Confessions of a Military Wife Read Online Free Page A

bed, when a 13-year-old boy walked into the room carrying a bucket of ice. I screamed again. He made eye contact with my milk white breasts and screamed. From somewhere in the bathroom, Jon screamed. The boy, who we dubbed “Sheldon,” dropped the ice and ran. He had gotten an eyeful of my D-cup boobs, while Jon stood in the bathroom trying to cover himself up with a washcloth.
    All our happiness washed out the embarrassment of the “mid-coitus walk in.” That is, until we sat down for breakfast the next morning and realized “Sheldon” was our waiter. Humiliation washed over me as I saw the young boy’s eyes light up before slowly settling on my breasts.
    He walked right up to us and asked, “Were you two in room 101? Was that your honeymoon last night?” We avoided making eye contact. “Yes,” we mumbled.
    He didn’t stop there. He kept apologizing, making the excuse that he thought we simply had to have the ice. We ate as fast as we could, but we could see him hiding behind plants gazing at us, eyes glazed over and frozen in a flashback of breasts and ice cubes flying through the air.
    After our brief honeymoon, my new husband drove back to Virginia and I returned to South Carolina. We started writing detailed love letters and making phone calls.
    While I missed him so much that it hurt, I took comfort in knowing we were starting a wonderful life together. Jon and I spent the first three months of marriage living in different states. It was surreal, but over the next few months I began to settle into married life.
    GRANDMA: THE GREATEST GENERATION
    The next time I was able to see Jon was during a weekend stay at my Grandma’s house in Virginia. She invited us over because she wanted to give me some advice on being a military wife.
    This woman had been married to the U.S. Air Force for more than thirty years. She and my grandfather went through World War II and Korea, seven children, and assignments all over the world. I knew she could teach me a thing or two about being a good military wife as well as how to embrace the lifestyle.
    Grandma is what we call “Old South,” which means she still holds a grudge against the British. In fact, she got really mad at my cousin, Dean Charles, calling him a traitor because he went to college “in one of them Union states.”
    Grandma is extremely charming and outspoken. In fact, I learned manipulation techniques from her. I think a lot of what she says is done in an effort to get a reaction out of others.
    A few years back, she had more than four feet of her colon removed. That’s hard to imagine since she’s not too much taller than five feet. Her grandchildren like to tell her that since her surgery she does everything half ass. To get back at us, she hides all her secret family recipes in her medical files next to the color photos of her colonoscopies.
    Anyway, during our visit, we noticed she was mixing up words. She started referring to Muslims as Mormons. After 9/11, she told Jon and me how it was important for America to stop the radical Mormons because they had perpetrated the attacks on the Twin Towers.
    There was no way we could convince her of the difference. We’d just smile and nod. “That’s right, Grandma, all the Mormons got together on September 11th and ran their bicycles into the Twin Towers!”
    Then she started using “Dildo” instead of “Dickey,” the word for the mock turtleneck worn under a sweater. We weren’t quite sure where she heard that “new” word, but we assumed it came from one of the “stories” (soap operas) she watched every day.
    It seemed harmless enough until she misplaced her “Dildo” and started calling her neighbors to ask if she could borrow one of theirs!
    Needless to say, Jon was concerned about what advice this woman would give me.
    Here’s what she offered:
    1. It is imperative you have a baby before he deploys. He won’t want to give you one. So take care of that yourself.
    2. Never have