did we loose that loving feeling?

You know when you read something and it sparks a thought in your head and then for the rest of the day you feel like everything going on around you is linked to that spark? Kind of like a spider map you use to make as a kid…that is exactly what happened to me today…

I finally started reading “The Homefront Club” by Jacey Eckart, can I just say this woman might be my long lost older twin sister…here is the first line of her about the author section, “As an Air Force brat, Jacey Eckhart grew up swearing she would never enter the military herself or marry anyone who did.” Ummm, hello, just recplace Air Force with Navy and I’ve said that same phrase since I was just a kid…fast forward to my mid twenties when I did in fact marry my sweet husband, who is, you guessed it, in the Navy.

I got to the end of page 5 and already it hit me, this ain’t the same Navy you grew up in girl. Ok, so I knew that long ago, but this just reinforced it “When the command stopped paying attention, we families stopped attending all those keep-’em-busy-and-out-of-our-hair activities. We stopped meeting and knowing and supporting each other. These days, families sink or families swim, and they do it alone.” How true that last sentence is, it stuck to my brain like bubble gum to a 4 year olds hair.

I admit, I have few close friends that are military spouses, I’d say one actually, and a handful that I speak to often but don’t share my innermost thoughts with. I do however have a good handful of “aunts” that have been military wives for 20 plus years, as well as my own mother. With that being said I think it is fair to say there are two different worlds when you are a Navy wife, the wife with kids, and the wife without. I know, I know, that seems like I might be generalizing too much, but it is the most clear separation I have seen. Looking at wives with kids and comparing it to how it was when I was a kid, things sure are different. Gone are the days where you create a family with the neighbors around you and the families of your husbands command. No longer is there a babysitting ring that takes place where you watch each others kids, or where your old kids watch the neighbor kids. Am I saying this is extinct, not at all, but do I see it at my current base location, Houston, that’s a no. I see a CDC that is constantly made available. That is a great, but it makes it easier to loose that bond and connection with other families and wives. The support system between wives seems to not be as strong as it was when I was growing up as a child and observing it all. I have spoken with friends and wives who say that OCONUS (overseas) it is a whole new ball game and the bond and connection is there, and is much stronger then when families are back CONUS (state side).

I obviously have no idea what the bond and connection is like with other wives who have kids, as we do not yet have any little ones running around, not even a bun in the oven…let’s see if we can change that….ok, ok, that is another post topic entirely. Back to the topic at hand, maybe once you have kids you develop a greater connection with other Navy wives. You are no longer just trying to figure out the military life as a wife, but instead now as a mommy too. You become part of that secret society that thinks differently, speaks differently and probably looks at life differently, because a watermelon came out of your who-who. My fear is that my relationships and connections with other wives will not change once we finally get that bun in the oven and then out on the table…what if things really are that different and everyone tries to do it all on their own. Doesn’t the old saying go “it takes a village to raise a child,” what if my village is more like a one-mama-show????