The first time I spoke to the man who became my husband, I called him an a-hole. Except I added the s’s.
I was 25 and single, and I was working on my tan poolside at a hotel in Fort Lauderdale, where I’d just gone on an interview for a job I hoped to get. A really hairy, creepy guy had been bothering me, and when the guy I would eventually have three babies with swam up and asked what I was reading, I thought it was Creepy Guy talking to me again. I told him to “take the f-ing hint, a-hole.” (But I pronounced all the missing letters.)
Fortunately, he laughed.
He likes a challenge.
When he told me he was in the Army, I said, “So long as you’re not one of those psychopaths.”
He laughed again.
There was a lot I didn’t know about military life back then. A lot.
He and I dated long distance and, within just a few weeks, we decided to get married. I’d love to say that I knew from the start that he was my soul mate but, truthfully, I just thought he was hot and funny, and getting married seemed like a good idea.
See — my instincts aren’t always wrong.
Back then I thought that all soldiers started out as privates and that if they were really good at shooting and marching and stuff, they would get promoted all the way to general.
Back then I assumed that I’d become BFFs with the wives of all the guys he worked with.
I thought that the ladies who work the phones and front desk at the clinic and ID card facility would have some concept of customer service.
I thought that all spouses would be welcomed and regarded as full members of the military community.
Oh, how wrong I was.
But I also thought that everyone in the military community would share the same political beliefs and basic philosophy.
I thought that this strange new world I was moving into would primarily affect my husband and that my life would mostly stay the same.
I thought that only my husband would get to experience the pride of service.
Back then I thought that the war would just be a temporary blip and then things would go back to normal. I thought that all of our friends would live to see middle age.
Like I said, I was wrong about so much.
I’m 11 years into marriage and military life. It hasn’t been at all what I expected, and it hasn’t been at all easy. But it has been amazing. I’m truly grateful for every moment of it, the good times and the bad. I’m grateful to have grown more as a person than I think that I — that girl who just wanted to get a great tan and pursue my own interests — would have grown under different circumstances.
And I’m super grateful that the guy I called an a-hole didn’t taking the f-ing hint.
