Just a New Year's letter from and Army spouse
January 2nd, 2007
Dear MFSO:
I
have heard of your organization from friends of mine, but just recently visited
your website. I think you all are wonderful, and I want to thank you for giving
military family members a voice. The letters featured on your site inspired me
to write you with my thoughts. Without further ado, here is my letter:
It
is New Year's Day, 2007. I have been out
of the Army for four years, and my husband has been in for fourteen. This year, our daughter will turn four, I
will be twenty-six, and he will be thirty-two.
My, how time flies. I sat here
in our little flat in an old part of Army Housing at our post, and as the ball
dropped in Times Square on our TV screen, my heart dropped with it, even though
I was undeniably grateful that my husband was sitting right beside me and not
deployed like he was this time last year, and will be this time next year. The reason my heart dropped with the ball is
because this year will bring yet another deployment to this unjust and illegal
war in which my husband has already served two tours, including the invasion.
I
realized a strange thing as my heart dropped with the ball in Times Square. I realized that I'm not even mad anymore like
I was toward the end of the last deployment, as I rang in 2006 alone, in this
same flat. Well, I'm still mad, but not
to the livid extent that I was then. No,
I'm mostly just tired now. I am weary
from my whole family being jerked around by this government's decisions, and
from having to sit by helplessly as my husband, one of the best Sergeants I ever
had the honor of taking an order from, is treated like a pawn. I am tired of fielding the questions from
friends and family members about when the next deployment will be, where, and
for how long. I am tired of welcoming him home from one, only to start thinking
right then about when the next will be. I am tired of wondering if he will be home
from the next one in time to see me graduate with my Civil Engineering
degree. I am tired of trying to explain
to my daughter why daddy's truck is in the driveway, but he's not upstairs.
I am tired of my home being a revolving
door in the months leading up to the deployment, and being so empty every other
year.
I am
looking right now at my husband's statue of Buddha, and thinking about its
meaning makes me even more weary and bewildered.
Yes, true to his Asian heritage, my husband is a devout Buddhist, and
we are both pacifists. Neither of us
believes in war. Neither of us felt that
way when we took our oaths of enlistment, he in the winter of 1993, I in the
summer of 2001. No, we both wanted to
do our duty for our country, and enlisted wide-eyed and ready to serve. Neither of us ever imagined that we would
take from our service the resounding lesson that war is wrong, and our country
has failed us by subjecting us to it time and time again. Neither of us saw that coming, and how could
we?
However, in all this fatigue and bewilderment, I have
hope. I have hope because the more I
look, the more I see that there are other military families who feel exactly the
same as we do. If this is how the
people most impacted by the government's policy pertaining to the war feel about
it, the private citizens of the nation must feel this way to a far greater
extent. According to the polls, they
do. Maybe it will be enough to make
possible the election of a peaceful president in 2008. I have hope because if enough of us military
families and veterans speak out against this war, people will have to see that
supporting the troops means electing the candidates who will BRING THEM
HOME! I have been saying it since the
beginning, and I will keep saying it until the end. I have hope because I know that I am not
saying it alone. Maybe for my husband,
three tours will be all. We do not know
if it will be, but I have hope.
Maybe in 2009, the next year that we will ring in
together, we will do so without the knowledge that we will spend it apart as we
have every odd numbered year since the war started. I am tired, but I hang on to that hope.
-Anna
