I skirt politics in my blog, but this post deals not with the current slinging of political comments, but with the cultural and sociological aspects concerning women who are not pursuing  paid work outside the home. When I wrote my first novel, Orchids in the Snow, about an Air Force wife, I deliberately set in the early 1980s. That was a period when military wives were beginning to question and break away from some of the strict, unwritten social rules that they lived by. I chose to present my characters in a way that was accurate, although it turned out to be not commercially viable from a publishing perspective. That, however, is not the point of this post.

I was one of the inadvertent pioneers in the advancement of women in the Army, and thus my role as an Army wife and mother was not the same as that of my civilian counterparts, but I came to better appreciate their position. That, in turn, shifted my general view of women who chose to remain at home rather than enter the external workforce. When I did research for my first non-fiction book, The Parent’s Guide to Business Travel, that further expanded my exchanges with women who chose to either not work outside the home, to take some time off from an external career, or to pursue a work-at-home option.

In the course of writing those two books, I came to better define my personal philosophy that interestingly connected back to Ayn Rand – bear with me for just a moment. If you recall, one of the themes in Atlas Shrugged is that If you are faced with a contradiction, return to your original premise. It is distinctly possible that you will find a flaw in your premise rather than a contradiction. How does this relate to the rally cry of women who say, “Yes, you can have it all”?

The flaw is in the definition of “all”. In common usage, it is intended to show that a woman can have a fulllfilling external career and a family. I don’t recall how many times I said that myself, and what I now believe is that the real freedom is in defining your own “all”. No single position is intrinsically superior to the other as long as it is a personal choice. The lack of liberation is when a woman is forced (literally or figuratively) into a decision by others’ expectations. Having been suddenly thrust into the role of single-parent, I also understand that being a stay-at-home mom is not always an economic option and I am not going to enter into the discussion about women who are stay-at-home moms based on government welfare programs.

As human beings, we have a tendency to justify our actions and so the, “No, my way is better”, does fly forth with great regularity. There are most assuredly groups who embrace the validity of choice and I hope that we send the message of choice to girls and young women today.

This is one of those weeks that causes me to wonder if “Gremlins” do exist. Weren’t they the ones that would wreck havoc in the middle of the night? I had noticed that our dark colored mugs had a residue after being run through the dishwasher and so my husband used one of those super-duper cleaners on it. No luck. Then he tried to put me off by declaring, “It’s not that bad.” Uh huh. On the other hand, it was busy last week and I couldn’t recall the appliance repair guy we’d used before or find his card. On Sunday, however, when the icemaker went out, that was a different thing. With two problems, I called what I thought was the previous guy. It wasn’t, but this one could come on Tuesday. Ice makers, as you may know, aren’t particularly sturdy, so being told that it needed to be replaced wasn’t a big surprise. As for the dishwasher that is a major brand and not very old, the drain pump had gone bad. The residue was a build-up of detergent that wasn’t being properly rinsed and drained. Yuck!

Two major components, plus labor, plus the hassle since of course the parts didn’t come in on Wednesday as intended. If all goes well, the kitchen will be restored by noon and the checkbook will be the only remaining source of damage. It was almost funny having to wash dishes by hand again. We both grew up washing dishes, and actually, I don’t think I had a dishwasher until my second assignment in the Army. It is easy to become dependent on those household conveniences and then you wonder how you ever managed without them.

Back to ice makers though. One of the plans for the dream house (on the five year plan, more or less) is to have not an ice maker in the fridge, but to have a separate, small commercial-grade one. Some friends of our did that and they loved it. Those are far sturdier and aren’t terribly expensive, but do take up space and don’t work well in a small kitchen. Yes, we did have one of the portable ice makers and that didn’t last as long as we had hoped, so we haven’t replaced it.

Hopefully our appliance issues will be over for a while.

If you look at the post title and ask, “Huh?”, let me take a moment to explain. The term may actually be different now since I have been retired from the Army for a number of years. Military members deploy all the time as a normal part of service – there are assignments to foriegn countries and major war games that are played, many humanitarian type projects that a lot of people are unaware of, etc., The continuing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have altered that balance somewhat, but the point is that when you deploy to an area where there is an environment in which someone may be actively trying to kill you, it is designated as a Danger Pay area for administrative purposes.

When my husband and I deployed to Desert Shield, which preceded Desert Storm, as logisticians we were not in the forward combat units. We did have a few SCUD missiles launched in our direction although never close enough to cause damage in our particular locations. And although the actual combat part was over fairly quickly, redeploying hundreds of thousands of troops and equipment is not a rapid matter, plus it was only right that the units that had arrived in-country were scheduled to depart first. All of this is to say that we were in the desert of Saudi Arabia for Easter that year. I do not regularly attend church services, but I do often go to an Easter Sunrise service.

That Easter morning, I joined my brothers and sisters in arms as we gathered in the sands of a desert that had been there thousands of years. We were in a part of the world where three major religions began and in that quiet dawning, if you looked out on the expanse of sand and sky, it looked much the same as it would have in the time of Christ. We removed our helmets, standing with them tucked under an arm or dangling from curled fingertips and said a prayer for those who had been lost, and a prayer hoping that no more would be. It was a short service as the sun rose in the sky, the soft morning colors transforming into the bright blue of the day.

Tomorrow, those soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen who are deployed in harm’s way will gather for a similar service and I will send a prayer for their sakes. It is not only them though, but also their friends and families who wait for their safe return. And I will include in the prayer the people everywhere who are tired of war and conflict, who genuinely want to live their lives in peace. May we chose to take that path someday.