Last weekend, I got to do something I'd never done before.
I got to see a friend become one of us.
When I read about my friend's engagement on her blog, I was so excited. Then I realized my husband would not be able to go. It's so funny to me that in celebrating my friend becoming a milspouse, I had to exercise one of the basic tenets of milspousing: You will have to do things alone if you want to do them at all. Our spouses aren't always home, and even when they are, they can't always get leave.
So I went to Hawaii by myself.
On the plane ride over, I sat by a cute couple on their way to the beach for a vacation. The husband remarked that it'd been two years since they'd taken a trip, so they splurged on a romantic place like the beaches of Hawaii. It made me realize another tenet of milspousing: You and your spouse will rarely use your leave days to go somewhere "romantic."
AirForceWIfe has said repeatedly that you have to enjoy your duty stations because vacation time is usually reserved for going home. That rings true for me. We have spent the majority of our leave days since my husband joined the Army shuttling back and forth between our parents' houses. We don't ever go anywhere "romantic." But as I thought about it some more, I realized that any time my husband and I have together is romantic time. We're just as happy sitting in our house eating popcorn and watching kung fu as we would be on the beach in Hawaii. When you know the anguish of separation, any moment shared is romantic.
During the wedding ceremony, the priest praised my friend and her new husband for overcoming "obstacles of distance and danger." They went through a year-long deployment as boyfriend and girlfriend and came out of it as strong as a couple can get. She's already far more attuned to the heartaches of being a milspouse than I was when I got married. She's well-versed in another tenet of milspousing: You will face obstacles of distance and danger; how well you deal with them is up to you. She passed with flying colors. I'm so excited to welcome her into our world.
And of course, she saw firsthand one of the greatest tenets of milspousing: Your spouse looks so hot in that uniform.
