Our military community, friends and sisters

Occasionally when I look around at Dh’s comrades when they are out together, I realize that for some of them, apart from the military they have nothing in common.

It’s really true, for many of them there is an age difference, sometimes of 10 or more years. Differences in family situations, some married with kids, some divorced without, everything in between.  They have diverse interests, everything from Warhammer and MMORPGs to hunting and camping for days without electronics. Different faiths, different choices, different opinions. Their personalities can occasionally clash pretty loudly. I mean, there’s even Toronto Maple Leaf fans mixed in with Bruins fans and no one understands the Roughrider fans.

The truth is, for many of those relationships the only common factor is their time served together. That bond is even stronger when you throw in some time in a tent in Kabul, or a FOB in Kandahar.

Or both.

One of the most amazing things to me about the military is that those experiences together can be all that’s needed. Especially among combat troops, they overshadow the differences and cement relationships stronger than any other simply by the fact that they’ve experienced a time when they counted on each other for survival.

Now that I think of it, that’s not simple at all. But it’s amazing to watch from the outside.

It’s also, I think, why in the military community it’s more common to hear the word brother than friend. Brother implies family. You don’t choose your family, they are chosen for you. You might not even like you family, but you don’t always have to. You are still there for family, anytime they call and for whatever they need. Family shows up.

I’ve seen that kind of military family pick up and drop off a brother for AA every day for weeks. I’ve seen it drive across provinces for a single member’s homecoming. I’ve seen it wait all night in emergency rooms because their brother put a fist through a wall/dumped a motorcycle/did something they regret. I’ve seen it stand together in the freezing cold at a graveside for hours. Fly their single brother out to spend the holidays with them. They help each other move. They lend their precious truck without a second thought. They drag each other home at all hours in all states, but you’ll clean up your own mess in the morning because that’s how you learn.

When I started this month speaking at bases at International Women’s Day events, all I knew was that I wanted to focus on unity. That we are stronger together. That as women, we have tremendous power to tear each other down but that means that we also have an incredible ability to build each other up if we choose.

Then my travels really opened my perspective on what military family friendships could be.

Last week I flew to Gagetown. I was renting a car and hanging out for 5 days despite only having to work for one because I have a significant number of friends posted there, most I haven’t seen in years. When I found out I’d have the opportunity to speak there I messaged a friend I hadn’t seen since 2012 and said ‘I’m coming!’ And it was the first time in half a dozen round trips someone had met me at the airport. Gotta say, it felt pretty good.

On the way to her place I said “you know, I intended to grab us something at the store on the way…” and she said “well, there IS a gas station.”

I said, “let’s be honest. I was going to grab wine so I need a liquor store.” She said “oh, my friend. Welcome to New Brunswick.” (You guys, did you know you can buy wine at gas stations there?)

While I was in the province I lived with them and their daughter. They gave me a key so I could come and go. I grabbed what I wanted from the fridge and made 100 cups of coffee because dude, time change is not my friend these past few months. And when she said “I feel like I should take you somewhere. We could go to the mall? Or the movies?” I replied “or we could get in our jammies and watch Netflix.”

We talked about frivolous stuff, like the time I forgot my wallet at the Sgt’s and WO mess when I was attending an….ahem….adult toy type party put on by our Spouse’s Group, and I had to beg her husband to go pick it up for me since I couldn’t even get to the building without ID.

And we talked about the super crazy hard stuff that 15 years of marriage with a war thrown in has meant for us both. We’ve been doing this life together since the very beginning.

On Dh’s 3rd deployment to Afghanistan it was the first time her husband wasn’t with mine. Whenever I’d be there visiting he would storm in the door and say “KIMBERLEY, YOUR VAN IS A F’ING DISASTER AND YOU’RE GOING TO KILL YOUR KIDS WITH THOSE LOOSE CARSEATS.”
He knew that because he would have just been out there, vacuuming my van and tightening the seats.

So it didn’t surprise me that, while he gave me shit the whole time I was there, he still came and left me a glass of water at the bottom of the stairs after I’d gone down to get ready for bed, in case I needed it in the night.  Spend your entire adult life around combat soldiers and you learn there’s a lot of ways to say you love someone.

The more I thought about it that week the more I realized that we overlook the fact that if our spouses have all these brothers all over the country, that means that we have a whole lot of sisters.

And that makes a difference in how we look at our community.

I have obviously made some amazing friendships along the way, but maybe in that I’ve missed noticing the value in the others I’ve met, too. For each of these close friendships are the ones that I am not close with. Sometimes I feel guilty, like I should have invested more time or made more effort with those relationships, but I don’t need to.

We aren’t all super close with all our family. We don’t always have much in common. We don’t always even really like them. In fact, life gets busy and for some families, you can go an awfully long time without talking.  When our husband’s introduce us to the spouses of those they serve with, we aren’t going to even get along with all of them, that’s just reality.

Truly, we may have the opportunity to meet the kind of sisters that you will be close to for decades, that you can stumble out of their guestroom and grunt at while making coffee in the morning.

But just because every one doesn’t turn into that kind of friendship that doesn’t detract from who they still are. They may be the kind of sisters that you don’t see eye to eye with. The kind that you just maybe don’t have a lot in common with, the kind you just might not find that you hang out socially.

But it doesn’t really matter if they are the sister that you love to spend every moment with or the one you are happy to only see at that mess dinner, in the end you still know that when the deployment has been far too long, when you’re posted to a new city and they are the only ones you know at first, or when, Heaven forbid, that doorbell rings for someone in the family….

They’re still there.

When we can see the value in both those types of relationships that we are given as part of our journey, we can become that support and encouragement for each other, knowing that every sister might not be our best friend, but will still be our family.

Those military members have the right idea (don’t tell them, you know how they let that stuff go to their head). When I look at the people in our lives that are part of our military community, my perspective changes when I see them less as friends and more as family. We are spread out all over the country. We don’t always get along. We have different lifestyles, different life stages. We have different beliefs, support different politics, make different choices. We might not have *chosen* each other.

Push comes to shove, though, we are in each other’s corner.

In the end, that’s worth it all, isn’t it?

Comments

comments

Related posts:

Military Community Bullying and my Bedroom Closet Building Military Communities: On Resiliency and Entitlement Month of the Military Child: Canadian Military Kids in April What’s 3432.87 kilometers between friends?…