What haunts a military spouse? A rooftop tale

With one hand shading my eyes and the other planted firmly on my hip, I peered up at our starter home and tsked. Was that a sapling growing on the roof? The three kids were at school and pre-school, so I had about two hours to solve this problem. 

We’d bought our first house, a two-story, vinyl-sided Dutch colonial on a treed cul-de-sac in Virginia Beach, after my Navy husband, Francis, received orders to Norfolk Naval Base. As a military spouse and stay-at-home-mom, I wasn’t earning income, so I not only cooked, cleaned, and child reared; I did yard work, house repairs, and home maintenance, too. 

Besides, Francis wasn’t a handyman. If fact, he referred to hardware stores as “haunted houses” and flinched at the sight of marauding bees and houseflies. So, I willingly replaced the sink faucet, hung ceiling fans, rewired the ice maker, installed sprinkler heads, pressure washed the deck, and built shelves. I was proud of my contributions to the household, but sometimes, I took my military spouse handywoman role too far. 

That sapling on the roof had to go. Retrieving the extension ladder from our shed, I placed its feet on the mulched flower bed under our living room window, and pushed the top section up, rung by rung, toward the roof line. 

There were warning labels recommending a minimum four-foot overlap of the sections for safety, but I wasn’t planning to be up there for long — how dangerous could it be?

With the ladder at maximum height, I stepped onto the first rung. Although the ladder wobbled in the middle, it stayed put well enough. 

“Hmph,” I huffed as any brave military spouse would do, “let’s get this done.” Holding a kitchen broom, I started slowly up the ladder. When I reached the second story window, I glanced down. Unsure if the queasiness was from the ladder’s wobble or the questionable cheese I’d eaten for lunch, I decided to keep my eyes focused upward.

When I reached the gutter, I gripped it with my left hand, then swung the broom up onto the roof with my right. Steadying myself, I took another step and bent my torso over the gutter. Another step, and I hooked a knee over, finally pushing the rest of my body onto the angled roof.

I commando-crawled toward the chimney where the sapling grew in a corner filled with pine needles. I tore the sapling from it’s happy spot, and threw it backwards with a satisfying whip. I swung the broom back and forth, knocking more debris from the asphalt shingles, sending it all flying over the roof’s edge.

Rolling over and sitting up, I looked out — at treetops, rooftops, our kids’ backyard play set, and the tips of the ladder barely peeking over the gutter — proud for being an independent, strong, and resourceful military spouse. 

Suddenly, the broom slipped, rattling down the shingles and launching into the air, landing with a thud in the backyard below.

“What on earth am I doing up here?!” it finally dawned on me. “I’m 30 feet off the ground! I could fall!”

Breathing rapidly, I rolled onto my stomach, then lowered myself inch by inch. At the roof’s edge, I was unable to gather the courage to drop a leg over to find the ladder rungs. 

Getting onto the roof had seemed relatively easy, but descending off of it went against every human instinct. My center of gravity might pull me down, causing a deadly fall. With no other way, I lowered a trembling leg over the edge, where it floundered before finding the wobbly ladder. 

In my semi-panicked state, it took forever to get my other limbs onto the ladder. Miraculously, I somehow made it safely to the ground. Unlike my other military spouse handywoman feats, I never bragged about this one at the dinner table or to my neighbors. It became my secret.

And yet, it haunts me to this day. Countless times, my mind has replayed what might have happened on that rooftop … until I shake off each terrifying vision. 

Over the years, I’ve realized how silly I was to go to dangerous extremes in order to prove my worth as a military spouse, when my love, support, and help was all my family needed.