I was invited a few days ago to escort the stars to the red carpet and to be available to any reporters who wanted to interview real military spouses.  It sounded like a fun night so I jumped at the chance. 

When I called Elysia and asked her if she wanted to hear something funny, she just said “uh oh.”  I guess I’ve earned it, but she did agree to attend and we gambled and took Citrus with us. 

They showed next week’s episode in the old Red Cross Building at Walter Reed, and invited wounded warriors, their families, and other servicemembers.  The place was packed.

Lee Woodruff, wife of news anchor Bob Woodruff, gave an amazing speech about what she went through when her husband was almost killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq and her understanding of what military families experience.  If I can get a transcript, I’ll post it.

Brigid Brannagh then addressed the audience and barely said a sentence before being overwhelmed with emotion.  She spent the day at Walter Reed meeting with soldiers and their families, and then being in front of a packed audience was too much.  She regained her composure and made it through, as did Sally Pressman.  Both of them couldn’t say enough how much they appreciated being able to represent everyone’s stories on the show.

Only in the past few days have I realized how many people watch the program, both military and those with no connections to the military.  It is the highest rated series in Lifetime’s 23-year history, and it is because the scenes are very authentic. 

It was quite something to watch the episode with several hundred families and wounded warriors.  There are sappy moments and silly moments — which make it fun – but at its heart it manages to capture quite a lot of how families cope with war. 

If there ever was a tough audience with a critical eye for the facts of military community, this was it.  By the end most of the audience was wiping tears away.  Wives, husbands, wounded soldiers, survivors.  Everyone except for our 2 year old daughter, who has been particularly enamored of one character (Trevor LeBlanc, Roxy’s husband) and talked about him  through most of the screening.

We mingled afterwards and Citrus chatted a bit with Sheila Casey while her husband – General George Casey, the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army and former command of the forces in Iraq — was elsewhere in the crowd. 

The episode will show next Sunday at 10pm.  I did not take many pictures, but will undoubtedly receive a few from Lifetime in the next few days and will post them then.

Our daughter, Citrus, is almost three years old.  It seems like only yesterday that she was not much larger than a rich amber ale.

Soon she will be transitioning into pre-K at the base CDC (Child Development Center), which has been great place for her the last year and a half.  It’s just too bad we have to drive 24 miles to get there. 

Pick your poison:  Drive the Washington DC Beltway during rush hour, or drive through Washington DC.  And cross the Anacostia river twice no matter what.  (The meandering line shows the fastest route.)

For us, child care has been a paradox of military life.  On the one hand, it is less expensive than civilian providers, the care is top-notch, and the teachers understand the unique issues that military children face.  On the other hand, our last round of getting into a CDC was a nightmare and made a deployment and PCS move unnecessarily more stressful. 

Elysia was already doing a geobachelor tour (living apart) so that I could keep my job in Washington when we learned that her command in Norfolk was going to deploy.  Citrus was going to live with me in Maryland, and we immediately set out to get on child care waiting lists.

Civilian providers were quickly ruled out — we had a few month’s notice, but their waiting lists were longer than one year.  I contacted Military OneSource, which provides case workers to help with such things, and they identified about 70 daycares within reasonable distance of our house.  Not one had an opening.

We thought we were going to be okay because the CDC at the Army’s Walter Reed Annex is located 1.5 miles from our house and the nearest Navy CDC is 3.3 miles away at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda.  But it turned out that Citrus could attend neither.

Walter Reed takes Army families first, and NNMC first serves families who work on that installation.  Because Elysia’s command was based in Norfolk we were way down the list.  It made no difference that she was about to be deployed.  It looked as though we could only get military care if I moved to Virginia, giving up my job.  In which case I would not need child care.

We did stay on the Walter Reed waiting list for more than a year.  The system was designed to kick us off the list.  If you do not call every quarter, you lose your place.  They generally did not return calls so I was rarely confident that we were still on the list.  

After several months, Walter Reed introduced a new program which would guarantee a spot if you could show that you sought but could not find civilian care.  If you didn’t try, you were removed from the list.  But I tried only to be told that the program only benefited Army families on the list.  We could only lose. 

The last I heard from Walter Reed, in 2007 after Elysia came back from overseas, there was an influx of new Army families and we were bumped far down the list.  We never heard again from them.

The simple explanation, we are reminded often, is that military child care is not an entitlement.  Yet at the same time, various DoD officials state that providing services to military families helps retention rates in a time when every servicemember is needed.  The bottom line is that on-base day care is a great benefit but there are not enough spots for everyone.  You have to be a real advocate for your child. 

As for giving priority to one service over another, I have no explanation.  Soldiers and sailors are serving alongside each other overseas but their children may not be treated like “one of the family” depending on the base.  Army vs. Navy vs. Air Force.  Oh, and the 8 day care spots at the Coast Guard in DC.

In the end, and out of desperation, we found an opening at Bolling Air Force Base 24 miles away instead of at the Walter Reed CDC which is almost walking distance from our house.  The care at Bolling is fantastic and at this point we are likely to stay there until we have to move. 

In the grand scheme of things we really can’t complain about how things turned out.  For all I know, things have changed in the last year (but good luck finding the CDC priority policies online).  But we can still hope that it becomes easier for the next round of parents who are deployed.

It just wasn’t the same.

 But they are not as welcoming as this store in Sioux City that I spotted days after graduating in 2000 and driving across the country to meet Elysia at her first duty station in Bremerton, Washington.

Congratulations Class of 2000 Now WIC Approved

A distant shot of the panel.  The blue dot is where I was sitting.

Darn, just missed me!

Hmmmm.  I swear I wasn’t scratching myself or something.

The camera pans across the group.  Hey there I am!

[I found the YouTube video via the MOAA Spouse Blog]

My experience thus far is that male civilian spouses are often invisible. I think it is due to three things: First, there are a lot of men out there who do not bond with other men. Second, traditional gender roles dictate that women are going to run the social and family events. And third, the military community has a long and proud tradition of supporting wives. Which means that when I visit family service centers on base or approach symposium registration tables, other people wait to see if I am actually attending or simply got lost on the way to the restroom.

There were about 100 spouses and I was the only male civilian with a wife on active duty. I did meet a guy who retired after 40 years at the Newport News shipyard.  He is married to a retired Air Force officer.  We bonded over sticking out like sore thumbs.

Aside from sessions on federal/state advocacy efforts, staying employed through multiple moves, and helping marriages survive deployments, there were some very personal and inspirational stories.

One woman shared with the audience the story of how her husband died a week after returning from Iraq in 2005.  Her loss was compounded by the financial stress of finding out that his death benefits were only a fraction of what they would have been had he died a week earlier overseas. She single-handedly lobbied several Senators and had the disparity addressed for all surviving spouses.

Another military spouse and daughter of a military widow co-founded the Military Spouse and Family Legacy Association with another spouse who lost her husband in Iraq.  Their goal is to build a national monument to military families.  Nicole Alcorn of MSFLA shared how the idea came to them and how they have put their plan into action.

I also met Tanya Biank, an Army brat and Army wife.  Her book, ”Under the Sabers:  The Unwritten Code of Army Wives” was turned into a television series last year.  Army Wives is now Lifetime’s highest rated series ever.  [On a sidenote, one of the Army Wives is played by Catherine Bell, who starred on the television show JAG.] 

Tanya interviewed me a few weeks ago for an article on military spouse blogs so it was nice to meet her in person.  Many readers here — Hi!  Please say hello! — found my blog because she mentioned my Flat Mommy project.

I also met a few folks from MOAA, including Sue Hoppin and re-introduced myself to their legislative director whom I met through AARP a few years ago.  All in all, it was worth stopping by!

Here is Elysia posing for an “I Want You . . . to be the King” poster.  Sadly it won’t wind up at the Washington Navy Yard, where several years ago the Navy-Marine Corps Appellate Defense Division had an Elvis shrine and the JAG officers traded around a blue suede shoes doormat to those who prevailed in court.  (It was good to be the King.)

After hanging out near a giant Elvis possibly related to the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and listening to one tribute artist — one was enough for us — we headed to Beale Street BBQ for the tasty goodness of deep fried pickles.

Our first weekend here we were driving to the base and a dog ran in and out of traffic.  We pulled over, as did a woman in a real beater of a car.  She and I chased after the dog for about a block and a half until she was able to grab his collar.  The dog pulled her into a ditch.

As she got up and brushed herself off, the first person we met in Virginia Beach introduced herself:  “Just all in a day’s work — I work for PETA”. 

PETA is headquartered in Norfolk, but the odds were much greater than we would first meet someone in Navy.  There are about nine military bases in the greater Hampton Roads area, with 110,000 active duty servicemembers.  Plus, another 200,000 reservists, retirees and family members.  40,000 to 50,000 military spouses (and a lot of children’s consignment stores).

With about 16 percent of the local population connected to the military, you can imagine that among younger people the percentage in the military is enormous.  When a ship is deployed or comes back, it is front page news.  Families here know firsthand what it means to be at war.

Our other early experience in Virginia Beach when we moved there a few years ago was a hail and farewell party we were invited to at a karaoke bar.  Somehow I had made it through life without knowing “Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl)” by Looking Glass.  It plays here all the time.  So much so that I don’t think it was a coincidence that our doula, a Navy brat, was named Brandy.

Someone also sang Imagine and I was surprised to see that the streaming lyrics omitted “And no religion too”.  Maybe not surprising given that Christian Broadcasting Network and the 700 Club are headquartered here.  When you fly into Norfolk Airport you are greeted with a giant mural of a warship firing its guns – I think it is the USS Wisconsin doing something like this – and then there is a lifesize poster of Pat Robertson’s Regent University with a giant picture of John Ashcroft giving the commencement address.

Virginia Beach turned out to be a nice place to live even though we barely settled in.  There is at least one good Cantonese restaurant (Jade Villa), and we found a few places that made good New York style pizza (Bella Pizza), something impossible to find in Maryland.  Even with the hordes of summer beach tourists, it is a calm and relaxing place. 

For the next few days we are camped out at the Navy Lodge, taking a vacation that has the familiarity of home.

We have yet to see an amazing farmer’s market here.  Downtown Washington DC has a smaller market, but a friend has noted that it must be run by retired Beltway PhDs who moved to the suburbs and became artisans in retirement.  $13 small blocks of cheese, $6 loaves of bread. They make Whole Foods and its $4.50 artichokes look reasonable.

When shopping off base there is sometimes some sticker shock because the commissaries are about 30 percent less expensive than civilian grocery stores.  Unfortunately, the produce at all but the largest commissaries is often in pretty bad shape.

Going to a pick-your-own farm is a good deal and it is a fun family activity.  Usually there is sampling involved and there is a lot to do before you get tired.