I spent much of my day trying to figure out how to compose my Veterans Day blog post. I pay special attention to this day and Memorial Day, and I try to express some deeply held emotions on these posts. Today it has been more difficult than usual to separate the signal from the noise. On previous Veterans Days, I was safe in my knowledge that I was an air force wife, who was the daughter of two generations of air force wives, proud of her active duty husband and proud to be doing everything possible to keep her military family safe and intact through deployments and moves and the stress of daily life. This year, everything is turned upside down. Everything I thought I knew about my life has changed, and that military family identity feels like it belonged to someone else. After twenty years, I feel like I'm out of the club. I feel like I didn't do enough while I was in it. There were times in my life that I wished I could have followed in my father's footsteps, and gone into the service myself, but even as a teenager, I knew that I was not physically fit for the job. Long before I knew chronic pain was a thing, I knew that my body wouldn't have made it, and I would have washed out of basic training. Rather than trying and failing, I just never tried. When my husband decided he would sign up, I did the only thing I could. I threw my unwavering support behind his career move (which ended up becoming an actual career, much to our surprise), and I took care of the home and the family throughout the entire journey. I moved when the government said move, and I stayed home when the government sent him away where I couldn't go. I volunteered with the spouses groups and gave them my full attention. I got jobs on and near bases so that I could help out airmen and soldiers every way I could (with research, education, and testing, mostly). It always felt like it was never enough. I never wore the uniform, so I always felt like I lacked in some way. (And I was made to feel that way by others sometimes.) I am in awe of those people who had the strength to do it. I will never take their service for granted. I will always admire and respect the ones who answered the call. I thank all of them for doing what I couldn't do.
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