Having grown up when kids roamed freely while parents smoked Salems, wore belted vests, ate pimento cheese and adjusted console televisions, my upbringing was undoubtedly different than my children’s. Without a 24/7 supply of internet information, my hopes, dreams and fears were based on my imagination, influenced by what others told me and what I…
Holidays
Recruiters face anti-military influencers
Back in 2011, my husband, Francis, reported to Naval Station Mayport, Florida to be the staff intelligence officer (N2) of the US Fourth Fleet. We were excited, because N2 positions at numbered fleets were traditionally “command equivalent” and highly competitive. However, the military was being drawn down between 2010 and 2016, and the rules were…
An accidental regular at the commissary
The day after my honeymoon 25 years ago, I moved into my Navy husband’s apartment in Alexandria, Virginia. He carted me around to get a military ID, submit Tricare forms, and obtain base pass stickers for my car, so I’d be an official, card-carrying military spouse. Then he went to work, leaving me home ……
Redux: The Lame Duck in the Chicken Coop
In my 23 years as a military spouse, we lived in base housing four times, for a total of eleven years. Although living among sterile government buildings enclosed by fences sometimes made me feel like an inmate in an asylum, the social culture in military housing more closely parallels the behavior of chickens in a…
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