Deployment Question

Wendi

I have read your blog for several years, and commented a couple of times, and I have a military wife question for you.

I live in Houston and we have a neighbor that just moved to Houston in January from Wisconsin because her husband's company transferred them here. He is in the Marines Reserves and is being deployed to Honduras for 9-12 months. She has chosen to stay in Houston while he is gone rather than go back to her family in Wisconsin. They have only been married about 2 years (and have only been together for 1 year of that because he was deployed for the first year of their marriage). They have 2 kids and when he leaves next month they will be ages 15 months and 1 month. Yikes!

So, my question for you is how can I help her while her husband is gone? I try to get all of the neighborhood ladies together every couple of weeks to do something fun or we do a Bible study together and we have park playdates once a week. But do you have any suggestions? Should I get the husbands to take turns helping her with the lawn, should we plan dinner at our house? Any suggestions are greatly appreciated! We just all want to help her out during this hard time. Sorry if this all sounds weird, I just couldn't really think of any other military wives and thought you might have a little insight.

This is a great question! I had some opinions, but being as I have not dealt with a deployment, I wanted to seek advice from the professionals: those who have lived in the trenches. Here was some of the replies I received.

Andrea, my friend from Eglin who moved to California and then faced a seven month deployment. She lived a few hours from family but not in the immediate vicinity. And, she had two young children at home.

This is a great question and I'm already glad for this wife because she sounds like she has wonderful neighbors. During Eric's deployment my saving grace was friends having us over for dinner and keeping the kids busy. Dinner was a hard time as that was a time when the kids really noticed Eric's absence the most. When we would go over to a friends house for a play date and then stay for dinner it would help the day and evening pass quickly and was just great. In her case she has little ones so it's going to be a little different.

She is actually going to need a break herself because her kids won't be in any sort of school program. I would definitely suggest to the neighbor that she would offer to babysit and that other neighbors would offer to babysit so she could have some time by herself to either rest and relax or go get errands done without the little ones in tow. A Bible study would also be a great time of fellowship and refreshment for her.

It was different for us because I could take the kids bowling on base to deployment dinners on base and I also had Jonathan in soccer and Chloe in dance so keeping them busy was key to not having them think about daddy being gone all the time. With little ones she's going to need lots more support to keep her busy and to help her just get through the days. I think Playdate's and a Bible study would be great and dinners at other peoples houses would also be a tremendous help and if the husbands could pitch in for the yard work that would be a definite bonus.

Fellowship and friendship with other adults at this time is critical since you don't have your main best friend with you. I would definitely encourage that neighbor and any other neighbors to just be open and honest and truly offer help whenever they can.

From my Sister-in-law Danielle who has survived TWO year long deployments. (Think that might be too much to ask? No idea how she did it.) Danielle did not have children and did live near family.

• Don't treat her like a cancer patient.
• Make sure to schedule girls nights out! Something she can look forward to, to help the time go faster!
• Be a good listener. Wait for her to talk before you ask questions.

From my friend from Eglin, Brittny, whose husband was deployed to Korea for one year. She had two small children at the time but was living near family.

• A big help would be meals! Especially with kids that young. With me it wasn't that huge, but I had family that I could go see and have dinner with them. We ate terrible while Brandon was gone because it's hard to motivate yourself to cook when you know your audience is only going to complain it's not chicken nuggets or hot dogs.
• I would also say that babysitting would be nice too. And they may have to kick her out to make her go, but it would help her to have a little break.
• I think one thing that would be awesome would maybe someone could bring her dinner and then help her get the kids ready for bed. That's always a really stressful time, especially when you know that you will not have help. You are tired from the day and just want the kids in bed. That may be nicer than having a sitter, just some company to have ice cream and watch mindless tv with after the kids are asleep.
• Another thing that would be huge is to have someone do yard work. It's getting into fall, so it wouldn't need to be that much. I used to love cutting the grass, but having Brandon gone for a year made me hate it. Plus I had a lot of yard to cut.
• Oh, one final thing, invite her and the kids over on weekends. You know yourself how hard weekends are when your husband is gone and you know that everyone else is with their family. We spent many weekends with family/friends and often their were 7 kids ages 6 and under together, but I didn't care. It was just nice to have the company during that time.

So, my top four ideas:

1. meals

2. babysitting / help at bedtime

3. yard work

4. weekends

From my friend Stebbins who faced deployment before she had children.

I think anything and everything would be helpful. She can decide what help she would like and not like. I think the lawn care idea is great, and maybe babysitting (at least the older child) and just being hospitable neighbors.

I had someone do grocery runs for me when Ryan was deployed and I was working 40+ hour weeks. It was so nice! Just another idea

I would love to get some feedback on this from some other deployment professionals (Brittney Rabens?) So if you have the time to shoot me an email (flakymn@hotmail.com) or leave a comment, that'd be awesome.