(Can I just say that most days I love Florida, but some days I realllllllly love Florida.)

The woman who said that had to say some variation of that same sentence four times before it dawned on me that she meant she had a red fox as a pet. And that her pet red fox was always escaping. And when I finally realized that that’s what she meant, all I could think was, “Well, duh, it’s a fox,” but not, “Who the hell has a fox as a pet?”

Because I’m from the South. And we will domesticate anything.

First, though, I should explain that this conversation took place yesterday, on the playground of the Presbyterian church about a quarter mile from my house. My dog Hank, a yellow lab — a very much domesticated breed of actual pet — had again escaped because, well, duh, that’s what Hanks do. This time Hank made it to the Presbyterian church where the friendly neighborhood fox owner/preschool teacher corralled him onto the playground because it was fenced in, and then called me to come get him because my number is on his collar.

But sitting here now, mulling over that exchange, I got to thinking: why are Southerners so eager to bring the outside, in?

When I was growing up in Nashville my guitar teacher (because everyone in Nashville has a guitar teacher)  had a flying squirrel he had “tamed”. (in quotation marks because that thing was anything but tame.) He kept it in a drawer when students were there for lessons, but sometimes he opened the drawer and, as you might expect, the pissed off flying squirrel would, well, fly.

It was awesome.

A few years ago my husband and I were at a gun show in Fayetteville, NC (I know, I know, a gun show…what did we expect?) and we were talking to an exhibitor about dogs. We had just gotten Hank and in those days we talked about dogs to anyone who seemed even mildly interested. We should have guessed by the airbrushed image of the Indian chief, in front of a dream catcher, backlit with moonlight, on her t-shirt that she wasn’t likely to own, oh, say, a Jack Russell. But as she told us about her dog’s remarkable hunting and guarding abilities and how important security was up in the mountains where she lived in a house “off the grid” (said with great pride) we broke down and asked what breed her dog was.

“A wolf.”

We waited for more then finally asked. “A real wolf?”

Turns out she found him as a puppy and kept him.

Which shouldn’t have surprised my husband as much as it did. For years I’d heard him talk about the freakishly large, freakishly aggressive, pointy-eared cat his grandmother in Virginia used to have. When I finally saw a picture of the “cat” it all made sense.

It was a bobcat.

“He liked her, but he didn’t like anyone else,” was all my husband said, shrugging, as he looked at the picture with fresh eyes and found that he agreed with my breed classification. Which, by the way, puts his grandmother almost on par with the guy in NC who uttered the greatest sentence I’ve ever heard: “I got this here baby tiger at bike week in Daytona.”

There is so much right — and wrong — with that.

All of which brings me to the greatest what-were-you-thinking exotic animal story I’ve ever heard. My friend Valerie, who grew up in Jackson, Tenn., recently told the story of her sister Vicky and a pet cougar named Tico:

“Vicky was in high school and her boyfriend got her the baby cougar as a gift,” Valerie said matter-of-factly, as if everyone gives their high school girlfriend a deadly feline as a token of affection, “but Mama said she didn’t want that cougar in the house and wouldn’t let Vicky bring him inside.” (Logical.)

“So Vicky took Tico everywhere with her, but she had to leave him in her [Mazda] 626 when she worked her shift at Walmart, and Tico would get so pissed!” 

(Okay… pet cougar… locked in a car … in the Walmart parking lot… who wouldn’t pay to see that? )

“Tico shredded that 626 so bad and eventually he got so big Vicky couldn’t keep him anymore and so she gave him back to her boyfriend.”

(Who did what with him? We don’t know. Maybe he took him to bike week in Daytona.)

2013 Parenting:

6 a.m. Wake-up

6:17  Hit snooze for the second time

6:30 Get up, make bed, let the dog out, make the coffee, wake the kids

6:36 Scream upstairs “If you don’t get out of bed now you’re going to be late and miss the bus! And I do NOT want to drag everybody out of the house just to drive you to school!”

6:45 Pour the cereal. Pretend it’s nutritious. Deliver silent self-lecture on how eating cereal with milk is no worse, and probably way-better, than something totally unhealthy like Toaster Strudel. Give the kids vitamins as a back up measure. Remind self to buy kid version of fish oil to add to their regimen.

7 – 7:37 Walk in circles around the living room, alternately yelling at kids to “hurry up!” and “put on your shoes!” Add in three extra laps while trying to remember what I was walking to get in the first place.

7:38. Crap. Totally forgot to let the dog back in. He’s not in the yard. Must have jumped the fence. Again.

7:47 Walk with kids to the bus stop, two minutes late. Again. Spy the dog in the distance, running in circles on a neighbor’s lawn. Reason that he must have learned that trick from me. Debate whether to a) go with the kids to get the dog and risk missing the bus; b) leave some or all the kids at the bus stop and run for the dog, risking them being kidnapped or hit by a car(s); or c) wait for the bus and hope the dog stays put or finds his own way home. Opt for c. He doesn’t stay put. Silently hope that he doesn’t find his own way home.

8 Turn on “Oscar’s Oasis” for the preschooler and put the baby in her “cage”. Turn on my computer and check Facebook. Recall that once upon a time I had dreams and goals but am too tired to remember them, much less care. Play “Gems with Friends” on my phone instead.

8:12 Notice that I have 43 emails alerting me to LinkedIn connections and endorsements. Vow to figure out how LinkedIn works. Tomorrow. Perhaps that’s the key to making this work-at-home thing profitable.

8:17 Read an article about how tween girls are bullying each other on Instagram. Now I have to figure out Instagram, too, including learning that the cool kids just call it “Insta.” Post the article to Facebook.

8:27 According to friends’ comments on my Facebook Instagram story post, predators are stalking kids who play online video games (like Gems? NO!!!) and using social media like Facebook (duh), Twitter (that’s still around?), Pinterest (thought that was just for craft projects…what’s next, Etsy?), Tumblr (huh?), Reddit (wha?), GooglePlus (that took off?) and MySpace (WTH – MySpace? I have to worry about Facebook’s trashy cousin again?) to meet and groom kids… Sidebar: start wondering why anyone needs StumbleUpon? Stumbling upon things is the easiest thing to do online without help… My friends recommend keeping track of all of my kids’ accounts and passwords and monitoring these daily, if not hourly. A few even reference the violence in video games and how it causes sociopathic behavior. They say that kids should never be allowed to play video games without a parent watching. (What?!! Well, then what is the point of video games?!!)

8:43 Eye the liquor cabinet and wonder if it’s too early for a cocktail. Maybe one with coffee in it? I’ve had LinkedIn and Twitter accounts since 2009 and still haven’t made time to monitor MY OWN feeds. I don’t even know MY OWN passwords. Realize that there’s no way I’ll ever remember those long-buried dreams if I’m up to my earlobes in under-age Insta feeds.

9:05 Click on Pinterest to look for a crock pot recipe. Am re-directed to a galaxy, nay, a universe, of mommy-blogs. Wonder who in the hell has time to photograph a sage-rubbed roasted chicken with all this newsfeed stalking (and, um, parenting) we’re supposed to be doing?

9:37 Have finally cleared the inboxes for my seven (why?!) email accounts. 236 messages (in addition to the LinkedIn alerts) have come in since 11 p.m. 222 are advertisements from companies I’ve bought something from in the past. Seven are newsletters from charities I’ve donated to. Four are related to the kids activities. Three are actual, honest-to-God, missives from actual honest-to-God people. Remind self to unsubscribe from all these mailing lists. Attempt to do so but 12 minutes and 2 successful unsubscriptions later, quit. Maybe if I just start a new email address I can ignore these accounts…

10 Google various therapeutic programs I’ve been meaning to research for the kids. Horseback riding, scouting, karate, swimming…  Realize that every kid needs therapy today because every kid has been diagnosed with a condition. When I was a kid we called these therapy sessions “lessons” and “sports” and we called the conditions “weird”, “annoying”, “energetic” and “rude”.

10:15 Put the baby down for her nap. Thank God. She was making me feel guilty with all that quiet play she was doing in her cage.

10:32 Phone rings. Lady says she has my dog. Consider asking her to keep him… Get the baby up, put the kids in the car, go get the dog.

11:30 It’s too late to make up the missed nap. Lunchtime!

12 Try to keep the baby awake for just a little bit longer by playing “crawl parade” on the floor with both girls. Crawl parade is hell on the knees. And boring. The girls love it.

12:17 Still crawling. Maybe this will be the next exercise craze. Maybe next year Beyonce will release an exercise video called “Crawling Back to Sexy” or something. It could be like hula hooping. Reflect on the posse of overweight ladies I saw hula hooping on the sidewalk last week. They would look no more ridiculous crawling.

12:19 The TruGreen guy is looking in the window. Watching. How long has he been there? Put the preschooler at the table with a coloring book and lay the baby down for a nap before answering the door.

12:43 Am now a TruGreen customer. Not really sure what TruGreen is, just wanted the pushy salesman to go away. Google TruGreen. It’s pesticides. Realize that pesticides on my lawn don’t really mesh with my commitment to eat organic this year. Vow to cancel TruGreen. Decide to blame it on the hubs in order to spare myself the last ditch “don’t cancel” sales pitch.

1:04 Back to the computer to do some worky-work, as opposed to mommy-wifey-work.

1:30 Still haven’t put anything in the crock pot. There’s still time if we eat late and use the “high” setting. Look at JustaPinch.com and Recipe.com, then decide to use the tablet because it’s more portable. Browse the Epicurious and Cook’s Illustrated apps for recipes.

2:30 Crap. Got lost in a world of electronic recipes and phone calls from doctors’ offices. Throw some chicken breasts, potatoes, onions and carrots into the crock pot, make a wish, and hope the crock pot will work its magic. Toss in garlic salt as an afterthought. Wonder if the garlic salt contains iodized or sea salt. Briefly consider if any of the veggies are on the “Dirty Dozen” list of things to always buy organic. Glance at the massive size of the chicken breasts on top of the veggies and guiltily recall the “Food, Inc.” documentary. Consider building a chicken coop and raising chickens in my own backyard. Remind self to call TruGreen and cancel. No point raising chickens on chemically-treated grass.

2: 39 Ugh. Realize that if I raise my own chickens for meat then I’ll have to slaughter, pluck and disembowel them, too. Google “slaughter chicken.” Vomit in mouth. Decide that steep price for organic chicken is really not so steep.

2:47 Google “pest control”. What use is going organic and chemical-free inside my home if I’m paying Terminix to spray the outside. Maybe I should cancel Terminix, too? Still haven’t called TruGreen…

3 Who knew you could kill ants with Borax? Damn you, Pinterest! I’m sucked in again!

3:23 Child #1 is home from school, soaked. Wants to know why I didn’t pick him up from the bus stop. Doesn’t understand when I explain that I was busy saving our family from pesticides and hormones.

3:47 Homework is hell — on me. His meds have worn off and the privacy cubicle we erected as a homework station has only peaked his little sister’s curiousity. She keeps whining that she wants a cubicle, too. Fine, let her think that. Twenty years from now when she’s working under florescent lights in a room filled with softly playing radios and cat meme screensavers she won’t want that cubicle so much, I think.

4 Recall something about lost dreams. Start walking circles in the living room. At least the chicken in the crock pot smells good.

4:13 Yell at kids to get their cleats and shin guards on for soccer, er, therapy. Yell, “If you don’t get in the car right now you’ll both be late!”

4:32 Realize, five minutes away from the soccer field, that today is my day to be “snack mom” and I have brought no snacks. Give self silent lecture on how ridiculous it is for parents to sign kids up for sports/therapy so that our little fatties will burn 220 calories and then we fill them with 550 calories worth of Rice Krispies Treats and Gatorade. Decide to pretend I didn’t know it was my turn. Aren’t these kids all about to eat dinner, anyway?

5:25 Home for the nighttime rush: dinner, more homework, baths and bed… and then it all begins again tomorrow.

Lean in? Lean in?!! — I just wanna lie down.

http://www.bluestarfam.org/blog/view/context-is-critical

Mommy and Daddy are fighting again.

It started as a normal enough fight, one about money. It’s always about money.

But then it got ugly. They started yelling, and threatening. Little Brother and Little Sister happened to be nearby. Daddy grabbed them and held a knife to their throats. Daddy threatened to cut them, to cut off the blood and oxygen their bodies need to survive. Not one to be swayed by manipulation, Mommy called Daddy’s bluff, saying, “Go ahead. I don’t care. You want to kill them? Fine. By. Me.”

Little Brother screamed, terrified. Little Sister’s eyes grew wide, showing her feelings of betrayal. These were their parents. The people they trusted. The people who were supposed to look out for them. The kids had done nothing wrong. The money problems weren’t their fault. They had simply been going about life, doing exactly what they were supposed to do, only to be caught in their parents’ unthinking, unconscionable crossfire.

****

And this, my friends, is how sequestration looks to those of us in the military community, and to any others who stand to be a big losers if nothing is done by Friday. It’s an imperfect metaphor, of course. It doesn’t even take into account all that members of the military have sacrificed for the nation during the past 11 years, sacrifices one would hope would elicit more — not less — concern.

The White House and Congress, or simply the two political parties, depending on how you think about it, are the parents — the people my community relies upon to provide what we need to sustain, quite literally, our very lives. And now, in their bickering, they’re holding us hostage, each hoping the other will blink before one of them slips up and kills US.

In 2011 the President, frustrated by a Congress that wouldn’t work with him, proposed this horrible idea of sequestration, thinking that surely Congress would never let it get that bad. And Congress, betting that the President wouldn’t let it get that bad, either, voted to approve it, the Budget Control Act of 2011. It was a nothing more than a political game; a do-you-still-beat-your-wife-question in the form of a Congressional Act. And so now here were are. The people who can actually do something to stop the looming disaster, won’t calm down and reason with each other. Worse, they’ve all shown that they’re willing to let innocent people pay for their mistakes.

But back to the metaphor, what do you think will happen when the fight is over? Do you think the kids will ever trust the parents again?

And now that we in the military community know that our leaders — ALL OF THEM — are perfectly willing to hold us hostage in order to win nothing more than political points, we can never again trust their intentions. This game of chicken has already done irreparable damage to the relationship between the military and our political leaders.

If this were a real family, and not simply an analogy, police officers and social workers would be called in because we, the responsible adults, would recognize that these parents are absolutely unqualified, and far too selfish, to be in charge of anything.

Hi, I’m Rebekah. I’m a ‘drone parent’.

(The picture above is a ‘helicopter parent’ — my sworn enemy.)

I watch my kids from afar. I do not engage in their every activity. I let them argue with other children and I don’t try to settle the arguments. I let them fall down, sometimes getting hurt. When extreme danger in imminent, I swoop in and act, otherwise I just survey the scene from a distance, like the pilot of an unmanned drone.

This is not negligence on my part. This is my parenting strategy, one advocated by experts like these and these. I believe in letting kids make (and learn from) their mistakes while the costs of making mistakes are small. I believe that if I protect them from themselves when they are little, they will not develop the judgement they need to make good choices when they are bigger and the costs of making mistakes are much higher.

My polar opposite is the helicopter parent but, being a drone, I tend to just ignore the helicopters. (I’m letting them learn from their mistakes, too.) But, being helicopters, it seems to be outside of their natures to just ignore me. Case in point:

Last night Bo, my 8-year-old son, had soccer practice. He’s too young to just be dropped off for practice so I have to stay and watch with my other two younger children. Rudy is 4 and Lucy  is 10 months, and neither is AT ALL interested in sitting still and watching their brother play soccer. Rudy wants to run and Lucy wants to crawl, and not even in the same direction. But I’ve found a way to manage both. The soccer area (there are several fields side by side)  has a six-feet-tall fence around the entire complex. There are no breaks in the fence and only one gate, which stays closed during practice. There are usually lots of other siblings running around and Rudy likes to play with them. My solution: I put Lucy in a jog stroller and walk laps around the complex while Rudy plays with her new friends. I’m able to constantly watch Rudy as she plays, even though I am not right next to her, and Lucy stays entertained and happy as we walk. (And I burn a few calories.) Rudy is a pretty obedient kid and likes to follow rules. She’s stays off the soccer fields and doesn’t go near the gate. She can see me at all times and knows to come and find me if she needs me, and I tend to walk right by her every five minutes or so.

I’m pretty proud of this plan. Rudy gets exercise. Mommy gets exercise. Bo gets exercise. Lucy doesn’t scream for an hour. Everyone is safe. Everyone is happy.

Well, almost everyone.

Last night as I was approaching where Rudy was playing at that moment, another mother stormed up to me, flanked on either side by three children who looked to be between 9 and 15. When I was few feet away she spat out, “Is Rudy your child?” (Naively expecting her to tell me how adorable my little girl is) I smiled brightly and said, “Yes!”

“When I asked her who was watching her, she pointed at you,” the lady said accusingly.

“Yes, I am watching her,” I replied (not quite as brightly as before. I was beginning to see where this was going.)

“Well, don’t you think you should be with her if you are watching her?” she demanded.

“No, no I don’t,” I replied and I kept on walking.

The lady’s jaw dropped and when I glanced back over my shoulder she was walking in the other direction, leaving.

I’d love to say that the encounter didn’t get to me, but it did. As parents, I think we all worry that we’re screwing up, and nothing makes us worry more than another parent telling us that we’re screwing up. I spent the next 20 minutes reminding myself that I am a good mom; that I am not negligent; that Rudy really was safe and had never been out of my sight. Then I went to my mean place and noted internally that the woman had three kids, all at least middle school-aged, who were weirdly attached to their mom in public…

But that’s not fair, so I’ll stop.

The thing is, if you do parenting well, you’ll work yourself out of a job. If you over-parent, you’ll find yourself parenting those kids well into their 30s and even 40s, and possibly parenting their kids, too.

Ain’t nobody got time for that.

My friend Lisa Cullen, the brilliant author of the brilliant novel Pastors’ Wives, asked me to participate in this little exercise in navel gazing. Never one to turn down an opportunity to check out my distended-from-three-pregnancies, still-pierced-because-I-was-in-college-in-the-’90s belly button, I accepted.

Basically, at some time a few months ago some writers came up with these questions and then sent them out to some writer friends, who sent them out to writer friends, and everyone posted their responses on their blogs. It’s pretty much a chain letter, but one for people who type all day and have books to promote. It probably started with Gillian Flynn and Nicholas Sparks, but now they’re down to me.

I tagged Lori Volkman and Molly Blake, and they should have their posts up next week, so be sure to click over and check out their belly buttons, too. (I hear Lori has an outie. Just kidding. The only thing I know about her navel, is that it’s Naval. BTW, is “Naval Gazing” the name of a military blog yet? It should be…)

I attempted to tag Siobhan Fallon but someone had already beat me to it. Still, you can read her responses here.

Anyway, read on to learn more about what I do when I’m trying to ignore my kids:

What is your working title of your book? Do I really have to answer this? Okay, It’s “Afghan Y/A Novel”. Makes you wanna just run right out and buy it, doesn’t it? Honestly, I keep waiting for that one brilliant line of dialog that is both foreshadowing and clever. It will course from my brain, through my veins, into my fingertips and just click itself out on the keyboard with a certainty like an epiphany. So, uh, yeah, for now it’s “Afghan Y/A Novel” — I suspect that at one point in time, before he stumbled into lightness, Milan Kundera was probably working on a book called “Somewhat Depressing Czechs in the ’60s” and Gabriel Garcia Marquez spent many months writing “Overly-dramatic Colombians” before he struck cholera-gold … I have faith. Someday my title will come…

Where did the idea come from for the book? The Hunger Games. I LOVED reading The Hunger Games trilogy. Suzanne Collins brilliantly wove together a tragic and riveting tale that also serves as a criticism of how modern Americans are so far removed from the realities of our own long war. At least that’s how I read it… Anyway, after spending most of this past decade trying to get people to be more interested in Karzais than Kardashians, it occurred to me that I could take a note from Suzanne Collins and present that message as entertainment! For children!

In the words of Madeleine L’Engle: “You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”

What genre does your book fall under? I suppose the working title gives this one away, but it’s Young Adult. I think. Who knows? My early readers have told me that it’s too graphic and violent for kids. We shall see…

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? Another horrible question! See, the thing is, I have three little kids. I NEVER go to the movies. The movies we watch at home are always on “Pizza Party Movie Night” (every Friday in the Sanderlin household, sometimes followed by dancing on the coffee table) and tend to feature cartoon characters in the starring roles. And I don’t really watch TV, but I don’t mean that in a “I’m-too-intellectual-to-watch-TV” way. Rather, I watch a crapload of “House Hunters International”, “American Pickers” and “Storage Wars” while I’m painting my toenails or watching the baby crawl. There are no teen stars on those shows. I even googled “teenage actors” to try to answer this question and pulled up an IMDb listing of 160 actors — NONE of whom I’d ever heard of. So I will pretend-answer this question using my only frames of reference:

Daniel Radcliffe, circa 2000.

Kirsten Dunst, circa 1998

Jerry O’Connell, circa 1986

Dev Patel, circa 2008

Jake Gyllenhaal, circa 2005

Russell Crowe, pretty much anytime

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? In the years following the war, the American ambassador to Afghanistan and his wife are kidnapped by the Taliban and their three children have to use wits and survival skills to get to safety and to help their parents.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? I’m working with an agent now, so here’s hoping this book finds a home with a publisher.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?  Well, I’ve been working on it for nearly a year now and it’s still called “Afghan Y/A Novel”, so you do the math… But, during that year I gave birth, moved 800 miles alone with three kids, and saw my husband off on his ninth deployment. (Guess where? Afghanistan! It’s much easier to stomach another deployment when I can think of him as my one-man researching team.)

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? The Hunger Games and the Shipbreaker series by Paolo Bacigalupi.

Who or what inspired you to write this book? My husband, and all of the amazing troops and military families I’ve come to know since marrying into this parallel universe. Seriously. I know that’s a sappy answer, but it’s the truth. Scout’s honor.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? It is very, very accurate. If you read about a place in the book, that place is really there in Afghanistan. When the children use a survival tactic or martial arts technique, those are tactics that would actually work in that situation.  My dream (though I’m told that the book business doesn’t really think like this) would be to incorporate some interactivity in the e-book version so that when the kids in the story use a technique, young readers can click on a link that will take them to a video of a survival expert demonstrating and discussing the technique. And then children can overthrow their parents! No, no … I don’t really mean that. (But, kids, it would work. Nudge, nudge.)

We couldn’t go into the second and third order effects of sequestration because of space and theme constraints, but there are many. For starters, the economies of military towns will suffer greatly. DoD civilians will be the first to be laid off and many have already been issued furlough notices. Who among us can afford to lose a day’s pay each week? That will be felt by every restaurant, store, car dealership, real estate agent, and so forth and so on. Further, some estimates say that as many as 200,000 active duty troops could be dismissed from service. Aside from that gesture from a seemingly not-so-grateful nation (“Welcome Home. You’re Fired.”) those lay offs will further hurt any businesses located near military towns.

And then on to the third order effects, of which there are many. The non-Defense cuts under sequestration include programs like WIC, and in some areas 30 percent of WIC recipients are in military families. Also on the chopping block? Civilian mental health resources. So, in this, the age of PTSD and TBI plaguing the military community, and school shootings and other acts of inexplicable rage horrifying the nation, we’re actually considering offering LESS help for the mentally ill. God help us all.

It’s a very scary situation, and it’s even worse for those who are deployed now, getting ready to deploy, and for the people who love them. Without a doubt, troops in combat zones this year will have less training and equipment than troops have had in the past. And I just can’t imagine any member of Congress being okay with sending his or her own child or spouse into a situation like that.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/12/opinion/sanderlin-blake-military-pay/

For weeks now I’ve been mulling over the issues raised by Ashley Broadway, the lesbian Officer’s wife who was denied membership in the Association of Bragg Officers’ Spouses. I have literally written seven very different versions of this post trying to ferret out my thoughts on the matter. On the one hand, I get why Ashley wants to join the Officers Spouses’ Club, at least I think I do. I suspect she’s trying to knock down some walls, and I support her in that. But, honestly, it’s hard for me to be excited and passionate about anyone being allowed to join a group that won’t let me in — and therein lies the rub.

My husband is Enlisted. I am an Enlisted wife. (And why does that feel like a dirty little secret?) So though I have an ID card (not having one is the reason they gave for excluding Ashley), my ID isn’t good enough to get me into the Association of Bragg Officers’ Spouses — and that stings. No matter what justification they might give for being exclusive, the very name of the organization smacks of snobbery. And, yes, I know there are some Enlisted Spouses Clubs at other posts, but there isn’t one at Bragg. Even if there was, ‘separate but equal’ is not exactly a respected American value.

In researching what to write on this issue, I found a newsletter for the Association of Bragg Officers’ Spouses and it made me cry — actual wet, ugly, tears. There were notices of tennis lessons, craft meetings, play groups and other social activities. The club was bursting with community and support. In other words, the exact things I searched for but had a hard time finding during the almost 10 years I spent at Ft. Bragg; the exact things that might have helped me ward off two bouts of clinical depression. All those years I kept thinking these types of activities would happen through my Family Readiness Group (FRG) — the Army’s-sponsored family support groups — and so, with the tireless efforts of others (many of them Officers’ wives) I volunteered countless hours with my FRG, only to see nearly every effort I poured myself into fizzle out for lack of volunteers. The most likely volunteers, I now realize, had their own club; one I and most of the other wives were not allowed to join.

Some background: The Officer/Enlisted divide was the most shocking thing for me to absorb when I married into the military world. I didn’t grow up in a military family and I was raised to believe that all people were worth the same, a value I hold dearly and deeply and one that has often put me at odds with my military world. My civilian friends are usually shocked to learn about some of the O/E separations and often describe it as a caste system. I don’t disagree with that assessment. Honestly, even 10 years after the initial shock, I still find many of the separations to be ridiculous and offensive. During those years, I helped advise the White House on military family policies; shared the stage with the President and several Cabinet members; gave hundreds of hours to military family causes and had my writings on military family issues published by dozens of national and local news outlets, and yet there’s a large segment of my world that still assumes I have nothing to offer them because of the “E” on my military dependent ID.

Is a deployment really that different for a Captain’s wife than it is for a Sergeant’s wife? Do we not all experience the same loneliness? The same frustrations settling into another new community? The same hardships in attaining our own educational and career goals? The same worries for our children’s adjustments and futures? And if our spouses can manage to accept, respect and work together, why in the world can’t we?

As the years passed, I came to understand that the military has rules — necessary rules — regarding fraternization between Officers and enlisted soldiers. And, actually, I agree with many of those rules. A commander can’t hang out with those he commands. I get that. And the commanded don’t really want to hang out with their commanders after hours. Makes sense to me. I have no problem with the Army maintaining separate Officers’ Clubs and Enlisted Clubs for this reason. Problem is, Ft. Bragg did away with those clubs a few years ago. Now there’s just the All Ranks Club — and everyone is welcomed there. Which makes it all the more puzzling that, though there is no longer a Ft. Bragg Officers’ Club, there is still an Association of Bragg Officers’ Spouses.

There’s a story every military spouse has heard, a cautionary tale. I don’t think anyone knows who actually said it and when but, like any good fable, it is used to remind us to listen to our better angels. It goes like this: A commander entered a meeting of a spouses’ group and told the ladies to seat themselves according to rank. The wives all shuffled around with the highest ranking soldier’s wife taking the first seat and so forth and so on right down to the private’s wife, who took the last seat. The commander then sternly said to the crowd, “Ladies, you have no rank,” and walked out angrily.

But even with this oft-repeated and much-beloved tale, why is it that we — especially after more than a decade of war — excuse and ignore the institutionalized rank-wearing that takes place in social clubs? Why do we even tolerate the existence of clubs whose very names are rank-based, and based on a rank that none of us — only our spouses — actually wear? And why would any forward thinking commander encourage his or her spouse to be involved in one of these organizations, particularly considering that the all-inclusive FRGs exist for exactly the same purpose and could really use more volunteers?

I know that these clubs are largely benevolent organizations and that they truly do some good work. They raise money for charities and much of that money goes to help enlisted families. (Which, while needed and certainly well-intentioned, is a bit patronizing…) But if the women involved actually wanted to help the broader military community — if they actually wanted to help enlisted families — they’d pour their efforts into organizations that include all military families and, in that way, would actually come to know the needs of enlisted families firsthand. Because then they’d know that the biggest need of any military spouse — Officer, Enlisted, gay, straight, young, old, regardless of race, regardless of religion — is friendship. And it’s hard to be friends when they won’t let you in the door.