Wife of deployed ‘Air Force Guy’: Here’s a day in my life on auto-pilot

I was looking through Doonesbury’s Sandbox the other day and saw this interesting post from an Air Force wife, married to "AFG," about her life while he is deployed.

I’m often just putting one foot in front of the other. A big part of my day is trying to appear "normal". Whatever is going on inside my head or wherever my husband is deployed to, I have to take the kids to Girl Scouts, Cub Scouts, Gymnastics, Swimming, and Boxing lessons. And I’ve got to figure out how to group everything around the times AFG might possibly call (because I will not miss those).

I’ve gotten really good at squashing down inner turmoil to get through the day. It’s a defense mechanism and we all develop it eventually. It seems that there is always a crisis, and if we holed up in the house for each and every one we’d never leave. And the nice thing about putting one foot in front of the other is that eventually you end up somewhere and find yourself enjoying things.

In any case, I’m on auto-pilot a lot. I’m multi-tasking parenting issues, planning a menu, grading schoolwork, getting laundry done, writing, planning for holidays, getting birthday parties planned, and making sure the dog gets to the vet when necessary, among other things. Meanwhile a large part of my brain is wondering what my husband is doing. Is he cold? Is he hot? Does he have enough clean t-shirts? What is he thinking about? Is he okay? I’m distracted, yes. And I’m sorry. I don’t mean to forget things, be late, or in general act like "Hurricane Airforcewife." Trust me, it could be a lot worse. Most of the time everything goes as planned, but when that kink hits my schedule . . .