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I wrote this little piece back last Fall while Bryan was gone. I call it the REAL fantasy of an Army wife. Enjoy.

As I Stand Raking

It was a crisp Saturday in early November that year, and our back yard was covered with leaves already. The drought in our little Northeast corner of Tennessee had left the trees crunchy and dry instead of supple and bright. The leaves were not their normal fantastic array of bright hues. The “fall” of the leaves, which normally takes a month, happened in just a couple of days. I was left standing at the back door looking across the yard and dreading the hard work ahead of me.

My back yard is not huge, but it is full of beautiful trees. Not one Evergreen among them, mind you. They are all large, full and beautiful. I am a sap for this time of year normally. There is nothing I love more than an earth-tone patchwork quilt covering the yard. That year the yard only looked neglected. The leaves were dead before they hit the ground. I heaved a sigh, put on my gloves, checked my pocket to be sure my cell phone was there, turned on and turned up. The first thing I learned when both my husband and son simultaneously deployed was to never allow my cell phone to go dead, and never set it down out of hearing range for one moment.

Grabbing my trusty rake and my gardening gloves, I head for the top of the hill. My thoughts drift quite a bit. It is easy to let them go because I really do not want to be here on this day. Daydreaming is how I get through when I am running cross-country. I kind of drift between lucid thought and a daydream state. Seasoned athletes call the dream state a “zone.” It is a forced altered state of consciousness that is used to stave off the driving desire to give up.

I begin raking, and I am making very little progress. Regardless, I keep moving and doing. My thoughts drift back and forth between my husband and my son. I am laughing in my mind at something Bryan said before he left, and I am remembering the last chat I had with my son Mike, before he left for Baghdad. I am thinking about all of my children, the housework that needs doing, and bills that need paying. I am drifting and raking and thinking.

Suddenly I feel a twinge. It is not in my back or my knee. It is in my heart and it is a small taste of resentment mixed gingerly with a nice twist of guilt. The resentment is fleeting and small, but the guilt is large and overwhelming.

“Here I am having a pity party for myself over having to rake these leaves.” I scolded myself for thinking “If Bryan were here…, or if Mike were here…”

Those of us left on the home front are tired and busy too. I wish they were home, but for that moment I wished they were home for the wrong reasons. I was not fantasizing about their homecoming or hugging their necks. I was fantasizing about them raking while I rest, and consequently I taste guilt.

It is not just the raking that has me blue. Everything is so overwhelming some days. There are days where my little daughter does not want to cooperate with anything. She has her papa’s will and his uncanny ability to convince me of just about anything. I have the weight of the entire household on my shoulders, twenty-four-seven. Every financial decision, every medical decision, educational, social and disciplinary actions are all mine to think through, decide and act on. When I feel I have made a bad decision, or even just a “less good” one, I get to reap the full benefit of excruciating self-doubt and guilt as well.

Shoot, it’s not even all of that. It’s the fatigue too. I go to bed painfully late, and I get up early. I run all day long, and when the day is over, I spend half of the night cleaning and preparing for the next day. My down time, when I have a sitter for the little one, is spent at appointments or running errands. Of course, sometimes I get the occasional luxury of doing yard work. Wait a minute! I am supposed have a good fantasy to escape this dreaded chore, but I cannot seem to get beyond the undercurrent of guilt that has me ensnared.

About that time in my reverie I hear chattering around me. I look over the fences around me and I see it. I see them. There are men doing yard work. There are wives out there with them pruning and preparing to plant their tulip bulbs after the first freeze. They are chatting, laughing, and helping each other. I suddenly feel sad and tired.

Back to raking. I have a few piles going now. A couple of large ones already accumulated pretty fast. My back is sore, and the pity stew I am eating is getting caustic. I lean on my rake for support. It was at this time that a man approached me.

“Hey! I am your neighbor from across the way there. We wanted to welcome you months ago, but haven’t had time. You all military, huh?”

I startled as he loudly blurted out the greeting. He pointed toward a pretty house across the way and continued,

“My wife will be here in a minute, but we noticed you have a lot of work to do here and with your husband gone and all.”

I open my mouth to ask him how he knows we are military and how he knows that my husband is gone, but then flashing before my eyes are men in ACUs standing in my driveway, Go Army! stickers on my car, huge American and Blue Star flags, and my even huger yellow ribbon wrapped around my front yard tree. I guess it’s obvious.

The man explains that he was out doing yard work and his wife prompted him to come and offer me a hand with mine. She was walking over the pathway at this time, she had a huge smile on her face, and a hand extended before she even made it to my yard. She is pretty, warm and very easy to chat with. Her husband disappeared for a moment and she and I stood there chatting. When he came back, he had three other men with him! They all had rakes, leaf bags and even clippers! The wife of the first man says, “Let’s go sit on the deck, chat and we’ll let these guys finish this work for you today!”

I am so overwhelmed that I am standing on the ledge ready to jump off and into a vat of insane weeping. I cannot believe it! She is so easy to talk with. I normally am quite a stoic, but with her, I can just talk and share these burdens and the loneliness that at times is overwhelming. I do not think I have ever talked so candidly to anyone other than my husband about how difficult it can be some days. I purge the pity stew I had feasted on earlier.

Suddenly the cat is out of the bag. Claire confesses all. She is tired, wore out, and sick of being strong. I know it is just that kind of day and I will get through. That is no comfort in the moment though. No more room for pity. My new friend and I just moved into the realm of brutal honesty.

What feels like a mere five minutes later, I look up and notice that my yard looks fantastic. I am ready to cry again, but this time out of relief and gratitude. I offer everyone a drink, but they refuse, insisting that they are fine. They say “Thank your husband and my son for their service to our Country.” I hear that a lot and I always pass the message along. I wonder if these people realize that they just thanked me for holding the fort down and working so hard to keep it all going smoothly while my soldiers are actively serving. They took a moment to offer a helping hand in a very tangible way; a small way that made a huge difference to a discouraged and tired neighbor.

I stood up and extended my arm to shake my new found friends’ hands, but I hear a very loud roaring motor in the background. It is loud and intrusive. So loud, in fact, that it shook my universe for just a moment. I looked at my extended hand, and there sitting in it was a rake. I looked around me and I was standing in my backyard. All around me are crunchy leaves. The loud roar that viciously ripped me from my daydream is a neighbor’s lawn mower.

Within those dry, crackly leaves I found a momentary oasis. Sure it was just a fantasy, but it was a real fantasy had by a real Army wife.

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