So, when my friends—who depended entirely on their husbands to fix a leaky sink, grill the steaks, aerate the lawn, or hook up the DVD player—told me how hard deployment would be, I didn’t believe them. I was already used to handling many of the traditional “husband duties” by myself. I was ready to fulfill my obligation as a navy wife and wholeheartedly believed I’d make the best of it.
To prepare for Francis’s prolonged absence, we bought a few things to help keep us connected while he was away: a new computer for us at home, a laptop for him, and new cell phones. I entered the world of social media, hoping all these avenues of communication would simplify our complicated situation.
Francis left for his deployment unceremoniously on an airplane. Frankly, as a sailor’s wife, I felt a little ripped off. I wanted to doll the kids up in red, white, and blue, and wave tearfully from the pier as a grey ship shoved off with the band on deck playing “Anchors Aweigh.”
No such luck. After hugs and kisses next to a bagel kiosk at the airport, we watched as he disappeared into the security screening line, carrying his backpack and a clear plastic baggie of shampoo and toothpaste.
At first, it was fun debunking what I believed to be the myth of the beleaguered military spouse. I enjoyed not having to put a decent meal on the table for Francis. Why cook a roast when the kids prefer boxed macaroni and cheese anyway? And I was perfectly happy eating the remnants scraped out of the pot with a wooden spoon while standing over the sink. Later, after I put the kids to bed, I quite liked not having to share the TV remote, surfing to my heart’s content between morally bankrupt reality shows and second-rate suspense films.
I spoke to Francis once a week through a bad Skype connection, but we sent sweet, humorous, or heartfelt emails almost every day. And in an absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder kind of way, romance flourished, because we used our brief contact time to communicate that we didn’t take each other for granted.
As for the kids, there were a few uncomfortable moments when having their father around would have helped immensely, like the time I had to answer my pubescent son’s questions about some startling new hair growth. But for the most part, the kids were happily occupied with citizenship awards, sidewalk chalk masterpieces, blanket forts, flag football championships, merit badges, lemonade stands, and bowling parties during their father’s yearlong absence.
And at bedtime, in the quiet darkness, when the kids had some time to consider being sad and missing Francis, they could fall asleep to the sound of his voice. He couldn’t be there to read with Hayden, Anna, or Lilly, so he sent them each a little handheld tape recorder, headphones, books, and tiny cassette tapes he’d recorded of himself reading Black Beauty, Amelia Bedelia, Because of Winn-Dixie, Charlotte’s Web, Ramona the Pest, The Westing Game, and volumes of A Series of Unfortunate Events.
This isn’t so bad, I thought a few months into the deployment. I’d had bouts of loneliness, but nothing that couldn’t be cured with a good cry, which usually happened Friday nights around ten while watching a gut-wrenching episode of Intervention and eating microwave kettle corn paired with a cheap bottle of pinot noir. I’d get it all out of my system and wake up refreshed, ready to face another week on my own.
But eventually, one by one, things began to go haywire.
The hot water heater broke. I got a double ear infection and a cold sore at the same time. Hayden was bullied at school. The computer died. I said something stupid at book club. The dog dug a trench through the back yard.
Mishaps and mistakes began to pile up like the chocolates in the candy-factory episode of I Love Lucy. By the eighth month of our separation, I was struggling to keep up with my everyday responsibilities. The computer, phone, and social media connecting me to Francis also connected me with a world of other messages threatening to overwhelm me. I hadn’t anticipated the subtle pressures brought on by our new gadgets, nipping at me like a swarm of mosquitoes, buzzing and biting relentlessly. Rather than simplifying my life, this connectivity introduced more details to my consciousness, while social media added a new layer of competitiveness and false reality.
Before Francis’s deployment, I scurried busily through my days without the distraction of kitten videos, scientific breakthroughs, political banter, pop-up ads, crowdfunding campaigns, or pictures of everyone’s latest meal. I had been content to read the newspaper or wait until the six o’clock news broadcast for a summary of current events. I didn’t mind that the only way to find out what a friend was up to was to actually pick up the phone and call. If I wanted to know the latest trends, I could thumb through a magazine or look at the mannequins at department stores.
Suddenly, I felt the pressure to master, monitor, and manage new concepts such as teeth whitening, digital photography, hydrogenated fats, iPods, Facebook, and text messaging while handling my already-hectic schedule. I found myself drowning in a sea of meaningless minutiae—hypoallergenic pets, microbe-resistant yoga mats, antivirus software, corn syrup solids, colon cleansing, game-system updates—without a lifeline.
The increasing challenge of the deployment had knocked me off balance. The tidal wave of details and daily demands threatened to sweep me away. I lost my grip on what really mattered and was headed for a total breakdown. My Supermom days were over.
In the wee hours before dawn, I huddled in bed under the rumpled covers, squeezing the muscles of my closed eyelids in hopes of delaying the morning grind.
Something in me had snapped. I could no longer face the daily onslaught of snooze buttons, toothpaste splatters, sassy kids, and car pools. I cringed at the thought of folding laundry, scraping burnt edges off the toast, or rubbing mascara smudges from under my eyes. I couldn’t deal with Anna’s latest wardrobe crisis, another missing phone charger, or figuring out where I left my cup of coffee this time.
Many mornings, I just wanted to wallow in that nonsensical dream state just before full consciousness, where I might ride in a convertible Camaro with the Muppets or have a fancy-hat picnic with Marie Osmond.
For the first time since becoming a mother I felt helpless, and I couldn’t stop myself from stressing about the endless details of modern family life. Something deep inside me knew I was, quite simply, overwhelmed and might not make it through the deployment without completely falling apart.
Unlike the kids, I didn’t have a tape recording to get me through the night. I knew I had to do something to keep it all together.
And so, it began.
I started carrying a yellow legal pad around, making notes during piano lessons or scout meetings, wondering if jotting things down might relieve my stress just like Hayden’s spiral-bound notebook had. Ever the list-maker, I wrote to-do lists, grocery lists, wish lists, and self-improvement lists. I sketched out plans for redecorating rooms and reorganizing the garage. I scribbled puns, alliterations, and interesting turns of phrase. Eventually, I began writing observations, complete sentences, and even paragraphs.
One winter night while the kids were taking swimming lessons at the overheated indoor YMCA pool, I sat on a damp bench, inhaling chlorinated steam, sweating profusely, and scribbling on my yellow legal pad.
Six lessons later, I’d lost five pounds of water weight and managed to write three personal essays about parenting, marriage, and life in the military.
I hadn’t written the essays for any particular audience but writing became my way of sorting through the overwhelming details of daily life, distilling them down to what really mattered—and more importantly—what really didn’t.
Writing became my lifeline.
Before I knew it Francis was home again, and we began frantically packing up to move to our next assignment in Europe. In our new apartment on Patch Barracks at US Army Garrison Stuttgart, Germany, I came up with the idea to submit my essays to newspapers for publication.
Around that same time, a humor essay I’d written about marriage titled “Tired, Boring, Predictable? True Marital Romance Is a Gas,” appeared in the Metro section o
f The Washington Post.
In the following months, I filled my yellow legal pads, started a blog, and created a weekly column I called “The Meat & Potatoes of Life.” I self-syndicated the column to civilian and military newspapers across the United States and eventually landed a contract with Stars and Stripes, the newspaper for the US Armed Forces worldwide.
Writing became my hobby, my job, my weekly therapy. It helped me realize I was human, not Supermom, and despite the chaos of the twenty-first century, there was indeed still meaning in everyday life.
Sure, I still wake up worrying: I forgot the answers to my online security questions. I’ve lost track of whether faded or dark-washed denim is in style. I still don’t like kale. I should’ve planted the daffodil bulbs earlier to adjust for global warming.
But now, I know what to do. With my pen and yellow legal pad, I whittle life down to what counts, and I have a good laugh at all the rest.
SEASON ONE
IN THE BEGINNING
SEASON 1 EPISODE 1
WHEN STRANGERS MARRY
Twenty-five years ago, I promised to love, honor, and cherish a man I really didn’t know all that well.
Before we committed ourselves to each other until death, Francis and I were pretty much clueless. We had no idea what kind of husband or wife we might turn out to be. We were in love, and we thought nothing else mattered.
Francis grew up going to private school as the son of a neurologist in the affluent DC suburb of Chevy Chase, Maryland. At weekend cocktail parties and crew regattas, his parents chatted with their friends over canapés about politics, world events, and their children’s prep schools. They drank bottled water before it was trendy and bought their food from overpriced grocery stores. They kept things like capers and pâté in their refrigerators, and they drove imported cars.
I was brought up in a town with only one high school, where we thought everyone in the world had two days off for hunting season. To the people of my western Pennsylvania town, Chevy Chase was a comedian, and it was perfectly normal to get your water from a well and your meat from the woods. Our refrigerators frequently contained bricks of Velveeta, cans of Hershey’s Syrup, and in the spring, fish with the heads still on. My parents’ vehicles were pre-owned and, other than one Volkswagen Beetle, none were imported.
Francis grew up believing all women could throw sophisticated dinner parties at the drop of a hat, while being charming and looking fabulous in the latest styles from Lord & Taylor or Talbots. He did not realize he had made a lifetime commitment to someone who shops at Target and whose idea of a party is opening a bag of Fritos and watching a Steelers game. My poor husband has had to redefine “woman” to include those who, like me, would prefer a hot poker in the eye to the obligatory social events of a navy officer’s wife.
Similarly, I have had to adjust my definition of “man” to include those who don’t own fluorescent orange hunting gear, who prefer white wine to beer, and who don’t require space in the garage for a work bench. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that although Francis is in the navy, he is afraid of tools, guns, and knives. He shudders at the mere thought of hooking a worm, much less eating a fish with the head still on it.
I’ll admit I’ve felt somewhat guilty for not fulfilling Francis’s expectations of what his wife might be. I’ve often wished I were more sophisticated, formal, and fancy.
He’s had his doubts about fulfilling my expectations too, like the time I put the barbecue grill together because he couldn’t understand the instructions, or the beach vacation when I snorkeled for hours alone while he sipped mojitos and read an Oprah’s Book Club selection under an umbrella.
We first met on the deck of my family’s summer beach cottage in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I had just come up from the beach to help out with dinner, and my mother asked if I could shuck corn before I showered. I sat cross-legged beside a pile of corn, wearing an old swimsuit, with my wet hair beginning to dry in an unflattering shape and sand ground into my ear. Just as I was shucking the third ear of corn, my brother Tray, a navy pilot, walked up onto the deck with Francis, one of his old squadron buddies.
“Lisa, this is Francis,” Tray said, prompting me to squint up at him, silhouetted against the late afternoon sun. “He was our intel guy in VAQ-139 a couple years ago out in Whidbey Island.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said, with one eye open and a lapful of corn husks.
On the third night of his visit, Francis made me laugh at dinner. A spark was struck. We danced to Guns N’ Roses’ “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” which was strangely romantic, then walked to the beach to look at the stars. He was leaving the next day, but we knew we would see each other again.
When we first met, we knew for certain neither of us was perfect, but we offered each other something we were missing in our lives. Unconditional love and approval are powerful enough to transcend unknown personality quirks, but I have often wondered, If we had known back then what we know now, would we have eternally promised ourselves to each other before the altar of Graystone Presbyterian Church all those years ago?
Through the years, I’ve discovered Francis is disciplined, dedicated, and hard working. Better yet, he is fiercely loyal, and his love for our family is deep and sincere. And he still makes me laugh.
So, other than those occasions when Francis leaves his dishes in the sink or his underwear on the floor, and I contemplate running away to Mexico to sell coconuts on the beach for the rest of my life, I have no doubt the answer to the question is an undeniable:
Yes.
SEASON 1 EPISODE 2
BAGGING THE BAGGER
The day after Francis and I returned from our Bermuda honeymoon in October 1993, we moved my belongings from my parents’ house in Pennsylvania to his apartment in Alexandria, Virginia, near his naval intelligence job. The morning after our move, Francis carted me around the base to get a military ID, submit health insurance forms, and obtain a pass for my car, so I could be an official, card-carrying military spouse.
Then he went to work, leaving me alone to explore our apartment.
The kitchen cupboards contained a huge plastic barrel of pretzels, a half loaf of white bread, and an expired box of Shake ‘n Bake left there by his old girlfriend. In the fridge, I found a stack of bologna, a gallon of milk, a bag of onions, and a jumbo bottle of ketchup.
I’d better go shopping, I thought. I was now a navy wife, so instead of heading to the local grocery store, I hopped in the car with my new ID and braved the tangle of highways to go back to the base for my first military commissary shopping expedition.
When I got there, I was surprised to discover the commissary didn’t look like a normal supermarket with colorful signs and eye-catching displays. The cavernous building’s austere interior was more like a drab warehouse—just row after row of groceries. No colorful advertising displays, no soothing background music, no free samples. The floors were painted with confusing directional arrows, pointing toward the front or back of the store. I looked for other new military spouses. Perhaps we might help each other? But there were none to be found. The employees were all business, and all the shoppers seemed to know exactly what they were doing.
I wandered aimlessly, following the big black arrows. Although my new military ID card gained me entrance into this bastion of military life, I didn’t seem to belong there. I felt like a fraud, like a nineteen-year-old who just got into a nightclub with a fake ID.
I completely forgot what I needed to buy. I haphazardly threw some grapefruit, oyster crackers, a pound of ground beef, a gallon of cooking oil, and a box of raisins into my cart. I despise raisins and had never purchased oyster crackers before. Overwhelmed and unable to focus, I headed for the checkout.
The cashier looked as if she’d worked there for centuries. Her movements were automatic, and her eyes seemed fixed on some distant point. I placed my meager merchandise on the rapidly-moving conveyor belt, and the items zipped away from me. The unsmilin
g cashier finished scanning in a flash. Fumbling to get money out of my purse, I quipped, “Whew! You’re too quick for me!” The cashier stared blankly.
A tall, thin man with a graying beard placed my paltry purchases into three plastic bags.
“Ma’am, I’ll carry these to your car,” he said.
“Oh no!” I said, trying to be polite, “I’ll carry them myself.” As I grabbed the bags and started toward the door, the smile drained from the bagger’s face.
“That’s your prerogative,” he said, crossing his arms and turning away.
Unsure what I’d done to irritate him, I scurried back to my car like a cockroach running under the pantry door.
Francis returned from work that evening, eager to experience his first home-cooked meal as a married man and to find out how his new wife had managed on her first day as an official military spouse.
He may have been puzzled by a dinner of meatloaf with a side dish of grapefruit, but all he said was, “So how was your day, Honey?” I related my commissary experience, and he immediately realized my mistake. He took a few minutes over dinner to explain that in military commissaries, the people who bag the groceries are not paid employees of the commissary. They work for tips. From customers. No tip means no pay.
No wonder the guy was irritated.
I had a lot to learn about being a navy wife. Rather than become overwhelmed overnight with paperwork, acronyms, customs, procedures, and unspoken rules of my new lifestyle, I decided I had plenty of time—an entire marriage, in fact—to become a seasoned military spouse. If I had to, I would bumble my way through, day by day, base by base, mistake by mistake, until I figured it out.
The Meat and Potatoes of Life Page 2
