Standing By: The Making of an American Military Family in a Time of War - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Alison Buckholtz wrote Slate.com’s “Deployment Diary” column, and her essays have been published in the New York Times, Real Simple, and many other publications.  She lives in the Washington, DC area with her husband, an active-duty Naval officer, and two children.

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Introduction

PART ONE - Workups

Chapter 1 - Shock and Awe

Chapter 2 - Who by Water

Chapter 3 - Gone Mom

Chapter 4 - Lost

Chapter 5 - The Provincial

Chapter 6 - Pippi

Chapter 7 - O’Dark-thirty

Chapter 8 - Flat Daddy

Chapter 9 - A Day of Mother

Chapter 10 - Cryptology

Chapter 11 - Starfish

Chapter 12 - Beautiful World

Chapter 13 - The Loved Dog

Chapter 14 - Tell Me Your Secrets

Chapter 15 - My Sweetest Friend

Chapter 16 - The Feast of Crispian

Chapter 17 - New Beginnings

PART TWO - Deployment

Chapter 18 - By the Waters of Babylon

Chapter 19 - American Trinity

Chapter 20 - The New Normal

Chapter 21 - “People in the Navy Kill People”

Chapter 22 - The Navy Wife

Chapter 23 - That Stupid Boat

Chapter 24 - Pancakes and Ice Cream

Chapter 25 - Rock Bottom

Chapter 26 - A Draft of the Heart

Chapter 27 - The Happy Family Photo

Chapter 28 - COWs and Other Mammals

Chapter 29 - Everyday Fantasies

Chapter 30 - “If It Were Easy, Anyone Could Do It”

Chapter 31 - Diving into the Wreck

Chapter 32 - “When Is It My Turn?”

Chapter 33 - Pippi

Chapter 34 - Counting Down

PART THREE - Homecoming

Chapter 35 - Magical Powers

Acknowledgements

Selected Bibliography

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JEREMY P. TARCHER/PENGUIN

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Buckholtz, Alison.
Standing by : the making of an American military family in a time of war / Alison
Buckholtz.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-02877-3

1. Buckholtz, Alison. 2. Navy spouses—United States—Biography.
3. United States. Navy—Military life. 4. United States. Navy—Aviation—
Anecdotes. 5. Naval Air Station Whidbey Island (Wash.)—Anecdotes. I. Title.
V736.B
359.0092—dc22
[B]

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and
Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author
assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication.
Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any
responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

FOR THE AMERICAN MILITARY FAMILIES
WHO SHOW ME THE WAY, EVERY DAY

“Child, my heart feels nothing. I have no words, no questions.
I cannot even look him in the eyes. If it really is Odysseus, and
he is home, we will recognize each other well enough; there
are secrets that we two know and no one else.”

—The Odyssey, XXIII, 104-110. Penelope is speaking to her son after
seeing her husband, Odysseus, for the first time in twenty years. He has made
his way home after fighting in the Trojan War.

All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
—Robert Hass, “Meditation at Lagunitas”

Author’s Note

When my family moved to Washington state during the summer of 2006, I had no inkling that I would write a book about our experience as a military family. Neither did the scores of new Navy friends who trusted me with their stories, or the spouses in our squadron who reached out for help. Within weeks of our relocation to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, I obtained the most treasured security clearance of all: access into the lives of people who would come to mean a great deal to me. I heard their heartbreaks and triumphs in confidence, and to maintain that confidence I have changed names and significant identifying details of nearly all non-family members. In cases that required a greater level of sensitivity, composite characters and altered situations stand in for the real thing, though the essence remains intact. The only secrets revealed are my own.

So, first, a confession: I am not an expert on the military or even the Navy family. I read many books and articles on these subjects, and these texts tutored me in a heritage I am privileged to claim (though I alone am responsible for any errors in the telling). To gain the broadest understanding of the military-family experience, however, I talked to the people who constitute this extraordinary community. Many of the service members’ spouses I have met since embarking on this unexpected path have traveled it much longer than I have, and their experiences are richer and more dramatic than my own. Learning of the far-flung places they have established their lives, and the hardships and losses they have endured, has humbled me. Their adventurous spirit has inspired me. They have taught me valuable lessons about the challenges and rewards of a military lifestyle, and I feel honored to transmit what I have learned from them—especially if I can bring these stories to a civilian population with a limited understanding of America’s armed forces. But no one military spouse can represent another, and certainly not the entire group.

Finally, a note about the way I refer to military spouses. When discussing our squadron’s officer families, I often write about “wives,” and I use the pronoun he to refer to the married officers of our squadron. Although many officer spouse clubs include both men and women, ours was composed solely of women. Within the squadron, approximately one-fourth of the officers were women. While this is...