I Married the Military
This post is dedicated to Samantha, who likes long blog posts! :-)

Mike and I were engaged in October of 1997 correction: 1987!, and in November he was transferred to Keesler Air Force Base, in Biloxi, MS. We had not yet set a date for our wedding, but since I was in college and had always wanted a fall wedding, I thought it would be good for me to finish the school year, then take the summer to finalize plans for a September wedding.

But we couldn't figure out if that would work. Mike was going to Keesler for cross-training, meaning he was changing from one career field in the military to another, and he would be at Keesler until the end of July, but he didn't know yet where he would be stationed after that. In any case, after he transferred to his permanent assignment he would begin his on-the-job training, and wouldn't be eligible for leave at any time in the foreseeable future.

Mike was going to have a two week long Christmas break, so he suggested we marry then, but the idea of planning a wedding while I was studying for final exams was daunting, and I really wanted a nice wedding. The next holiday Mike would have was President's Day, which was on February 15 that year, so we decided that we'd be married on the Saturday before, February 13, 1988. I know, I know, the day before Valentine's Day is a stupid day to get married, but we couldn't have a wedding at my church on Sunday, so there wasn't really another option.

The week before the wedding, Mike's instructor told him that he could take his weekly test on Thursday instead of Friday, so that he could leave Friday morning to make the six hour drive to Little Rock – Mike had been planning on leaving after class Friday afternoon and driving all night, missing the rehearsal of course, but hey, it's the actual wedding that's important!

The wedding was beautiful – in spite of the fact that we spent less money on our entire wedding than the average wedding gown sells for these days! We spent the wedding night at the historic Capital Hotel, stopped by my parents' house for lunch and to say goodbye on Sunday, then drove back to Mississippi. Monday was Mike's day off, and Tuesday he went back to class, leaving me in our cute little apartment to begin making it into a home.

Since we didn't have time (or money!) for a honeymoon, we promised ourselves that we'd take a honeymoon on our 10th anniversary.

Now, before I tell the next part of the story, I have to tell why Mike was cross-training in the first place. His first job in the military was as part of a maintenance crew on the Titan II missile silos in Arkansas, but as a result of the SALT II treaty, all the Titan IIs were dismantled and the silos destroyed. This job was finished in the spring of 1987, and everyone in Mike's squadron was given a special medal for having overseen the deactivation of an entire unit. Then Mike was told that he must either re-enlist and cross-train or get out – and was given 10 days to make the decision. He wishes now that he had gotten out and gone to college, but with so little time to make a decision, he chose to re-enlist and cross-train into air traffic control radar repair.

Now, fast-forward 10 years. The ATC radar career field has been merged with weather radar, and now Mike is doing NEXRAD weather radar repair, and he finds out that the military intends to contract out that entire career field – they want all but 400 airmen in the career field to either (can you guess?) cross-train or get out. Mike decides to cross-train, which means he has to re-enlist again. This time he chooses computer programming, so in the fall of 1997, he heads off to Keesler AFB, Biloxi, MS, for cross-training. Which is where he was on our 10th anniversary.

We never got the honeymoon.

We've decided to put it off until our 20th anniversary, being reasonably sure that he will not be cross-training into yet another career field! Hopefully he will have retired by then and our lives will have settled into the stability we've longed for.

In the meantime, tomorrow is our 16th anniversary. Mike usually takes leave for a week around the 13th of the month so we can do a big gardening project as a gift to each other. Well, really it's Mike's gift to me – I'm the one who loves big gardening projects but I need manpower to accomplish my purposes!

Unfortunately the Inspector General is coming in March, and it's very hard to get leave right now. Base commanders tend to start getting really flippy just before and IG, and denying leave is pretty standard.

Whenever I complain to Mike about these inconveniences and ask him to "talk to Someone about it," he, in his joking manner, reminds me that the Air Force's standard way of handling situations like this is to remind the airman that "the Air Force did not issue you a wife."

When some soldiers approached John the Baptist asking him "what shall we do?" his response was that they should be content with their wages.

I guess the corollary to this is that soldiers' wives must be content with their husbands' wages... and assignments, and every weird thing that comes with being a military wife.

Every once in a while, I am asked how the military affects my marriage. My answer is usually, "I don't really know." Since I've never been a civilian wife I don't really have anything to compare it with. By way of answering the question, I'll try to post the Adventures of a Military Wife on a semi-regular basis.

**I'm sorry the picture is such poor quality - we don't have a scanner, so I took a digital photo of a picture from our wedding album.