thedrifter
01-30-06, 04:16 PM
War speeds up life’s seasoning for military spouses
January 30,2006
BY ANNE CLARK
DAILY NEWS STAFF
“Have you heard of the seasoned woman?” my mom asked me last week. A few images flashed through my mind — Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies, waving her shotgun at fleeing chickens. Patricia Neal as the wise, tough nurse who seduces John Wayne during “In Harm’s Way.” My cast-iron frying pan, rubbed with a bit of oil and heated to seal it off.
Mom was talking about a new book by author Gail Sheehy. It’s about passion and the post-middle-age woman.
“A seasoned woman is spicy,” Sheehy writes. “She has been marinated in life experience.” In Sheehy’s book, the great marinade isn’t barbecue sauce or wine; it’s time. That makes sense. Unless you’re living in a cave, life is going to throw you both the curveballs and slow, easy pitches that let you round the bases.
While I don’t like to think of me or my friends as raw meat to be tenderized and thrown on the grill, we are seasoned women. We’re seasoned not by time, but by war. Nothing except serious illness throws life into sharper relief.
Like me, you might have known nothing about military life when you first married. You might have been pink-cheeked and excited just to make your first trip to the base exchange. I was all that, and naïve enough to think that we wouldn’t ever really be apart, because he’d done all those deployments before we met, you see. Back then I was uncooked dough, ready for some serious molding.
That process started for me, as for you, on 9/11. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was looking at the inside of a Shake-n-Bake bag. The seasoning had begun.
When most other couples in their 20s and 30s are making babies and planning careers, we’re drawing up wills and talking about estates and inheritances. When other women complain of overnight business trips, we’re skipping over entire seasons in the calendar to the day our Marines come home.
War does funny things to time. You live in a funky twilight, mentally adding eight hours to make it Baghdad time, checking every hour for e-mail or a cell phone call, mailing Christmas packages on the same shopping trip you make to buy your child’s Halloween costume.
If just going through the motions of life gives you gray hair and wrinkles, be prepared for that to accelerate in wartime. I didn’t notice any gray before my Marine first left for Iraq, and maybe you didn’t either; or maybe your eyes are deceiving you, blurred because you haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in months.
If life makes some of us single parents, then war will do it for sure, at least for the better — or worse — part of a year. Suddenly you’re the only one making decisions on gymnastics teachers and halter tops and emergency room visits.
I don’t want to imply that all this aging turns us into cane-grabbing, powdered grannies before our time. When our Marines come back, they usually find us in better shape; if I can continue the cooking analogy, browned and ready. We’ve been seasoned to perfection, all right.
Anne Clark’s weekly columns focus on life as a military spouse. Contact her at (252) 527-3191, Ext. 242, or at aclark@freedomenc.com.
Ellie
January 30,2006
BY ANNE CLARK
DAILY NEWS STAFF
“Have you heard of the seasoned woman?” my mom asked me last week. A few images flashed through my mind — Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies, waving her shotgun at fleeing chickens. Patricia Neal as the wise, tough nurse who seduces John Wayne during “In Harm’s Way.” My cast-iron frying pan, rubbed with a bit of oil and heated to seal it off.
Mom was talking about a new book by author Gail Sheehy. It’s about passion and the post-middle-age woman.
“A seasoned woman is spicy,” Sheehy writes. “She has been marinated in life experience.” In Sheehy’s book, the great marinade isn’t barbecue sauce or wine; it’s time. That makes sense. Unless you’re living in a cave, life is going to throw you both the curveballs and slow, easy pitches that let you round the bases.
While I don’t like to think of me or my friends as raw meat to be tenderized and thrown on the grill, we are seasoned women. We’re seasoned not by time, but by war. Nothing except serious illness throws life into sharper relief.
Like me, you might have known nothing about military life when you first married. You might have been pink-cheeked and excited just to make your first trip to the base exchange. I was all that, and naïve enough to think that we wouldn’t ever really be apart, because he’d done all those deployments before we met, you see. Back then I was uncooked dough, ready for some serious molding.
That process started for me, as for you, on 9/11. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was looking at the inside of a Shake-n-Bake bag. The seasoning had begun.
When most other couples in their 20s and 30s are making babies and planning careers, we’re drawing up wills and talking about estates and inheritances. When other women complain of overnight business trips, we’re skipping over entire seasons in the calendar to the day our Marines come home.
War does funny things to time. You live in a funky twilight, mentally adding eight hours to make it Baghdad time, checking every hour for e-mail or a cell phone call, mailing Christmas packages on the same shopping trip you make to buy your child’s Halloween costume.
If just going through the motions of life gives you gray hair and wrinkles, be prepared for that to accelerate in wartime. I didn’t notice any gray before my Marine first left for Iraq, and maybe you didn’t either; or maybe your eyes are deceiving you, blurred because you haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in months.
If life makes some of us single parents, then war will do it for sure, at least for the better — or worse — part of a year. Suddenly you’re the only one making decisions on gymnastics teachers and halter tops and emergency room visits.
I don’t want to imply that all this aging turns us into cane-grabbing, powdered grannies before our time. When our Marines come back, they usually find us in better shape; if I can continue the cooking analogy, browned and ready. We’ve been seasoned to perfection, all right.
Anne Clark’s weekly columns focus on life as a military spouse. Contact her at (252) 527-3191, Ext. 242, or at aclark@freedomenc.com.
Ellie