Ten-Finger Exercises

a common tale

I met two new patients last week, both lovely ladies in their 70's.

The first told me of her two years in the Army, when she met a wonderful man, married, and had three children. She never worked outside the home, but she worked hard to support young people's athletics. She and a friend built a snack bar to sell food at the ball games, and eventually added a grill, where she cooked onions and burgers that were greatly enjoyed. Some folks paid admission to the game just to get the delicious fare. One the highlights of her life, in retrospect, was selling burgers to a future Mariner player, John Olerud.

She related a story of a rush family trip to Astoria because her husband had heard that his old Navy ship was in port. They walked around in the cold rain forever, she said, while he searched with his binoculars up and down the coast for his old ship. She told this story with a disgusted voice, and it was clear that she thought the whole mission was a little silly.

"Why is it that men so often think back on their years in the military as the best years of their lives?" she asked.

The next lady was less vocal, but it was clear from the beginning that she had an axe to grind. I have no idea how the subject came up, but she said she'd never been on a vacation to any place she ever wanted to go. The only place her husband ever chose to go had to do with where he'd been stationed in the Army, or some great place to play golf. She did not play.

(Darn, I just missed Sunday blue by one minute!)

We flew to California last summer, partly because it was a good distance to fly in our little plane for a short trip, but more because Bill had been in the Olympic Arena at Vandenberg AFB several years in a row. We stayed in Santa Maria and Oxnard, and we drove all over the area that he'd enjoyed a long time ago.

We've also been to the missile museum south of Tucson, not because he was stationed there, but because he wanted to go down into a missile silo again and show it to me.

When I asked the lady with the terrible vacation history to tell me about a time or place in her life that was a fond memory for her, she couldn't think of one. That is not uncommon, and it's sad.

What makes military service, even war time, so memorable, in good ways? And, do military women experience it that way too? I can think of many possible answers, but I'm curious about what the real ones are.