military life

Waving the Flag at an OU Football Game

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On Saturday, my spouse and I, along with friends of ours, were invited to go onto the field at the University of Oklahoma and participate in the opening moments of the game. We were allowed to help wave the giant flag during the National Anthem.

What an image!

Let me preface this post by saying that I am not a huge fan of night time football games since I have had children. For some reason, the cold doesn’t agree with me. Correction, I know exactly why the cold and I aren’t friends. I was diagnosed with Raynaud’s. This disease affects the blood flow to the fingers and toes. What that equates to is white fingers and/or toes during the cold months. The cold and I are NOT friends. And this is not pleasant, by any means.

So, I went into the night thinking that it would be a short one.We arrived on the practice field in the late afternoon. The sun was still shining and the temperatures were in the 70s. I peeled off the sweatshirt and got ready to rehearse.

Happy to help.

“Wild Bill” was our instructor on what to do. He sectioned us off into three groups initially. There were “holders”-those 60 people who held onto the flag and didn’t move. Then there were the 60 “movers” who unfurled the flag by walking backward. And finally the “sides”. The “sides” were further divided into “stars” and “stripes”, each containing 30 people. After those assignments were doled out, we were left with excess people.

Those people were assigned as “runners”. I panicked when I heard our task; I couldn’t be expected to run the length of the field, could I?

Alas, that wasn’t the case. As a “runner”, our job was to remain underneath the flag and make sure it “waved”. What was ironic was that when I had talked to friends about the evening, I had told them that I was hoping to recreated elementary school P.E. class. You know, where you’d have the parachute and you’d run underneath it to the other side? It turns out that is almost exactly what I did!

Having fun at rehearsal for the flag ceremony

My job was to run underneath the flag and hit it so visually it would “wave”. I tried my darnedest but let me tell you, I failed more often than I succeeded. My height is a detriment to the job given to me. So instead, I took photos of my friends doing their job under the flag.

It was chaos to get us out to the field for the actual ceremony. Needless to say, game day isn’t a well organized machine. By the time we were ready, temperatures had dropped and I was lamenting the fact that I peeled off my sweatshirt and coat. Tailgaters were everywhere, students were hyped up and spectators were meandering all over the place. But once we were in place, it was go time.

Weather be damned!

The National Anthem started and we all did our jobs like good soldiers. According to my husband, who stayed in the stands, the flag looked magnificent. No one would ever know that I failed in my job. Others took up the mantle for me and made sure that our banner waved as it was supposed to.

I am happy to report that every once in a while, I was able to touch the flag myself. I felt a part of a bigger machine. I helped make the banner wave and salute our service men and women who have defended it. It is an experience I will never forget.

The Liberating Realization That Nothing Is In Your Control

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This article first appeared on militaryspouse.com’s website on August 8, 2017.

She gave up!

It’s happened to us all, or it will. It’s the day you finally give up, the day you realize that nothing is in your control and you surrender to it all. It’s very liberating. And as a military spouse, I wish all of you the peace and happiness you will find when you throw in the towel.

When I was first married, I was as bright eyed and hungry for adventure as most are. How could I not be? My fiancé had promised me a life of travel and experiences. While he was still at the Air Force Academy, he filled in his dream sheet.

Ah, the intoxicating form that makes us all go crazy.

It is billed as a way to state your desires and have them fulfilled. And at this point in our lives, I believed it. We wrote down our wishes and fantasized about where we would start our Air Force career. Our top choices were, of course, overseas assignments. After that came locations on the East or West coast. We are New Englanders after all and the ocean calls to us.

Imagine our surprise when assignments dropped and we were relocating to Omaha, Neb.! That’s nowhere near an ocean OR anywhere exotic.

Let’s call this Disappointment No. 1.

Eek!

But as a good military spouse, I looked at it as a new adventure anyhow. Nevertheless, it was somewhere I’d never been.

We arrived at Offutt AFB in the middle of the summer and my husband began his life in the command post.

That job required shift work so our schedules very rarely meshed. Disappointment No. 2.

Our first Christmas had him working mids while I had the time off since I taught in public schools.

That would be Disappointment No. 3. I cried quite a few times that holiday season.

After a year, my spouse cross-trained into a new field and we were heading to Florida for training! Woohoo! I get my ocean!

But wait, Disappointment No. 4 is on the horizon.

We are at Tyndall AFB and located nearby is a papermill. So, every day the breeze would deliver that lovely smell. I tried to be positive since I got my coastal living but it was hard since I was pregnant and my senses were heightened.

I knew that after training, we would be heading to Oklahoma. Disappointment No. 5, but at least I was prepared.

Really?

Back in the early 1990s, there wasn’t much to brag about in Oklahoma City. But we bought our first house and found great friends. Life was good — for a while.

Around the three-year point into that assignment, our friends started getting new duty stations. My spouse and I began mapping out where we would like to go and how our lives would look at each new base. He would hear of new assignments and we would start dreaming.

“Saudi Arabia is available.  What do you think?”

“It’s not my first choice, but it could be fun.”

“They need someone in Hawaii.”

“Duh. You don’t need to ask, just put in for it.”

“How about Alaska?”

“It’s so cold there but I guess I could do two to three years. It would be different.”

You get the picture.

And here come Disappointments Nos. 6 to 25. 

Each time he would talk about a change of scenery and it didn’t happen, I was crushed. More disappointments came as our friends would go to new bases and we remained in Oklahoma.

After five and a half years, we moved to Georgia. I was beginning to think that I could surrender to the Air Force gods and go with the flow. But I would be sucked back in whenever my husband would pull out that carrot called the dream sheet and I would get my hopes up once again.

The final straw for me came when a higher-ranking officer told us that my husband was getting a remote so she could assign him to teach at Weapons School in Las Vegas.While I looked forward to Vegas, I dreaded the remote. It was that confirmation that we are pawns in the game of Air Force chess that I finally surrendered.

Peace out

Afterward, I no longer took stock in the dream sheet or my spouse’s charts that plotted what would happen if we got assignment X or Y. I gave myself permission to ride the wave without stress. My spouse would try to drag me back in but I couldn’t do it. And let me tell you, I was much happier this way. I never say that I “gave up;” I say that I retained my sanity.

So now as a seasoned spouse, I try to pass my knowledge off to others.

We can’t control much but we can abandon the hold that “what if” has on our lives.

For some people, that concession may never come. But for others, the release of that one area of our lives can be so freeing that everything else seems easier. It is a sweet surrender.

I’m free!