I've been waiting for this day for sixteen years. Our first day on active duty, August 7, 1998, two US embassies (Nairobi, Kenya and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania) were bombed simultaneously. Sean was in the air with the Marines as I watched the Twin Towers fall. Yet somehow the moment was always averted. So when Sean came home that day in January to announce he'd be leaving around October 1, I immediately sprang into action. What would we need to do; what could I do as the chaplain's wife and a rabbi?
It's a strange thing- the military, so American, and yet so foreign to most of us. Growing up middle class on Long Island the military was history- Roosevelt Field, WWII, Levitt homes for soldiers returning from war, a plaque on the synagogue wall bearing the names of congregants who'd paid the ultimate price.
Still, my first year of rabbinical school, when presented with chaplaincy as an option, I was hooked. What a wonderful way to serve my country, my community, and my calling. Unfortunately, a bad knee and asthma made me medically unfit.
Enter Sean the following year. The son of a career navy man, Sean knew first hand what a chaplain could do for a family. If accepted into rabbinical school he would go into the chaplaincy, at least for one tour of duty.
Two years later Sean received his JTS acceptance, and we were off to Israel as newlywed students. During our year in Israel we tried to organize the paperwork, not easy half-way around the world, including a trip from Jerusalem to Haifa to meet a US ship in port for Sean's physical. Then, when faced with our first separation before our first anniversary I balked. Using the best artillery in my arsenal, I quoted Torah to keep Sean with me for our first anniversary. It worked, and six months later I was happy and proud to stand by him as he took his oath. That day has provided us with great experiences, lots of fun, and humor. It was October 31, 1994, a perfect day for Sean to don his new "costume."
But while Sean wears the uniform, a military career is a family effort. Swearing-ins, promotions, good times and bad, as the spouse, I've been as much a part of these as Sean. I've been congratulated, picked on, and confided in. The chaplain's spouse can play as important a role in the command as the chaplain him/herself.
For twenty-two years my experience with the military was through books, movies, and the news. Suddenly, with Sean in my life the military was family. I met my future father-in-law at a family get-together welcoming him home from a Med cruise. A year and a half later I was rescheduling my wedding to accommodate my in-laws' military move.
Postscript- (I've mentioned before) It's an adage that when the sailor deploys things break. There was one Med cruise when my mom-in-law and a friend had so many car problem, they packed up all the broken parts, and shipped them to the their husbands' ship for the guys to sort out whose was whose. As soon as Sean told me about the deployment we began to joke about what would break. We bought a new home six months earlier. The bathrooms are original- 1963. The oven, stove, and dishwasher are at least thirty years old. The roof has 3-5 years left in it, the fence is falling down, and the chimney needs work. (We've since fixed the chimney.) Sean was betting on everything. I bet on the oven to break two days before American Thanksgiving. It's a wall oven, and the size is hard to find. By the way, the oven temperature knob broke two days before Passover during a two week warm-up. This, along with a raging case of food poisoning just twelve hours after Sean left, was our trial by fire. We're ready for anything.
