Why Aren’t You Coming Home?

Whenever I talk to a group of military spouses living overseas, one common thread comes up- family being upset that the military family isn’t coming home more often. Now, there are plenty of military families living overseas who do spend almost every travel dollar they have going back and forth to the States, or have the time to take hops back and forth, staying for weeks at a time.  But many of us don’t, and it’s not that we don’t miss our families- it’s that there’s a whole entire world out there.

I wanted to take a moment to address a few common complaints I hear from other spouses.

Complaints Made By Our Families Back In the States

“The grandchildren are growing up without us! How can you do that to them?”

Here’s the thing: most military kids don’t know that they are “supposed” to grow up close to their grandparents.  The closest my kids have ever been to their grandparents is 2 ½ hours away, and for my littlest one, that was only for four months.  As far as my little one knows, grandparents are primarily related to through the iPad, and they still have a great relationship with them.  You should see the smiles on their faces when they hear me tell my phone “Hi!” and a grandparent’s voice says “Hi!” back.  We actually just returned from a trip to the States, and my kiddos knew their grandparents right away.  Relationships through FaceTime followed by the occasional in-person visit is normal for them.

“But, you can fly to us for free!”

Ahhhhhh, the Space A conundrum.  Yes, the military does have a program by which members and their dependents living overseas can fly for free (or close enough to it, anyway) … but it’s not that simple.  Space A stands for “Space Available” and that’s just what it is… IF there is space available, you can get a seat on the flight (and “seat” is a term I use loosely, because unless you’re on the rotator bringing troops home from downrange, your “seat” is likely to be a jumpseat).  Oh, and you’re going to need to haul twice as much stuff, because the military aircraft are only partially climate controlled, so even in the dead of summer, it’s cold once you get up in the air, and you’ll want a blanket or sleeping bag.  I flew back to the States in December one time, and I had on my scarf, hat and gloves the entire time.  In order to get warm enough to sleep, I had to put on my stadium-length down coat.  Now, since my flight cost $3.00 for my in-flight “meal” (sandwich, chips and a drink), I wasn’t complaining…. Still, we aren’t exactly flying first class. But I digress…

The first time we were overseas, we were stationed at Ramstein, the crown jewel in the Air Force’s European presence.  Our family was in the DC area, which happens to be surrounded by places that military aircraft land.  There were usually no less than 15 flights each week going to an air base or airport within no more than 2-4 hours of our family.  I also didn’t have a steady job for most of that time, so I could wait in the terminal for 3 days trying to get a flight out, and didn’t have to stress about buying a commercial flight home when I couldn’t get back to Europe in a week’s worth of attempts (which happened- it took me a week to get back home one time).  This time, we are at a small base that has a completely different mission, so there are almost no flights to the DC area, and flights within 2-4 hours of our family sometimes happen three times a week, and sometimes not at all.  But let’s just suppose I was able to get a flight from here to McConnell AFB in Kansas, because that’s all that’s flying out in the next three days, and since I’m now working full time and only have ten days off work, there’s no point in going if I can’t get out in the first three days, because I’ll have to spend at least the last three days of the trip trying to get home.  Well, if I had to buy tickets tomorrow from Kansas to DC, it would cost me $1200- and that’s to an airport over an hour from my family.  If I want to go to the closest airport to them, it will cost me $1800.  Now it’s time to go home, but there isn’t anything headed for England (our current home).  So I take a flight to Germany, just to get across the pond.  I can get my family of four home tomorrow on a budget airline for about $450, but then we have to pay for our bags.  Assuming we each have a bag and it’s high season, I’m paying another $250 for our bags.  Oh, and let’s not forget the hotels that we had to pay for in Kansas and Germany because we couldn’t get out the same day, so that’s at least $200, because after our break-in scare in Florida, I’m no longer willing to stay in the dirt-cheap motels, and $100 per night is about the best you can do for a reasonable hotel. That means I’ve spent at least $1900, which is a steal compared to the $5,500 I just paid for commercial tickets for our trip back to the States this summer, but it’s still a far cry from free.  It’s even worse if I can’t get that flight to Germany- after all, I’ve got to get back to work.  If I had to buy tickets tomorrow from the DC area to London, that’s $2,000 just for those flights, bringing our total to nearly $4,000 for our “free” flights, at which point I’d rather just shell out the extra $1500 and skip the hassle and uncertainty.

“You’re travelling all the time. If you have so much money, why aren’t you coming home more often?”

Okay. First of all, let’s address one of my pet peeves: I come home at 4:30 every day.   Maryland is where I was born and raised; my current location, where the three most important people in my world also reside, is home- wherever that may be.  But moving on… yes, I have been to the Czech Republic, Hungary, Bavaria, Belgium and Ireland (three times) in the past nine months, and I have tickets to go to the Canary Islands for six days before the year is out. The airfare and hotels for all of those trips added together cost me almost the exact same amount as I spent on airfare alone for our recent trip to the States (although in fairness, two of those trips didn’t involve the whole family, and I didn’t count the Bavaria trip, which was for business and therefore fully reimbursed).  Plus, I can go to Prague over Thanksgiving and not miss work.  I went to Dublin and to Brugge FOR THE DAY.  Because of the jet lag, it’s not really worth going to the States for less than a week, so that’s five days off work; between those nine trips in 18 months, I will have missed 13 days of work.

“But… the terrorism!”

Well, I can understand this.  But I’ll be honest with you… I’m far more concerned that my children or I will be shot in a school in the US than I am that we’ll be the victims of a terrorist attack here in Europe.  Plus, I can further reduce the risk of being blown up in a terrorist attack by not going to popular tourist areas (my preferred way to spend vacations anyway).  I can’t avoid sending my children to school.  Well, I suppose I could homeschool them… but, no.  I do not have the patience to homeschool, and I’ve invested too much time and money in my education and career to give it all up over a still extremely unlikely event.  Oh, and refugees fall into this category too, but I’ll be honest- in the past six months, the only two times I have personally seen refugees are from over 1500 feet away as we drove past the refugee camps at the port of Calais, and begging at the food court at the Annapolis Mall (which is in Maryland, not Europe).  Based on the conversation I overheard between a patron and a security guard, I’m not even certain that the girls at the Annapolis Mall were refugees.

 

And In Fairness… Our Complaints.  Because We Complain, Too.

There’s only two of you… and you’re adults.

For the majority of us, the people doing the complaining are our parents, which means that when it comes to flying to be together, there are only two of them, and at least three of us.  Right now I have a toddler and small child, and a direct flight from London to DC is about 7-8 hours.  Including airport time, we are travelling for at least 12 hours and flying across 5 time zones. While that’s not super fun for anyone, on my last trip to the States, with just my (then) 11 month old infant, my flight back to the UK was pure hell- he was overtired by the time we got on the flight, and he cried for almost all of the first two hours of the flight.  No one was happy.  On this most recent trip, he didn’t cry nearly that much, but he was unhappy, and within the first two hour of the flight, I had been doused by water, orange juice, worn macaroni and cheese, been slapped twice and scratched once, and yelled at by a passenger who found it a grievous insult that I needed to pass by him to get to the only bathroom on the entire aircraft with a changing table large enough for a toddler.  Again, all in the first two hours.

We’ve “Been There, Done That.”

Where you live in the States isn’t new to us, but where we live overseas probably is new to you.  Although in the interest of full disclosure, the only family that has come to visit us here in the almost year and a half we’ve been in England is our family members that come to England regularly because one of them is English- but they also visited a few times when we lived in Germany. It’s not that we don’t want to see our family; it’s that we’ve been given an amazing opportunity to see all the places we grew up dreaming about for a fraction of what it would cost to travel there from the States, but it’s a narrow window- most people will only be in an overseas duty location for 2-4 years. If you were in our position…. Wouldn’t you make the same choice?  In fact, if it’s really about spending time together, why don’t you come here?  Or, if you don’t fancy where your loved one is currently stationed, but have always dreamed of vacationing in Iceland or Italy or Portugal (or Thailand or Australia or India for my Pacific-based friends), why don’t we meet up there and ALL spend our money and vacation time on an actual vacation?

 

No Easy Answers

I know there are no easy solutions to this conundrum.  When families live half a world apart, someone will always be holding the short stick when it comes to getting together.  I know it can be hard to articulate how we are all feeling.  I know some families feel that the onus is on the military family because we are the ones that moved away.  I know that the media has convinced us all that you are likely to get attacked every time you walk out of the door, and that goes double if you’re in Europe, especially France, Belgium and Germany.

Remember- it’s not that we don’t love you. It’s not that we don’t miss you.  It’s that we have a discreet period of time to have these incredible adventures, to let our children see that people all over the world are primarily the same, and that there are good people in every country, no matter what the media tells you.  We all talk about wanting to end racism, to end murder in the name of religion, and the way forward on that one is to better understand people and cultures with which we are unfamiliar.  I’m not willing to pass that up.  We have the rest of our lives to live near family in the US- we may only have the next two years to live in Europe.  We love our families, but we have made our choice to sacrifice face-to-face time with them in exchange for being able to show our children (or just ourselves!) the wide, wide world up close and personal.  We know this is difficult for some of the folks back in the States to accept, but we hope they will at least respect it, and refrain from giving too much push back when we explain that a trip to the States just isn’t in the cards anytime soon- especially if they aren’t getting on a plane themselves.