The Challenge of a Father in Uniform

When my boyfriend told me he was going back east to interview with Admiral Rickover about joining the nuclear Navy, I told him I would see him in five years.

I had a life to lead of my own and I wasn’t interested in a vagabond marriage, much less raising children in a military family.

My boyfriend heard my arguments but headed to Washington D. C. anyway where he accepted the good Admiral’s opportunity. He was sworn into the US Navy the weekend I visited Prague, Czechoslavakia, then a Communist nation.

Love triumped in the end and I married him a year later, figuring I could anything for five years since I was only 21 at the time. We could have children after he completed his tour.

He stayed in the Navy 21 years.

We moved twelve times.

All my children were born in military hospitals.

The first six years of my oldest son’s life was spent with a father coming and going. When he was home he usually was tired. I mowed the lawn for five straight years.

More than anything, I wanted my husband to survive his seagoing days knowing his children well and not losing sight of who he was himself.

I think it worked.

But that meant effort on my part beyond mowing the lawn. I hauled those two older children across the Atlantic Ocean, twice meeting my husband in foreign parts. Not a bad gig, traveling to England and Italy, but I always had small children with me.

For the kids, every outing was an adventure–where would their father turn up next? They’d fling themselves around his knees and hug with joy. They were full of words, stories, and things to show him. “Going to the boat” to join him for dinner on the submarine when he had weekend duty, was a thrill.

I’d stand back to watch, usually with tears in my eyes.

In those early years, I interviewed teenage military children about their relationships with their fathers–what did their mothers do to help them along? What could I do for my kids?

One of our babysitters told us he opened an envelope from his father once that held, besides the letter, toe nail clippings. He laughed. “Weird though that was, it mean our father was alive somewhere and his toe nails were growing. I appreciated getting them.”

Okay.

Another friend told me she took the last tee-shirt her husband wore before he left and spread it on the baby’s crib sheet. “I wanted the baby to ‘imprint’ her father’s scent. This seemed to work.”

We didn’t do any of those things.

But one night before deployment, I put together a photo album with a story that I called “Daddy’s Book.”  I thought my toddler might need reassurance. He was so young, what did it mean he wouldn’t see his father for three months?

The book featured pictures of my husband doing his ship leisure-time activities: playing cards, talking on the phone, eating dinner, praying, looking at photos of us. (I didn’t have, nor could I have used, photos of the submarine reactor compartment where he actually worked).

I had pictures to illustrate and some vague sketches.

My husband read the story into a tape recorder that night and the next morning took off for places unknown.

My son turned the pages and listened to that tape every single day his father was gone, sometimes more than once a day.

His father’s voice became the backdrop of our day. “Daddy’s Book,” was his favorite.

When we finally marked off all the squares on the calendar and Daddy returned, the first thing our little boy did was fling the book at him and ask him to read.

Daddy happily read the book aloud with his little boy cuddled close. When he finished, he looked at me and said, “that’s a great story. I’ve never seen it before.”

I laughed. “You’ve read that book countless times.”

He raised his eyebrows and I realized the truth. He’d read that book once. His son and I had listened to it countless times.

The interaction of children and their military fathers still moves me. I don’t know if it’s the memory of all those months Daddy’s chair was empty, or a recognition of how much children long for their fathers.

Even now, my eyes tear up when I see children playing with their fathers without supervising mothers.

I remember, oh so well, the challenges of life with a military father.

If you’re in a family with a dad often away from home, how do you make him real to your children? How do you facilitate the bond between them and ensure they know each other individually and not through you?