NOTE: This probably seems like it’s coming out of left field but the fact of the matter is I’ve been thinking about this for a week or so….these thoughts have been heavy on my heart, so here it is. Love me or leave me!
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Well. You see. My favorite movies are set in WWI or WWII. I love those sweet war brides with their molded pin curls, red lipstick and smart blouses who pine away for their men as those fellows stumble about in No Man’s Land , suffer in the trenches, bleed in the name of their country and take bullets and shrapnel into their bodies as they would food. Those women wait for letters. Those women wait for the dreaded telegrams informing them of the death of their soldier. Those women make do. The experience of being married or committed to a soldier is always portrayed as romantic. There are stockings with seams, silk skirts, garter belts, smoldering love scenes (which really isn’t inaccurate), cold homes on the coasts of who knows where in England and France.
I love those movies. I weep when I watch those movies. I identify with those movies because, in a sense, I’m a military wife. My man leaves for six months at a time. I hope and pray for his safety, I hope and pray that we’ll still understand and love each other when he comes home and while he isn’t in the line of fire, while bullets aren’t zinging past his face and body, there are plenty of things that can go wrong with a parachute or a parachute landing or a fierce wild fire blow up that doesn’t leave a free exit of any sort and occasionally, at night, I sleep with my eyes wide open fearing for RW’s life. I wouldn’t ask him to quit his work. I never would. I understand why he is doing what he does, but while he’s away it’s a lonesome time and I can only imagine, from my Southeasterly end of Idaho, how he’s feeling….how he’s missing me; the feel of my long hair, my laugh, the gentleness of my touch and the look on my face when my love is shining up at him. I only have eyes for one man and I know he’s alive and well, though I haven’t heard from him in days and days and days, because the police haven’t come to my front door with news that will make me cry and fall to the ground.
So recently, besides being on a war bride movie binge, I’ve been hearing a lot of this song while out in my studio. I dance to it. I cry to it. I sing along because I know that my man can’t wait to take his leave and come home to see his family:
I think of her often. I pray that her man comes home physically, mentally and emotionally whole. For any of you who are sisters, aunts, mothers, wives or lovers of military men (or women), or firefighters, I pray he (or she) comes home to you safe and whole and alive and that you can pick up where you left off. Thank you for your sacrifice. Thank you both.
That damn war is so far away.
We hear nothing of it but the stories spun by our news agencies.
There’s no national effort to end the thing. No women in factories. No gardens in Central Park. No girls behind ploughs in fields because farm hands cannot be found. No dark curtains over windows. No threats of bombing runs or occupations. No nothing. Just the void in the lives of the women and men who are left behind to keep a home and a family and a life…going.
There’s no talk.
There’s no nothing.
Well I’ll talk. I’ll give you something.
I understand.
I’m here for you.
And whenever you feel alone you have my heart and my ear.
Always. Because I get it. I really do.
Love,
Jillian Susan Lukiwski-Krapfel
(Yes. Krapfel is RW’s last name. It means jelly filled doughnut, in German. Google it.)
(Yes. Krapfel is RW’s last name. It means jelly filled doughnut, in German. Google it.)