deployment day flavored kool-aid

Finally, after months of preparation, changes in deployment dates, and what seems like an endless trudge to the slaughterhouse, the deployment arrives. The weeks and days leading up to this feel like a loss of color—everything I see is in shades of gray. We all operate on autopilot, disconnected from our emotions.

WHEN THE SOLDIERS are finally gone, we start counting down the days until their return. The color gradually returns as the days pass. It’s always the period leading up to deployment that’s the worst: the packing, the final weekend, the final meals, hearing Jack choose songs for his “battle-ready” playlist on his iPod. All of that is over when they finally go. It’s a tremendous relief. The first few weeks of the deployment, we all feel beaten up, and this is a period of recovery and rebirth into our new normal. Our new battle rhythm on our own.

“Take this sinking boat and point it home, we’ve still got time, raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice.” The song “Falling Slowly” takes on a whole new meaning. We are out of time, yet a new time is just beginning.

I sit alone in Jack’s Jeep and drop my head on the steering wheel. For the first time in the months leading up to this moment, I cry. I’ve just said good-bye to my husband in a most unceremonious, abrupt way. No matter how many months we plan for this moment, it is always sudden. This is the seventh time I’ve sent him off on a long deployment, ranging from peacekeeping missions to battle, each one culminating in the slumped tears in the car. But this day feels different. This time he’s responsible for over six hundred souls, not just himself. This time the risk of casualties is higher than ever before. This time it is for fifteen months, maybe eighteen. This time I am responsible for caring not just for my own three children and those other hundreds of families, but for my marriage, strained by this new burden and responsibility. My worry for his safety takes an odd backseat to the responsibility on both our shoulders.

Today is also the first day of a new school for two of our children. Joe is starting his first day of fourth grade, and Bridget is beginning second grade. Greta, our youngest, is in day care. Our new house falls into a crummy school district, so we have enrolled the kids in Catholic school, and aside from a brief tour over the summer, this is a plunge into uncharted territory. The kids don’t even have the familiar, welcoming smells of their old school waiting for them at the other end of their bus trip. Somehow this lack of familiarity robs the kids of one more comfort, not just on the first day of school but also on the day they say farewell to their father.

We don’t get to choose the day Jack deploys. It doesn’t matter if it’s a birthday, or Christmas, or today. If deployment day falls on the first day of school and he has to hug them good-bye for fifteen months, then that’s how it goes. There will be no after-school cookies and excited stories about their new school for Dad. That will have to wait until the middle of the next school year. By then the excited stories about the first day will be nothing but a long-distant memory. Irrelevant in the mind of a child. But today will hang in their memories for a different reason. For the gut-wrenching good-bye.

All the other kids and mothers at the bus stop are exuberant and snapping pictures of the first day of school. A new beginning, a fresh start. For me it is both of those things; for the kids not so much. No one wants our stricken family huddled to the side in their first-day-of-school photos. My kids haven’t looked forward to getting this dreadful day over with like I do. Fifteen months seems too overwhelming to fully grasp even for me; to them it’s a lifetime. Nervous laughter and glee surround us at the bus stop, and my little family can’t make eye contact with anyone. I can’t bear the weight of my friends’ sympathetic eyes this morning. They know that today is our day. Their own days of reckoning are coming or have already come. We each sympathize too well with what this moment means.

My tears have to wait. We huddled on the periphery, a desperate attempt to make light of the white-knuckled moment and focus on the first day of school. “Where is your bus pass? Make sure your sister finds her classroom. Try to sit together on the bus. We will order pizza for dinner, guys. I can’t wait to hear about your new teachers.” My attempt to pretend this is just a regular first day is feeble at best. I turn away and pretend to sip my now-cold coffee as we wait those last few moments for the bus. I have to be cold like my coffee to get through this part. Removed from myself. Drink the tepid coffee, and remind yourself to hover above. This will pass.

When the bus rumbles to a stop and it comes time for Joe and Bridget to climb the stairs, Jack quickly and lightly hugs (long hugs bring tears) both of our children and says, “Have a great day! I love you guys! Take care of Mom!” For a split second, it feels like a regular day, until I glimpse their faces as they take their seats on the bus. All the other kids wave except them. They look forward and away from us.

They aren’t ready to start the countdown like I am.

Our moment of good-bye between Jack and the kids is a rip-off for both occasions. A gyp of the fun of the first day of school and a gyp of the open weeping of good-bye. We are forced to hover in the middle, and both moments are left unsatisfied. For the rest of the day brief glimpses pass through my imagination of the kids sitting at their new desks in their brand-new Catholic school uniforms, juggling the stress of adjusting to new classrooms, teachers, and students and wondering if they will hear their dad’s plane fly over their school. Wondering exactly how long fifteen months will feel. They picture the paper chain that loops and cascades from our kitchen to the living room that moment. Our mark of the first day of deployment.

I made the paper chain a few days ago, one colorful link for each week Jack will be gone. The chain has sixty-four links of thick, printed cardstock. Some of us use white paper, but it will never hold up for fifteen months. Each Sunday, we will remove one link and write a memory or note from that week and put it into a shoebox. By week six, depending on what I’ve faced the previous week with the kids and the unit, I might be tearing the links off on Sunday night as I down a glass of wine, wadding them up and whipping them into the trash. Some Sundays will be sentimental, though, and we will put those links in the box. I hope Jack never stops to count the links when he gets home.

The kids aren’t ready to start the countdown like I am.

The last week leading up to deployment is the hardest, and the longest. The dates of departure always fluctuate left and right, even up until the last day. He walks around the house humming “Leaving on a Jet Plane” and smiling in his childlike way. By the last few days, I am white-knuckling every agonizing moment. The weighty expectation of making the most of every remaining moment is smothering. Just last week, I abandoned a half-full cart of groceries at the commissary because I thought I was going to break down. I escaped to my car, but the tears never came. The last week. The last weekend. The last dinner. The last pancake breakfast. The last awkward sex romp, with no kissing. The last night, a night that brings no sleep for any of us.

Last week we had the “talk.” About possible funeral arrangements. He showed me where the keys to the lock box were. Each deployment, I want to confirm what his last wishes are in case he pays the “ultimate sacrifice.” I hate that term. As if getting killed is a choice, a preferred option in the multiple-choice test of war. Something about those words implies that making the ultimate sacrifice is the ultimate achievement. Buried at Arlington National Cemetery or cremated and his ashes sprinkled? Where? I’ve heard him mention more than one preference, and I want to be sure. We finalized his Soldier Readiness Contract, a task I dreaded.

“Is there a section on there for the people I want nowhere near me?” I asked. “Like Liesel Leonard and Regina Sweeney? I will make that notation.” Somehow, the people who are there with me fall second to the ones I don’t want there.

Family members of terminally ill patients always say that despite the months of emotional preparation, death is always a sudden stab. An hour before I sat sobbing in the Jeep, Jack and I had eaten Burger King in an empty battalion classroom. We’d made awkward small talk about details like sign-up dates for the kids’ fall soccer and when the cars would be due for oil changes. All things he’d left in extensive notes at home, the reiteration of them just a way to fill the empty quiet while we ate. Both of us wanted this part to be over. His uniform already smelled like the desert. Which was funny because these uniforms are brand-new. My mind must be playing tricks.

Now I gladly leave Jack for a few minutes for him to take care of some last-minute business. I walk around the courtyard crowded with battle-ready soldiers waiting to be called to buses. The cement courtyard weighed down with soldiers dressed in body armor and heavy, clumsy-looking weapons. Each soldier wears his mask, his battle face. The handful of family members in attendance wear the same. Stoic, strained, as if they’ve all left their bodies to hover above, watching with me. Together we are a cluster of unsettled and frightened souls sharing a certain congruence. What I want, though, is to rip off this fucking Band-Aid and get this over with. I want a Bloody Mary with a good, ugly sob.

I introduce myself to mothers of soldiers who’ve traveled from different parts of the country to put their sons on this bus and send them into a tangible hell masquerading as Iraq. Only a few wives are present. Most of them are veterans of this sick dance, so they’ve said their good-byes in the car and driven away to wait at home for the roaring sound of the C-17 flying over their houses. Then each wife will have confirmation that he is gone, and she will safely start marking the days until it ends. I can’t take that route for this deployment. I am the commander’s wife. So there I stand, trying to look reassuring and composed, listening to myself spout rhetoric about how we would not just survive the deployment, but thrive during it. Ladies, we will not just survive this deployment, we will thrive! A scripted line straight out of a binder full of the atta-girl stuff we are supposed to say. Jesus, did I just hear myself say that crap? The intricate, painful training I endure full of scripts for this day robs me of the ability to put a sentence together that does not sound scripted. I almost laugh at the absurdity. But another part of me hopes the line isn’t a Dixie cup full of Kool-Aid, that it’s the truth.

A dozen or so mothers are here. Fewer fathers. As I introduce myself I tell them that my husband’s main goal is to complete the mission and bring everyone home safely. Even saying the words feels too intimate, acknowledging that in all likelihood, some will not be coming home at all. But unlike many of the things I’m supposed to say in these moments, this part isn’t lip service. I also give the mothers, the ones who want it, my home phone number in case they need anything. In the moment, it makes me feel helpful, with a purpose other than looking like I want to get the hell out of here. I’m as helpless as the mothers, who at least have the privilege of not knowing the specific details of the uphill battle their sons will wage once over there.

Captain Ben Black, my personally chosen and still slightly disgruntled but committed rear detachment commander, comes to me a few times and squeezes my arm, the only person who acknowledges the mask of courage on my face. Sees the facade of strength. Everyone else is too focused on keeping his or her own shit together to notice.

“It’s all going smoothly,” he says quietly. “You hanging in there?” Then he rattles off irritation at some detail about a change in the manifest roster, a detail that goes right over my head. His attempt to distract me from the weight of the moment.

“Here it is. Finally. I had no idea so many parents would be here.” As I say those words, I avert my eyes from him, feeling my autopilot mask shift and fearing I might cry. Ben isn’t stiff and blank like so many of the other soldiers; he has an excellent way of making eye contact and connecting with people, a true empathetic nature. Ben shows his irritation at certain situations, but that’s fine with me. He will always tell me what I need to hear, not what I want to hear. Today that empathy, the reason I initially chose him as rear detachment commander, makes me need to avoid him altogether. Saving the tears and emotion for later.

As the rear detachment commander, Ben says good-bye to comrades, which is meaningful, but not as wretched as bidding farewell to a husband or son. I can see it in his eyes, that what he most wants in that moment is to be wearing a rucksack instead of clutching a clipboard. Ben would rather be heading to Iraq than be left in the rear to take care of the families, wounded soldiers, and equipment left behind. Left behind is something we are coached not to say, though. It sounds insulting. Instead we use the term rear detachment cadre. A better ring, yet the same meaning. Ben commanded a company of a hundred or so soldiers in combat in Iraq a year before, so he has a firsthand awareness of where these men are headed. Some of the men he commanded in his past deployment are here today, now headed back. As I look at Ben, I feel a little guilty that I robbed him of another opportunity to go to The Fight, but there will be other opportunities. Jack and I are certain Ben is the right choice for us.

Nowadays, the best are hand-selected for rear detachment to help handle unavoidable family debacles. To help untangle the mess of catastrophic and inflated dramas between wives. Ben is good at his job, the best in the battalion in fact. So maybe in his mind, his reward is being our babysitter for the next fifteen to eighteen months. Well done. I’m lucky he doesn’t hate me.

It is a perfect September day in 2007, sunny with clear blue skies. Our battalion will be the tail end of the surge, the brainchild of Petraeus, orchestrated to tighten the slippery hold on the stability of that country. I am aware that this is our generation of soldiers and their family’s place in history. I am proud of my husband, knowing that despite the pressure and pain, these are his glory days. Beyond measure, I am proud of myself and proud of the families in the battalion.

There’s one particular thing about the moment I want to freeze and remember. The faces. Each of these soldiers is someone’s baby, someone’s son. I feel guilty for not having an opportunity to know each of them by name. Because if they are killed, when the time comes for me to offer condolences to their mothers, I want to say with certainty and personal knowledge that he was a tremendous hero. I want to mean it, to know it. I have a moment of frantic regret as the battalion prepares to leave, and I realize that not even my husband personally knows every one of them by name. There is no way, and really it makes no difference whether we know them or not. Nothing, at that point, will ease anyone’s pain.

I wait and sit on the concrete pavement of the courtyard with Jack in the last few minutes, and he reassures me with his usual crappy propaganda, things like, “We’ve done this before, it’s no big deal.” “Fifteen months is going to fly by, girl!” “You’ll be so busy with the kids and the Family Readiness Group that you won’t ever be lonely.” “Please make sure the kids take their vitamins.” Sometimes these silly comments are charming; sometimes they make me want to kick his ass. Today’s a little bit of both, and like my desperate desire to have familiarity with each of the soldiers, I become aware that his words are meant to reassure himself more than me, even if he doesn’t think so. So I smile and nod. I don’t speak, because of course speaking will lead to tears, and that part I want and need to save.

Ben approaches Jack and me. “Sir, the buses have arrived. Five minutes until S.P.” Army lingo for “Get your ass on the bus.”

“Roger. Ruck up.” We stand and he gathers his gear. The amount of shit each soldier has to wear is punishment enough. Flak vests, that heavy helmet, the weapons, night-vision goggles, and the sixty-pound rucksack. The idea of being a soldier, the details of it, are beyond my comprehension. It would be just my luck that I would get all suited up and realize that I need to pee. Once, to make me laugh, Jack told me about a soldier of his who, on more than one occasion, pooped his pants in the helicopter en route to a mission. After the soldiers were perfectly packed into place in the helicopters, no one was moving, no how, not even to poop. I would make a miserable soldier.

Together we make our way around to the front of the building, and I’m shocked to see the buses lined up right there in the immediate parking loop instead of on the road fifty yards away. I expected at least a two-minute walk. This is too sudden. I turn to him and whisper, “I’m not ready,” and I feel the tears coming, but force them back. I see his tears and he hugs me, hard and fast. In that final hug, instead of being in that moment, all I can think about is how awkward and impossible it is to hug a soldier suited up for battle.

And that’s it. Not our first rodeo.

I watch him climb the steps and turn onto the bus. There’s no way I can or will stand there until the buses slowly drive away. I’ve done my job.

So here I sit in his Jeep that smells of army gear. Smells of him. It’s only just after lunch, and I have time before the kids return. With shaky hands and a body that feels drained of blood, I drive three miles, the ugly sob guiding me home. I walk into the side door and see his jacket hanging in its place, and his cup from this morning, rinsed and in the drying rack. Fuck. It’s time. I glance around the room at his magazines stacked next to his chair—that ugly, cheap leather recliner, an eyesore. So very little in this home is a direct reflection of him, except that chair. Everything else I’ve chosen and placed. He is little more than a guest in his own home.

I walk into the bathroom and stare at his sink with his few personal hygiene things neatly lined up. I feel limp. Everything is gray. I decide to lie down before I start my ritual. The bed smells like him, but it does not comfort me. I want that smell gone. It’s going to be fifteen months, and I won’t be one of those women sleeping with some old T-shirt, clinging to his long-faded scent. No. I’m a fresh-start girl. Today is day 1. Today we start counting down the days, 455 to go. So I get up and turn on my iPod. Loud. “Under Pressure.” A poignant and perfect choice. I rip the sheets from the bed and throw them into the laundry basket, pausing to stare at the empty mattress—a prophetic blank slate. I’m on my own now.

Part of my deployment ritual is to remove all his daily things. It’s easier for me. I compartmentalize his crap, and I compartmentalize my emotions. It’s my coping style, and we each have our own. If I had to look at that tube of deodorant for fifteen months, pick it up to dust under it, wipe it down for fifteen months, I would surely lose my mind. No. My way is better. Fresh.

That ugly chair. I want all of this done before the kids return, so I drag it out to the garage. It does not come willingly; it fights me the whole way. It slams one of my toes, bringing a new round of tears and fury to my face. The chair does not want to go, but I won’t let it stop me. Eventually it ends in the garage, pissed at me and defeated, but satisfied at having the last word by leaving a huge gouge in the new hardwood floors. That will be my one constant reminder of this day for the next fifteen months.

Reason number 67 that deployments don’t suck: I won’t have to endure the torture of effing American Idol or Fox News or any kind of f-ing loud sports show, like the UFC, which he loves to watch at deafening volumes.

Jack is a list man. I am too, to an extent. But he takes it to an extreme and makes matrices of what belongs in pantries, daily chores for the kids, packing lists, shopping lists, SOPs for everything under the sun. It exhausts me. The lists and spreadsheets neatly taped inside all of the cabinet doors and on the wall make me feel claustrophobic. I whisk from room to room and tear them down. They rip, they leave tape behind, it’s messy. I don’t give a shit for now. I will go back and remove the remaining edges of paper and tape later. This is my ritual, and I catch myself cackling as I wad the lists and shove them into the trash. I don’t think too hard about the cackling; it’s way too early in the ball game for the cheese to slide off my cracker. This part feels good. A rebirth. Euphoric sense of getting the fuck on with it, at last.

I miss my girlfriends and neighbors. In the week or so leading up to a deployment, we disappear from our seat at the playground, an unspoken rule of army wives. Allowing us to cocoon in our families and trudge through those last days alone with our husband and children. I heard them outside a couple nights ago, gathered around a fire pit in Mira’s driveway next door. I heard Gwen Bautista’s and Mira’s raucous laughs and wished I could run over for just a quick glass of wine and the familiarity of my friends. As I lay in bed listening to the hushed voices and laughter, I wondered what I was missing.

No one will call today, though, and if they do I won’t answer. Gwen waved to me from her driveway as I pulled into the neighborhood sobbing. I need this time to breathe and get my game face on. Right now I feel covered in bruises. But this is it. Day 1. Tomorrow I will see colors again. What hung before us for the entire past year, heckling us, is here at last.

I splash some water on my face and go to pick Greta up from her preschool class. It’s early, but I miss her. This morning, Jack wasn’t able to take her into her classroom as we had planned. We parked the car, and he got out to unbuckle her from her car seat, stopped, then looked at me with eyes full of tears and his lip quivering and shook his head. On autopilot, I took her from him and carried her away, checked her in, hung her little backpack filled with diapers and a change of clothes. Greta seemed to take it in stride, but for weeks after he leaves, she will cry and throw a tantrum, refusing to go beyond the parking lot at preschool drop-off. I want to go get her now; maybe we can snuggle and watch Caillou before the bus brings the big kids home. And I need a stiff drink. I can have that after I pick her up. Life in the army fishbowl, similar to life in the real world, makes us hyperaware of certain faux pas, and smelling of booze at a 3:00 preschool pickup clearly makes that list. Getting behind the wheel of a car after even one drink is unfathomable in our world. Schlepping to the commissary in pink pajama pants would practically make the news. Even on the day of deployment. In our fishbowl, we maintain at least an outward appearance of strength, control, and resilience; the ugly, snotty breakdowns are for behind closed doors.

Tomorrow I will place a huge catalog order with Hanna Andersson for the kids and a few tasty things for myself from J. Crew. Ease into our first days. Then before bed tonight we will at last hear the huge plane full of battle-ready soldiers fly over. Ben will call to confirm “wheels up,” and that will be it. The finality that he is gone will be undeniable.

Tomorrow is day 454. Then I will stop counting. Tomorrow brings meetings and our new normal, establishing a battle rhythm. Tomorrow I can’t hide and lick my wounds. But tonight I can.