My start as a military spouse

Before my PCS begins, and I am still able to breathe, I have decided that I will write about a few of the units we have been stationed. It has been suggested that I write about the units themselves to give others an idea of what the Coast Guard does, but I want to keep this for the spouses. Because of this, I will write about the units from a spouses view. I will also write about them in the order that I experienced them, so that my naïveté of what it means to be a military spouse, and how, as I learned from my experiences, my viewpoint changes. I won’t write about all of them at once, as this will give me some time to think of how I felt at the time. Not only that, because we have been around awhile, if I wrote about all of them at one sitting, I may be here for some time.

My husband’s first unit out of boot camp was the USCGC YOCONA, and because they were based close enough to home to visit, but not too close to be a nuisance, we decided it would be a perfect time to get married. Little did we know that the YOCONA was going to give me my very first hard lesson as a military spouse. On our wedding day, my husband finds out that shortly after our honeymoon, the ship will be changing homeport. If you could only see my surprise when he tells me that they will be moving it to Kodiak, Alaska. So, not only do I not get to move out of my parent’s house, but also I will have to wait at least three months before I will be able to move to Kodiak and set up house. So there is lesson #1: never assume that you will be stationed anywhere, even if the unit is currently in that place. The military does move units around, sometimes with very little notice. I was 19, and I had never been away from home, but because I’m young I look at it as if it is going to be a wonderful adventure, life will be perfect and I was anxious to begin this lifestyle of a military wife. That would be fine, but this is before there was Ombudsman, so not only did I not know any spouses from the ship (I had only bet one or two before the wedding), but I also had absolutely no knowledge of how the military did things or anyone to ask.

When the time came, my husband returned to get me and take me to my new home. This was my first experience in an airplane, and it wasn’t too bad, until we flew from Anchorage, AK to Kodiak. Back in the day there were very small planes that flew into Kodiak and when flying in, you come in low over the water. If you are looking out your window, all you see is the ocean and no runway in sight. Being my first time on a plane, this can be very unnerving. Great, so now I’m on an island, in an apartment and the ship is underway again (I haven’t even been here but a week or two?). Here is lesson #2: be prepared for the ship to be gone often, with no real schedule (of course they did have a schedule, but remember, I was new to this so not only did I not know the schedule, but it seemed my husband was gone all the time). Now what do I do? I have some idea of where the base is located, I’m learning to drive our truck (which has a manual transmission, and I only know the basics) and it is the middle of winter. There is only one other Coast Guard spouse in our apartment complex and she is just as new as I am.

I do eventually hear from the CO’s wife about a get-together of the spouses, which I am eager to attend, as I really need to meet these experienced women (back then there were very few if any male spouses, and none that I knew of). Lesson #3: be careful what you wish for, it may not be what you expect. Unfortunately, my experience with the spouses of this unit was not a good one. I was told (from the CO’s wife no less) that because my husband was a nonrate, I could not take advantage of any of the morale events they planned. I also discovered that their get-togethers were more of the “let’s talk about who isn’t here”. Now the dilemma of showing up so I wasn’t the topic of conversation, or avoiding them because who really needs that drama. I chose to stay away…they definitely were not the type of people I wished to know, I hoped that not all military spouses were like this, and at this point was anxious to move on. As to the issue of being able to take advantage of the morale events for the wives when the ship was gone…I should have been able to participate, remember wives do not have rank and should not hold their spouses rank over other spouses. But it is easy for me to say that now, back when I was the new spouse I assumed that this was how things were, and I figured that I would have to wait until my husband attained some mysterious rank that afforded me the opportunity to be involved with these morale events.

I survived this unit, sort of…but because of these lessons, when the opportunity came, I used them to ensure that no new spouse I met ever had to endure the same lessons. Fortunately we do have Ombudsman…volunteers that give up their time to help make new spouses feel like they are included and part of the unit family. There still are those spouses that like to talk about others, but there are far more that don’t put up with it. You will also occasionally come across a spouse that seems to think he/she also hold rank, rest assured they don’t. Be polite and respectful, but don’t allow them to demean you or make you think you are less than they are.

So for those military spouses that are finding this lifestyle difficult, that only seem to meet those that are negative, don’t give up…keep looking. There are many wonderful military spouses out there who will gladly take you under their wing, who will be your friend and will show you how wonderful military life can be with the right people in your life.