Army Wife

Recently my husband went back into the military, specifically the Army National Guard and he is currently going through his Officer Candidate School (OCS).  In June he was gone a week, home 4 days then gone for 2 weeks.  For his 2 weeks he was in Minnesota.  Part of their training is they are not allowed to have and contact home except for letters.  Of course, I waited every night hoping to get a phone call.  Now I know two weeks isn't a long time in the scheme of things, espcially when his Marine unit was deployed for 7 months to africa in 2003 and we would go for weeks without talking on the phone.

Two things occured to me during his 2 weeks away that I have reflected on at length.  First of all, in this day and age of technology with things like our email, cell phones laptops, facebook, etc we (as a society) are in constant contact with each other.  It is very stressful not knowing what is going on in the day-to-day, but ultimately it gave us something to talk about when he got home.  Many times I find myself alling home telling my husband about my day even before I get home.  I wonder at times, if all this technology for communication is really cutting out our true communication with each other.

The second thing that occured to me is this: my mother, both my grandmothers, part of my great grandmothers (and so on) were military wives.  Both my grandpas were in the Army during World War II.  My parternal grandpa spend time in the pacific theater.  The only communication they has was letter writing.  It never occured to me until my husband was gone, is that this is what the women in my family before me must have gone through, but at much longer time intervals when their husbands, brothers, fathers, and uncles were away at war.  Their hopes for even a few words in a letter must have been very great as mine was for a phone call, an email, a text message...something. 

I talk mainly about the Army here because that is the branch of service my family just happens to be in, but this could very easily be the Navy, Marines (which my husband was in before the National Guard), Air Force or Coast Guard.  I'm sure no matter the branch of service, the experience was the same.

Happy Hunting.