“eyes on the prize, violet.” wait. is that too cliché?

What, me? I’m the power-hungry one? No way. Okay, it’s maybe true.

THIS SATURDAY MORNING, I’m nursing a hangover and trying to keep my mind away from conjuring images of the helicopter crash.

Jack is due home in two menstrual periods. It’s sorta sick, but that’s how I measure time between deployments. He is due home in late June 2006, two periods from now. For him, this deployment is curtailed to only five months, because in June, we begin preparations for his new gig as the “command team” of his own battalion at 10th Mountain.

Planning for a goal so far in the distance is incomprehensible to me, but I admire his gumption. Everything he’s done in the years between then and now—the six deployments, the missed dinners and birthday parties, his absence from our three babies’ nightly baths and diaper rashes, my countless angry phone calls to his office because I watched the other men on our street pull into their driveways after work while he worked through the night and instead napped on a cot stored behind his desk in his office, his indifferent but indulgent hugs of reassurance when I cried tears of frustration, my ultimatums and empty threats that I was fed up, fed up to here, the years he missed out on being a present father, the years that our family took the backseat to his ambition—all of it was with that one goal in mind. Battalion command. “Eyes on the prize, Violet.” I can almost picture that ambition-crazed mother from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And here it is, a decade and a half later: our prize. His prize for making the army his first and only priority.

Jack’s command will call on me to sling an awful lot of Kool-Aid, but deep down I am delighted with the three years ahead of us. It’s my prize as much as it is his. I like to think of myself as a traditionalist, with a twist. I’m a closet liberal, and sometimes I wonder if I should have wound up living in artsy-fartsy Seattle. Maybe I should have been a Foo Fighters groupie. Doing yoga and talking about my chakras. Engaging in pretentious and ignorant but deeply concerned debates about the plight of Third World refugees. Maybe writing the fashion dos and don’ts for the back page of a women’s magazine, snapping stealthy pictures of fashion horrors and blacking out the eyes of the perpetrators before print. Eating authentic Asian-fusion dinners instead of lukewarm Swedish meatballs at my third mundane reception this week, which bore no difference from the previous two receptions, and the same reheated Swedish meatballs. And at these receptions, I make mental notes of the fashion violations, the room overflowing with fanny packs because nobody loves a frigging fanny pack like an army wife.

Most senior army wives are dorky. Old and nerdy before their time. Small-town, athletic nerds. Their sense of fashion goes down the toilet with their husband’s personality. Navy or khaki pants and a cream, not white, mock turtleneck sweater. A sensible bob topped with a sun visor. The same lipstick shade they picked out at the PX Clinique counter in 1995. It works, so why change it? I’d like to think I’m one of the anomalies in my group; some of us do try to stay current. On the days when I work my ass off selling Frito pies at a fund-raiser for the troops, nothing makes me happier than an out-of-the-blue compliment from a young wife or soldier: “Ma’am, you’re kinda hip. I hope it’s okay that I say that to you. You aren’t like the other older wives”—I was barely thirty-six years old—“I hope I can stay relevant and un-nerdy someday.” The use of the word relevant refers to my fashion sense, but I allow myself to take it at a deeper meaning. That I matter. Although I wrestle with angst about the perception of irrelevance as “just a wife,” the little compliment reminds me that I do stand my place in the line of army wives in history. We are relevant. Even if my interpretation isn’t the original context of the compliment, I let myself believe it is the intent. I like that better. We wives read deeply into the littlest, most innocuous compliments and criticisms. They are all we have to go on. Everything else about us is a reflection of our husbands. So little of “us” left to make us unique.

But aside from the nerdiness and forced pretention of so many in my crowd, I love them. They are my people. When you share a common thread like ours, we don’t let a poor fashion sense stand in the way of our sisterhood. There is no rhyme or reason to what creates a friendship or a connection. I’ve never chosen my people for political or strategic reasons.

I’m judgmental as hell, and a little mischievous. Maybe even borderline devious. It’s probably my biggest flaw. I have an answer for everything. I think I can fix everyone. I dislike people until I like them. I think that if my house is chosen for enough tours of homes, and if I prepare the best meal or throw the coolest party, my flaws will be hidden. But they are transparent to all who know me, and I don’t even fool myself.

Army brats turned army wives wear the lifestyle with the most grace and fluidity. We aren’t daunted by the political games and can navigate the waters with more ease and finesse than those who weren’t brought up here. We don’t overdress or call a senior wife “Mrs. Senior-Wife” but call her by her first name. Most of us wouldn’t dream of handing out calling cards, and we don’t obsess over wearing white after Labor Day. It’s instinct for brats turned wives to know which exact moment of the national anthem to place our hand over our heart. We don’t have to read the back of the program to be reminded of the lyrics to the army song. It’s emblazoned on our very beings as a person. We haven’t watched Army Wives and don’t base our knowledge of the intricacies of our lifestyle on a one-dimensional dramatized image. I can spot a new army wife from a mile away and can pick a relaxed army brat turned army wife out of the same crowd. The two groups are different animals altogether.

I jumped into life as an army wife with both feet, and aside from fleeting patchouli fantasies, there isn’t much I would change. This moment in Jack’s career, in our career, does feel like we have arrived. Finally a seat at the adult table. The possibility that Jack could eventually become a general crosses my mind on occasion, but I never let that idea linger. Half because I’ve seen how easy it is to slide from grace and lose everything, and half because the idea overwhelms me with giddy excitement. But I wouldn’t dream of saying this in my outside voice. Jack isn’t the one with stars in his eyes. His brass ring is a battalion command in combat. It’s me who covets the big house that Mrs. Stewart occupies.

But only the most obnoxious wives dare say this aloud, and many of them do, which is just tacky. Showing visible ambition only makes that woman a target. Best to stay nonthreatening and do the best in one’s current position. The plotting ambition is left for each couple behind closed doors, and it is obvious that many couples do plot and plan their future climb of the ranks. We do to an extent, but mostly take for granted that Jack will succeed because he always has. He doesn’t need to call in favors from generals or pull strings. We are naive in that regard.