this, which is sure to help shape the debate about women in combat and women in the military en masse. I hope to help educate the public about what its really like being a woman in the military.

  This is a huge responsibility and one that I take very seriously. While I have my opinions, I also know that my opinions are looked at by the public at large. I hope everyone remembers that everything I’ve posted has been my own words and thoughts and in no way represents Army policy.