My Life As A Marine Corps Wife

It's easy to forget.

Really, it is.

It's so easy to forget that we are at war. That men and women are gone, fighting, sometimes dying. That wives are home alone, hoping, praying, trying to keep everything running. That little girls and boys are waiting, wishing their mommies and daddies would come home. That parents and siblings are trying to run their daily lives, hoping that no news really is good news.

It's easier to go about our daily lives and not think about it. It's even easier when you have no connection to this war--which so many Americans can claim.

I'll admit--with my husband home, safe and sound, and most of my friend's husbands home, even I sometimes forget the gravity of what we are doing. Even living on base, I forget. It seems so far away, so long ago that he was gone.

Then, sitting at breakfast one morning, the ground rumbles and the air shakes and you look out your window to see Marines in AAVs rolling down the street in full on war gear, driving towards Marines dressed the same prowling around the buildings. Your husband rushes to the window, picking up your daughter, so she can see, she can realize, she can know what is going on, what our men and women are doing, what Daddy did while he was gone.

And suddenly, you remember. You remember just what is happening in other parts of this world, and how you've not given it a thought, and how maybe, just maybe, you should stop complaining about anything going on in your world.