The Counts Down

Summertime has slipped into Iowa early this year--one need only to look at the sultry morning mists over the duck pond to see evidence of it, or to feel the sweaty breath of humidity in the Midwestern wind.

Thank God for the wind. Without it, one could easily suffocate in the middle of an open field.

The Tactical Operation Center's air-conditioner, the one we had to break in order to save earlier this spring, now does little to fend off the sun oozing into our little brick medical shanty. The building was probably built before World War I, and was no doubt site of some influenza pandemic. As such, it was originally designed to invite in fresh air and breezes, but there's no more of that now. Now, the TOC seems more like a powder keg. Moods are more shortly fuzed.

"So am I deployed already or WHAT?!" The staff sergeant is pretty steamed. He's just added up the nights he has left at home. Here's how the math works: Number of days before Mobilization-Day ("M-day"), minus three weeks of Annual Training (A.T.--in a normal year, we'd only do two), minus "advance-party" scouting trips to various places and bases. If you're lucky, what you're left with is how many more nights you get to sleep in your own bed, with your own wife, to be awakened by your own dog.

More and more, maybe without even realizing it, the guys and I have been counting down the days.

I've caught myself counting in other ways, too: How many more times am I going to tuck my kids into bed? How many more stuffed-animal stories will I tell them? How many more times will I steal warmth by snuggling alongside my wife? How many more times will I mow the lawn, fix the sink, attempt to clean the garage? How many more times am I going to enjoy air-conditioning, or porcelain toilets, or privacy?

Household-6 said months ago: "You're pretty much deployed already." At the time, we'd been re-negotiating the daily routine: Who drops the kids at daycare, who picks them up, who shuttles and shuffles off to dance class--that sort of thing. I'd denied it at the time, but she was right.

In this stifling purgatory of neither citizen-nor-soldier, I have to regularly remind myself that I'm one of the lucky ones. When I came onto "temporary stateside pre-mobilization active-duty" orders--when I started wearing the uniform everyday, rather than once a month--my daily commute shifted all of three miles. I still live at home.

Compare that to my warrior-monk TOC buddies, who schlep in every Monday from the four corners of Iowa--Souix Falls and Council Bluffs, Dubuque and Burlington--returning to their families only on the weekends they're not otherwise on duty. During the week, they camp out in the barracks, or temporary bachelor-apartment digs off-post. They're already burning the midnight oil in the TOC, because there's little else for them to do. Sleep, wake, eat, work, go to gym, work some more, repeat ...

I can't remember how I came upon it, but I recently read a 2007 SpouseBUZZ post that really stuck with me. It discussed how it's not a good idea to compare who's going to have it worse--the soldier who's deployed downrange, or the spouse who's left managing everything else. In my recent conversations with Household-6, I've borrowed both the sentiment and a few words from comments made to that post, including: "Deployment sucks. Necessary, yes, but it sucks on both sides."

In other words, better not to dwell on who's got it worse. Instead, focus on sharing the load.

Or, with apologies to Earnest Hemingway and John Donne (but probably mostly to Donne, because I think Hemingway might've actually appreciated what I'm about to say):

"Do not ask for whom deployment sucks. It sucks for thee."