Army Wife

by Vicki Cody

  The first few weeks were the hardest and yet the most joyous. Clint was fascinating, and I spent hours holding him, kissing him, and just staring at him. I couldn’t get enough of him; he was my salvation. I hated that Dick was missing out on all these special moments with our son, but I was glad my mom and dad were there to share them with me.

  Overseas phone calls from Korea were too expensive back then for us to talk more than once a week, and the seven-hour time difference and Dick’s flight schedule sometimes made it difficult for him to find a good time to call me at all. So we got to back to letter writing, just like when we were dating. I sent lots of pictures of Baby Clint and tried to give Dick a glimpse into our lives back in Burlington. Eventually, we settled into a routine that worked for us—letters and a Sunday-evening phone call—and somehow, the weeks passed.

  Spring turned into summer, and with that came a better frame of mind for me. Summer in Vermont is always a celebration after the long, cold winter and usually a very short spring. I spent most days with my sister, Chris, who lived just a block away from my mom’s house. She had married Jim (Dick’s cousin), and they had two little girls. Almost every afternoon that summer, Mom, Chris, and I took the kids, a cooler, and beach chairs to the lake. I put mosquito netting over the baby carriage, and Clint took his nap in the shade of a tree. About every other weekend, I packed up Clint and all the baby paraphernalia and drove to Montpelier to visit Dick’s family. It was nice to get away, and the short road trip provided a change of scenery. Three of Dick’s younger siblings still lived at home, and his oldest sister, Diane, her husband, and their two sons lived across the street.

  Clint and I never lacked for love and support that year. I knew I was fortunate in many ways: I was living with my parents and sleeping in the comfort of my old bedroom, my sister just a block away, Dick’s parents nearby. However, as well cared-for as we were, I was often so tired I could barely hold my head up in the middle of the night, when I was up every few hours for feedings, and in those moments I felt so alone. I missed my soul mate, and no one could help me with that.

  Fall is one of the most beautiful seasons in Vermont, but I still felt a little blue when it rolled around that year. My brother went back to college, and my sister started classes at UVM to finish her degree. She had a full plate, and she and Jim had a social life on the weekends. I felt like everyone had somewhere to go, someone to be with. I had no way of knowing whether there were any other Army wives in Burlington. The only thing that got me through was caring for Clint.

  When Dick had left that April, he had not made any promises about coming home for midtour leave. At that time, a round-trip plane ticket cost about $900, which was a lot of money to us—more than half his monthly pay. But by September, I was hanging on by a thread.

  “Dick, I really want you to come home. I don’t think I can make it seven more months without seeing you.”

  “I know. I miss you and Clint. Let me put in for leave and see when I can come home.”

  The next time he called, he told me his two-week leave had been approved for mid-November. I counted down the days. Driving to the airport, I was shaking, and when I saw him walking toward me in his Army greens, I fell in love with him all over again.

  We hugged, and then he looked at me and said, “You look beautiful! You’re so thin!”

  His words were music to my ears; the last time he had seen me, I’d been bloated, swollen, and sore from childbirth. “I’ve been exercising and taking Clint for long walks, so the weight came off easily,” I said.

  On the drive back to my parents’ house, we fell right back into our rhythm and talked the whole way home.

  “I can’t wait for you to see Clint. He’s amazing and doing all kinds of neat things. It seems like every day he gives me something new to marvel at. This is the perfect time for you to come home.”

  When Dick unpacked his bags, he had all kinds of treasures and gifts for me, Clint, and all of our parents. He had bought various sizes of tiny Nike sneakers for Clint to grow into. I loved watching him with our baby; Dick had just two weeks to see the wonders I had gotten to experience for the past seven months.

  While having a seven-month-old and living with my parents didn’t make for the most romantic setting, we managed to have some alone time. We celebrated my birthday with Chris and Jim with dinner at a nice restaurant. I had bought a new dress and wore the jewelry Dick had brought me from Korea. With my pre-pregnancy figure back and Dick’s compliments, I felt like a million bucks. Dick always made me feel beautiful, but that night I felt like his girlfriend again, not just a wife and a diaper-changing mom.

  Dick also talked endlessly of flying. “As soon as I got to Korea, I transitioned into the OH-58 Scout helicopter. It’s a small, two-seat observation helicopter and really fun to fly. Now I’m rated in two different aircraft and I’ve flown over six hundred hours already.” I loved listening to him and tried to envision his life in Korea, but at times I couldn’t help but dwell on the fact that he inhabited a whole other world that I was not part of. I had been isolated from Army life for long enough that I felt as if my life was boring compared with his.

  Finally, I told him, “My life revolves around bottle feedings, diaper changing, doing laundry, folding laundry, naptime, mealtime, and bedtime. Oh, I almost forgot—one evening a week, I go visit your sister Cathi for a cup of tea and girl talk.” (His younger sister was single and living and working in Burlington.) “How’s that for excitement?”

  “My life in Korea may sound exciting to you,” he retorted, “but, except for the flying and the occasional tennis or basketball game, it’s lonely and the same routine day after day. I fly, eat dinner in the mess hall, go to bed, and wake up the next morning to the same thing. I have no TV and no car, and I share a bathroom with ten other guys. Sometimes I don’t even know what day it is.”

  When Dick left to go back to Korea, it was hard to say good-bye, but we also knew that we were on the downhill side of the short tour, and I knew then that I could make it the rest of the way.

  It was a typical Vermont winter: the snow piled up, the wind blew, temperatures dropped well below zero, and ice covered the sidewalks and my car. For the first time in my life, I understood the term cabin fever. I had never felt that growing up, because we had skied every possible day and loved the snow and the long winters. But that winter, living in such extreme conditions with a nine-month-old baby, was not fun. Flu season hit with a vengeance; I was cooped up inside for days on end and thought I would go crazy. My salvation was my mom and my sister who were always there for me.

  And soon the snow was melting and the smell of spring was everywhere. One beautiful spring day, I went skiing by myself. I just wanted to get out on the slopes and feel the freedom and happiness that experience always brought me. But it just wasn’t the same without Dick. Oh, how I missed him! Still, Clint’s first birthday was approaching, along with Dick’s return from Korea, and now that I knew that we had made it through the year and the sun was shining again, all was right with the world.

  The closer we got to Dick’s return date, the more we talked on the phone. We talked every couple of days, as we could barely contain our excitement. We no longer cared about the phone bill; we just wanted the connection. My hands shook as I drove to the Burlington airport that April day. It was an adrenaline rush for me because I was welcoming him home for good, not just for two weeks of leave. When we hugged after all those days, weeks, and months of waiting, I cried and laughed all at once, just as I did when we got engaged. Dick was more reserved with his emotions, especially in public and while in uniform, but I didn’t care—I wanted everyone to know my captain was home.

  Dick’s next duty assignment was the Transportation Officer Advanced Course (TOAC) at Fort Eustis, Virginia. My parents babysat Clint while Dick and I drove down to Virginia so he could sign in and get on the housing list. To some, that may not sound romantic, but for us, three days alone in the car and in a hotel room were a little hon
eymoon. It didn’t matter where it was—we were together again.

  Dick had accrued over one thousand flight hours in Korea. It was an enormous amount of flight time for a brand-new pilot, but he had bigger plans, which he shared with me on our trip.

  “Vick, I’ve decided to become a maintenance test pilot. I got accepted to the test-pilot course, which starts right after I finish TOAC. That means we’ll be at Fort Eustis for about nine months.”

  “But isn’t it kind of dangerous being a test pilot? Doesn’t that mean you’ll fly broken helicopters?”

  “Well, yes, but I want to be the one fixing and flying them. And it will make me a better pilot.”

  I didn’t really care where we were going, just that we were going there as a family.

  For the past year, while I had been essentially a single parent, I had also slipped back into the role of daughter. I had become very close to my parents again, and they had become really attached to Clint, watching him grow and enjoying every milestone. I could not have gotten through that year without their love and support, yet I was ready to be on my own. It was time to go back to my other life as a wife and a mother. Our leaving Vermont was pretty emotional for all of us. It was almost like when I got married and left home for the first time.

  After moving into quarters on post, we resumed our normal lives. I joined the Officers’ Wives’ Club, took Clint to the post nursery while I played tennis, and took him to the swimming pool every afternoon. Dick and I tried to play tennis, but it was hard with a fourteen-month-old toddler. More and more, Dick went out to play with his buddies and left me at home with Clint.

  When my parents came to visit, it was my mother who noticed we were out of sync. When she commented on it, I said, “You’re right, Mom. I thought because Dick and I love each other so much, I just assumed everything would fall back into place, like it always has. But this time is different. We have a baby, and I don’t feel like he’s connecting with us as a family of three.”

  No one had told me what to expect. At the time, I didn’t know there was a term for what we were going through: reintegration. I had based my expectations on our early years, when our reunions had been pure bliss. But it was different once we had a baby. I didn’t understand my conflicting emotions; I was happy to be together again but angry at Dick for not wanting to spend more time with me and Clint. When I tried to express my feelings to him, he said simply, “Jeez, Vick, I don’t mean to act that way. I just like to play tennis. It’s what I did in Korea; it’s what I’ve always done.”

  “But we have a baby now, and I need to feel like Clint and I are priorities. I’m not asking you to spend every minute with us, but maybe give up a tennis match from time to time,” I started. Then I blurted out what I was really thinking: “I want you to stop acting like a bachelor and act more like a husband and father!”

  “Vicki, I’m trying, but I’m not always sure where I fit in. I feel like you’re used to doing everything and that’s how you want it.”

  I knew the year had been tough on each of us, for different reasons. Dick had just missed an important year in our marriage, as well as Clint’s first year. I realized that maybe it would take some time for him to bond with his baby and feel like a parent—something that I had had a whole year to do.

  Luckily, Clint was young, so it didn’t take long for the bonding to happen. By the end of the summer and early fall, as we began to make memories, the three of us were back on track. We settled into a nice little routine: Dick came home every day for lunch (he even watched the soaps with me) and was home for dinner every night. Things were going so beautifully, in fact, that I was pregnant again by October. We didn’t plan it, but when it happened we were excited that our kids would be just two years apart.

  Clint was growing and thriving and starting to talk. Everything he said and did was fascinating to us. He was a strong-willed, independent, tantrum-throwing child, but he was the joy of our lives.

  Dick finished his advanced course and, after a brief break, started the maintenance test-pilot course. He loved the course work, and especially the flying. He had found his niche. He got his follow-on orders for Hunter Army Airfield (HAAF) in Savannah, Georgia. We would move the following May. We decided it was time to buy our first house, and, after two trips to Savannah that winter, we picked out one that was being built in a new community near HAAF. We were elated at the prospect of living in Savannah, in our very own home.

  We moved out of our quarters in mid-May and decided that Dick and Clint, who had just turned two, would drive a U-Haul truck with our belongings to Savannah. Since I was nine months pregnant, my doctor thought it was better for me to fly, so I would join them a day later. Just before they drove off into the sunset, I handed Dick our diaper bag and gave him last-minute instructions, reminding him that Clint was almost potty-trained but to stop periodically. It was hard for me to give up complete control of Clint and watch them ride off in that dirty, stinky, bouncing U-Haul.

  PS: I will always be thankful for that year at Fort Eustis when Dick was in school. It gave us some much-needed time together to work through the redeployment blues and to become a family again. Over the next thirty-two years, we would experience many reunions and periods of transition and reintegration. There was never anything we couldn’t handle, but those times would always test us.

  6

  Savannah, Georgia, 1979

  I arrived in Savannah the day before Mother’s Day. Dick and Clint greeted me at the airport. What caught my eye, as Clint ran to me, was the wad of chewing gum in his beautiful blond hair and his bare feet—in a public place! (Never mind the Kool-Aid stains on his shirt.) I also noticed his lack of a diaper. All of that ran through my mind those first few seconds. I had to bite my tongue, as I was still working on my control issues and trying to let Dick take part in coparenting, and save my burning questions for the ride home from the airport.

  “So, Dick, how’d the potty training go?” I asked once we were in the car.

  “What potty training? Whenever we stopped, I took him to the men’s room and he went to the bathroom. There was nothing to it.”

  “How did he get gum in his hair? I don’t let him chew gum; he’s too young.”

  “Well, he chews gum now. I don’t know how he got it in his hair; he must have fallen asleep with it in his mouth.”

  The Kool-Aid on the shirt was a no-brainer: there was no food in the house, so I’m sure they stopped at a 7-Eleven on their way to the airport for Twinkies and Slurpees (an Army aviator’s idea of breakfast). I could live with that, I guess.

  But after I’d spent months of trying every creative thing in the Dr. Spock book on potty training—countless hours of cajoling, begging, cheering, and clapping, and numerous accidents—Dick had come in at the last minute and finished the deed in twenty-four hours, on one road trip! I was curious how he’d done it. I envisioned the two of them driving down I-95 that night and at some point Dick saying something like, “Clint, you better not shit your pants, because I’m not cleaning up the mess.” I guess there are some things in life that are meant to remain a mystery.

  When we pulled into the driveway of our brand-new, beautiful house, after living in a roach-infested apartment in Hawaii and government quarters at Fort Rucker and Fort Eustis, we felt like the luckiest couple in the world.

  We didn’t have an overwhelming amount of household goods at that point. The boxes of kitchen items, dishes, china, and clothing were manageable, and I knew I could get everything unpacked in a day or two. We had about three weeks before my mom arrived and Dick would leave for Fort Rucker, for the Cobra transition course. And once the baby arrived on June 15, my life would be not just hectic but crazy.

  I met some of the neighbors and learned the lay of the land. I was excited that there were three Army wives on our street and they all had small children, too. I especially liked my next-door neighbor Sarah, who had a little girl. We became best friends and remain friends to this day. My ob-gyn’s office and
the hospital were just minutes from our house, and that gave me comfort for when the big moment arrived. I had not gained much weight, so the doctor assured me I was at least a month away from delivering and that I might go past my due date. I met the wife of a friend of Dick’s, who offered to babysit Clint if I went into labor before my mom arrived. Our game plan was all set.

  In the evenings, we took Clint for rides in the car and explored Savannah. It was so different from any other city we had lived in. The trees that covered the boulevards with a canopy of hanging branches and moss, the squares lined with row houses, and the beautiful parks with fountains all created a setting of Southern charm that was truly unique. We already loved the city.

  Amid all the activity and the excitement of settling in, I didn’t pay much attention to the cramping and contractions I was experiencing on June 5, but by the time I went to bed, I knew I was in labor. As it turned out, our second baby, a son, arrived nine days early, on June 6. It all happened so fast, and, except for throwing a monkey wrench into our finely tuned game plan, Tyler James was healthy and beautiful. What a blessing, and once again, I was overcome with relief and joy.

  That night, Dick and I ate our complimentary steak dinner in my hospital room. Picturing the pain of labor, still so fresh, and the image of him standing on the sidelines, eating my ice chips without a care in the world, I told him, “I think that’s my quota for delivering babies.”

  Dick was in full agreement. “I know, Vick, that was pretty exhausting! We have two beautiful, healthy boys; that’s good for me.”

  He was leaving early the next morning for Fort Rucker, and as we said our good-byes, I was reminded of his having left for Korea right after Clint was born. He would be gone only six weeks, which was nothing compared with the short tour, but it was still emotional for me. I put a smile on my face and sent him on his way to begin a new chapter in his aviation career: becoming a Cobra pilot. I knew how excited he was, but I missed him the minute he walked out the door.