Why is it that the only dry-eyed military wife we ever see is a fictional character? In the third episode of Stephen Bochco's “Over There,” the FX series about soldiers in Iraq and their families at home, one of the segments actually featured a military wife who was not in tears.  

She had plenty to cry about.  Her young husband was an amputee addicted to painkillers, a bad patient who was getting worse. Yet this chick in the black eyeliner did not sit around crying about it. Instead she advocated for him, argued with him, and cleaned him up when he was puking from withdrawal pains.

She was exactly the kind of tough military wife I have always known. She was not the kind of military wife we usually see in the media.  Why is that? Why are we a nation that only believes in a pitiable military wife?

We don't seem to have the same requirement of men who marry our female military members.  From them, we don't know what to expect. Strength, maybe. Certainly not tears.  

Yet when it comes to a military wife, we seem only able to see her when she is crying.  Crying because her husband deployed. Crying over financial hardships. Crying at homecomings.  Sick with tears at a funeral.  

The rest of the time the military wife is invisible to us. It is almost as if the moment a woman marries a man in uniform she is drawn in disappearing ink, only to reappear when wet with tears.  

It's a strange way to live.  I've been a military columnist for eight years, a Navy wife for 18 years, and the daughter of an Air Force fighter pilot for almost 40 years. I've spent my life with military people. Yet I don't know all these crying women. If our 600,000 military spouses really cried as much as they do on TV we would all be able to surf to work.  

I don't mean to make light of their tears -- especially in a time of war. Unless they are shed over a folded flag, military spouses only cry for about 17 minutes of an entire deployment.  Ask them.  

The rest of the time they are champions at coping.  They are picking up a grocery-roasted chicken after work.  Listening to spelling words on the way to football practice. Checking the email.  Again.  Filling the washer at midnight with only the palmetto bugs for company.  

These women are normal. So very normal. So why aren't they allowed to appear in public unless they are crying?  

Sometimes I think that it is just because the war at home is hard to photograph.  It isn't lit by the rocket's red glare.  Instead the Homefront is lit by brake lights, oven lights, and Christmas tree lights.  That ain't drama.  That ain't pathos.  That ain't the stuff of Pulitzer Prizes.  

But our inability to see military wives without tears hurts them -- burdens them.  It makes them appear, not as stalwarts to admire, but as fools married to men who will leave.  We cling to this cultural image of military wives as weak creatures who stand on their front porches and wait for bad news.  

That is simply wrong. Grossly inaccurate. Military life is not for the weak and not for the tearful. Instead, the ones who choose to be married to these fine people in uniform find that that military life is for the practical, the problem solvers, the improvisers, the strategists, the lovers of good men.  

Despite the flaws of “Over There,” Bochco is at least trying to show more of the life of the military family than we have seen before.  And we need to see it. Because military couples are not so different than everyone else in this country.  They are getting through their “crowded hour” -- the kind of crowded hour that comes to every family, military or civilian.  

I still want to see military spouses in tears sometimes.  They earn those tears of sorrow and loneliness, fear and fury, pride and joy.  So much joy. But I also want to see the military wife laughing with her kids at the beach, losing herself in her work, celebrating with her girlfriends, talking to her mom every night on the phone. All those things make up the real life of a military wife.  That is so much to be proud of.  And nothing to cry over.