The New FRG

One of the most frustrating parts of joining a well-established organization well AFTER it has been established is the catching up one is forced to do when you finally become a member. These organizations have been doing things THEIR way for a very long time. And I’m here to tall ya’, you’ll not be changing them. So you’d better get on board. Fast.

And there is no finer evidence of this phenomenon than the military. Having not grown up in or around military families, I had no frame of reference when I started dating J. I didn’t know the rank structure. I didn’t know branches or the jobs or the duties. I couldn’t tell a Colonel from a Capitan. I didn’t know the difference between a brigade and a battalion (still no idea on that one, actually.) Hell, I couldn’t even tell time correctly.

It was a lot like trying to learn a new language through immersion... And not the “I’ll-drop-you-in-Puerto-Rico-where-all-the-signs-are-in-two-languages-and-you’ll-figure-it-out” immersion. I’m talking Costa Rican Rainforest Emersion. Good damn luck. Try not to die.

Additionally, everything in the Army has a codeword. Or a number. Or an acronym. I grew very quickly to understand that lest you look like an idiot, you just listened to these shorthand conversations and then later in the day pulled out your decoder ring to figure out what you’d just talked about. To this day, Army folks will say to me, “Oh, what’s J’s QLX CTR (or some such silliness. All the acronyms sound like this in my head…) And I usually nod politely and make some sort of compensating joke like “Well, his t-shirt is an L and his coffee an XL.” Ha ha ha! (Such a idiot.)

Now, for the wildly intrepid (gluttons for punishment) they have classes you can take to learn all this stuff. But honestly, I think that these classes are mostly geared towards the better-halves of the 19-year-old Joes (Joes = young enlisted men. Look how I’m picking up the jargon.) Things like: learning how to communicate with your husband; how to tend to the kids while he’s away; and social graces for the young thrust into potentially awkward social situations in a manufactured social structure. Oh, and they teach you the acronyms.

These classes hold no interest for me.

In my (very limited, admittedly) experience with the Army, there seems to have emerged two pretty distinct classes of Army spouses, so wildly opposite that they seem irresponsibly placed on the same continuum. First, there are wives of the enlisted men who tend to be young (young, young, so young) whose boyfriend/ husband has gone straight from high school to the service; they have married and procreated at 19, and now are at home and exceedingly lonely (and very alone) because the strapping young men have been shipped Over There somewhere for deployments.

On the other end of the spectrum is what I call the Old Guard: the Wives of the Generals and the Colonels—the long time Army wives who refer to their husbands by rank instead of first name; who have always lived on post wherever their career military husband has been stationed, and have stayed at home and raised the kids and made house or had a very portable job they could do on the side (nurse, substitute teacher.) Because for the Old Guard, their job, their life’s work, was to be the General’s Wife.

The way the Army spouse structure works is that these Old Guard ladies run a group called the FRG. (That stands for Family Readiness Group…I realize that I have used that acronym several times throughout the blog without defining it…in essence doing exactly what I’m railing on--just using organizational acronyms and assuming that others knew what I was talking about or would figure it out. My bad.)

What the FRG does is reach out to those 19 year old brides whose husbands are deployed and helps them with coping skills. And plans activities to keep their minds off other stuff. And teaches them about Army life. And life in general. And helps babysit the kids. And talks them out of cheating on their husbands. It’s a really truly wonderful thing that these Army ladies do for one another, and I admire the hell out of them for it. For the young wives of the young soldiers these are essential life skills.

But wow, is that not me. I am not now nor was I ever one of those 19 year olds. And I really don’t see me being one of those Old Guard wives ever either.

In my experience, the demographic of the military wife is rapidly changing. And while that FRG model fits a good deal of the people that the classes and activities and services are intended to support, they do not fit well for what I am calling the “New Military Wife.” Or possibly better yet, the metaphorical “middle children” of the Army spouse family.

The New Military Wife is older. Wiser. Has been around the block a time or two. Possibly married into the Army later in life. Have had their own lives and their own careers for a long time. Have never lived on a Post. For the women who have not been a 19-year-old for a very long time…and who will never *ever* refer to their husbands by rank instead of first name. For women who keep the Times and the New Yorker in the bathroom for reading and not “Chicken Soup for the Military Wife’s Soul.” (…it exists.)

There’s this whole middle class (middle age?) emerging in the ranks of military spouses. And it’s funny…you find yourself seeking each other out at parties…And let me tell you, it’s pretty easy to spot one another.

Please understand, and I can’t really highlight this enough, I am speaking in generalizations. And I am applying *no judgment* to any of these groups of people—The ones who offer these classes or the ones who attend. Everyone does something amazing in the small world of military spouses in order to get by and to help each other out. And that is honorable.

But in my experience, the thing that helps us all get through the day best is finding someone “just like me” who gets what you’re going through and can help you work through it all. And I can tell you this: I’m not the Old Guard. And I’m definitely not the 19 year old. I’m something different than that. And during J’s deployment I have found myself looking for others in that same boat.

And better still, I’m starting to be sought out by others also in that boat. Since J left for Over There, I have been set up on no less than three Army-wife-blind-dates. The story always goes like this—“I have a friend whose husband is getting sent over and she just needs an army-wife friend who gets what she’s like and what’s going on and can help her through. Will you meet her?”

And of course I do, because I think that’s awesome. And I *DO* understand a little bit what they are going through.

These are usually early 30’s women, whose husbands have maybe not been deployed since the two of them have been together…or that are maybe National Guard and they just never assumed he would actually become active. These are women who have Careers (capital C) and routines and who do not now nor have ever lived on a Post and have never seen, let alone thought about what military life on a daily basis looks like. Not to mention thinking through a deployment.

And to be honest, these ladies (much like me, I think) haven’t really been seeking comfort and support as much as they have been seeking non-party-line information. They don’t want it sugar-coated. They don’t want arts and crafts activities to take their minds off things. They don’t have that kind of time. They just want to be recognized and have someone sooth fear with fact; uncertainty with information. We’re strong, bright, independent women: Give it to us straight-- We can take it.

This blog has actually brought several other friends of a friend to me as well, saying things like “Thank God someone is talking about all this” or my personal favorite: when some of my new Army wife friends have supplied me alternate interpretations for the FRG acronym (hilarious…and inappropriate…) I’m happy that I have found my own little network of strong, middle-aged, no-nonsense Army spouses and vets (yes…there are men and soldiers in my little network, too!) who can tell it like it is, and have frank conversations about how much all this sucks.

Because at the end of the day, we are a group of logical, rational, information consumers. And for many of us, the only way to make it through something as illogical, irrational, and completely emotional as dealing with a deployment is to arm us with experience and evidence. And while we all march on with our crazy lives at home, we’ll be able to take comfort in knowledge and in each other. Our NEW FRG! Sans glitter.