The Wetting of the Stripes

Happy Memorial day. I will be signing books at Barnes and Noble of Alisa Viejo on Memorial Day and remembering the lives lost.... My many relatives and the many I never met.

Doc will visit Dupes grave. Missy will be on her way to see her brother off for re-deployment. Here are pics of the ceremony, The wetting of the Stripes. Please look it up if you can, it's an amazing ceremony. More pics when I get back! JL









Chris invited me to his ceremony to "pin" him in his new rank of Non Commissioned Officer: Sergeant. The ceremony dates back to Frederick the Great. In prior days, you pulled the sergeant stripes off if the dead sergeant, pinned yourself and moved on. The ceremony is now a bit more civilized.

Picture of My Sailor

As promised, here is a picture of my husband, Jay. This picture was taken at the airport the day that he flew to Japan. It has been over a month since then and it already feels like a year. Sometimes I think you can see it in my eyes in this picture...I missed him before he was even gone.

My Sailor

I wanted to take a few moments to tell everyone a little about my Sailor. We always hear they are being deployed and that they are working hard, but do we ever really hear what they are actually doing. It takes a lot of sweat and tears to keep an air craft carrier going, and I am proud to say that my husband is a part of that.

My Husband is a 3rd Class Petty Officer, and is part of the Hull Maintenance Department. He just recently finished what is known as "C" School for Welders. He finished in the top 5 of his class, making him a Super Welder. Along with many others in his division he is in charge of welding. What might there be to weld on a ship you might wonder? Well a lot of things, every single day. They will be the ones to get up in the middle of the night because of a break or a leak, and just might be responsible for saving the ship from going down.

This division is also mostly comprises the fire squad, which my husband has been a part of since he joined the Navy. On his last command he was team leader of his fire squad, but he has yet to take his place on his new ship. I have no doubts that he will work his way to the top again.

On top of all of this, he is a magnificent husband, and once we are together again he wants to be a magnificent father. That will come in due time. For now we just have a cat! Thank you all for your kind words. I truly appreciate them. Other than this, I will post pictures as soon as I can. I am without a computer of my own right now (I let Jay take mine on deployment!) so as soon as that happens the pictures will come. I promise.

Casey Nicholson.

Letter from Assemblywoman Wolk

Here's an excerpt from Lois Wolk, Assemblymember eighth district:

"...your book shines light on the homefront experience and what it means to be patriotic. The citizens of our region are fortunate to have someone with your talents and insight among them."


Lois Wolk
May 3,2007

Home Front: Calm Before the Storm - Ahwatukee Foothills News, May 9, 2007

(click the above title to activate link)
HOME FRONT: Calm before the storm

Commentary by Missy Martin
My brother Mike is going to war. He’ll do his part to provide security for convoys in Iraq by driving an armed Humvee.

I’m trying to muster the same “bring it on” fortitude to cope with his deployment that he and his fellow soldiers first exuded at their boot camp graduation. But soldiers’ families aren’t trained to fight on the home front even though we face enemies too – those of the psyche – things like fear, anxiety and depression. We figure out how to deal as we go.
Before Mike joined the Army he was my neighbor in this placid suburb, where the war was on our TVs, not on our radar screens. For all the war’s ideals and flaws, they were all too remote from our suburban lifestyle to identify with. The only oppression I ever fought was the letters I received from our homeowners association about the trampoline in our backyard.

I never fought for freedom or security for anybody. While our family was once the target of a “lawn job” when some teenager peeled out, leaving behind a 2-inch-deep skid mark, I could never imagine my family as the target of roadside bombs that leave behind 3-foot-deep craters and broken hearts.

My only beef with sand has been that it fills my kids’ sneakers at recess and then spills onto our wood floor when they remove their shoes after school; of course it never seemed relevant to worry about it jamming a weapon during an ambush. Now I need to expand my resolve to cope beyond the trials of my suburb to those Mike will face in a combat zone.

For his pre-deployment leave, Mike packed his vehicle with every possession that would fit in it and drove for two days to my house, where I’ll store everything in the garage while he’s at war. On the day he was due to arrive, my three kids spent the morning making 12 “welcome home” cards and laid them out on his bed. Then they perched themselves in the backyard fort that overlooks the block fence so they could see every car that turned into our neighborhood.

When they finally spotted his shaved head behind the wheel of his gray SUV they bypassed the fort’s ladder and leapt to the ground, where they ripped a trail to the front yard and greeted Mike with literal jumps for joy.

For the rest of the day we sat on the patio and drank beer, barbecued steak and listened to Mike’s favorite songs programmed into his iPod. The kids asked questions. “How will you get there?” and “Are you scared?” Mike used the kids’ toy machine gun to demonstrate how soldiers are trained to clear rooms. The kids played the bad guys; lying in wait with their own plastic pistols cocked, but Mike’s technique prevailed every time. I felt glad.
The weather was perfect, the grass was green and lush, blooming plants splashed bright colors throughout the yard. Birds were chirping and we all could smell the orange blossoms.

We sat relaxed, enjoying ourselves, laughing and watching airplanes make contrails in the cloudless sky long into the night when a one bisected the moon. My husband brought out the telescope.

I’ve etched this day in my mind and hope in my darkest moments of worry it will supercede any visions of Mike in a violent combat zone. Soon he will be on a plane en route to a war defined by conflicting arguments whose validity in terms of our national interest, our soldiers’ interests and my personal values often leave me confused about my own position on the war.

But there’s one thing I know for certain: when Mike arrives “over there” he’ll be ordered to write a so-called “If you’re reading this” letter, a note every soldier writes and families receive only if their soldier is killed. All of the political chatter will be muted by the single-minded chorus of my family’s prayers to never receive that letter, and to see Mike come home again to spend another day drinking beer on the patio beside lush green grass, while the birds chirp and airplanes make contrails in the peaceful blue sky.


--Missy Martin is an 11-year Ahwatukee Foothills resident, mother of three and editor of Bombshells: War Stories and Poems by Women on the Homefront. Her brother, Michael Dunn, is a graduate of Arizona State University and a U.S. Army Specialist about to be deployed to the Middle East.

TDY: An open letter for Mother's day--update at end

Doc went TDY about 2 weeks ago, and when he did, I am pretty sure I build a static wall around myself of not feeling. It was only tonight, after two weeks of "down time" that I realized I had made quite a shield. I guess I am good at it. It makes me wonder if that is how I made it through the long deployment... Half dazed, half anesthetized. This is sheer speculation and a little Alaskan Amber talking here, but I wonder how many military wives and military girl friends go through the time a little numb to feeling but at the same time they are really self sufficient and great at:

a. putting other people first.
b. acting invinsible
c. tireless when it comes to helping others, and seldom asking for what they want.

Does any of this sound familiar?


I remember thinking.... in 2005, that I could be strong and "be there" no matter what. Of course the "no matter what" was such an unknown thing. In a way, how could I think otherwise? I was pretty naive....


It's hard to believe, but May 5th was our 2 year anniversary of getting together and neither of us mentioned it. I am not sure if we even spoke on the phone. I think we have known each other now for 7 years now....

The thing is, that with great risk comes great things... sometimes it is too much. If the only thing I had to worry about was Doc, it would be one thing, but my life has had its own twists and turns lately, and what can I do except try to cope? I have work, kids, a house payment, goals, and all are really important. It's quite complex.

I think it is hard to be true to yourself when things are bigger than you. To me, PTSD is bigger than I am, but right now, I need to be quiet in a garden reflecting on healing. It's a really strange time.....

With all that said, the couples struggling with deployment are going through their own crisis, and the thing about war is, when the tour of duty is over, for many of us, all the real battles have just begun. Just the battle of the VA was epic! The struggle to figure it out the survivor's guilt is another dimension. My speculation is that being Air Force or Navy is scary, but just not the same as air assault infantry or any of the Marine troops whose main job is to daily engage the enemy. Every job is important, every job, but I believe the Infantry medic type job is a recipe for great satisfaction and great mental burden.

When Doc came back he had tremendous survivors guilt, which occurs with every war, but this war's anonymity of IEDs really makes for a mind **** on guilt. I mean," if you were in one seat of the hummvee, then moved, and a bomb blew, it was meant for you,...... You should have died right?" That's survivor's guilt and it really sucks. The reason I was able to deflect it like teflon was my own experience. My twin sister died when I was a baby and I grew up with a heavy case of survivor's guilt. When I was going through it, I had no perspective on it and could only feel the burden. As I got counseling and spoke to someone who could help me name it and deal with it, I was able to put it away and learn that none of it was my fault. It just is.

It just is. I think "it just is" is a hard concept to grasp when society is always trying to make connections for us when there are none. For many people, "it was meant to be" serves the same purpose of perspective, but I find purer understanding in "it just is" and it isn't anyone's fault....let it go-

I think my own situation gave me the grace and strength to see Doc through his.

One thing I have learned is that things don't make sense, and trying to make sense out of them is like forcing puzzle pieces together from different puzzles. It can be done, but it isn't right. It is best to let it go. Let it go.

A place of strength isn't always a place of combat and engagement. It's hard to learn that sometimes being quiet, settled, peaceful about just being is the greatest place of strength. I think there are many faces of support, but one has to support the self too. Maybe it's like the oxygen masks on a plane. You have to put your own on in order to help others.

Anyway, be strong ladies, be strong because your life and other lives depend on it. Be strong and Happy Mother's day.
Godspeed!

Jesse--
5/14/07- He's back, looks great and has a new tattoo. I will post pics if he doesn't mind!

Two Weeks Ago...

Two weeks ago my husband left once again. We have only been married for 8 months and he is once again gone. When I wrote my original piece for the book he was on his first Westpac Deployment and we were only engaged. This time we are married and have spent the last 7 1/2 months in complete bliss together while he attended C-School to become a Super Welder.

He left on April 19th to go to Japan. He will be there for 5 weeks of indoctrination and then he will be out for deployment once again, this time for 8 months. I'm home with my parents this time. I truly had no desire to be alone in Japan for that long. While I am excited to go eventually, it is something I want to experience with him.

I'm not as happy as I was last month, thats a given. But my family has made every effort to make me feel comfortable and at home. My parents even remodeled my room, which turned out beautiful. I'm grateful for everything they have done. Even my grandmother got me a teddy bear that is dressed as a sailor to be my stand in "Jay." She always thinks of something.

Right now all we have is email because he doesn't have an address. This will also make it impossible to send him a birthday gift which will be in a few weeks. It will also be his 3rd birthday away from home, and his 3rd summer away from me.

Although it isn't very positive, this is my update. This is where my life is right now.