A Spouse Like You
By Melissa Meinzer
Katrina Steddum and her Army husband totally get ‘flexible.’ The pair, who met in junior ROTC in high school in Missouri, planned to get married the day of high school graduation. The school begged them to wait, so they could avoid name-change headaches on their diplomas.
The oh-so-understanding Steddums obliged and held off until the very next day—and 22 years later the state of their union remains strong, despite predictable skepticism.
“We had teachers who came to our wedding and teachers who said we were making the biggest mistake of our lives,” Katrina, 40, tells MSM by phone from Alaska, while dressing her six-month-old daughter.
Wait, six-month-old?
The stay-at-home-mom had planned to head back to school, but life had other plans: “Guess what, you’re having a baby!!” she says docs told her, much to her surprise, the surprise of her husband and the surprise of her 13-year-old and 11-year-old. Again with the flexible! “Oh man. My youngest one will be a senior when this one starts kindergarten.”
Those kids, of course, get flexible too. They’ve moved four times already, and Dad is on his second deployment—the first to a combat zone.
“Luckily they’ve gotten to the age now that they know when we move, they’ll make friends quickly. The last one was the hardest—they went through the tears, the attitude, the not talking to anyone. They had their friends and they were old enough to know their friends.”
Also luckily they’ve got mom Katrina in their corner. In May, she set up an assembly for the Month of the Military Child at their school, and dignitaries from all over—military brass, mayors and Alaska governor Sean Parnell showed up. “It just came about because I’m a pushy parent,” Katrina says.
“They thanked our military kids and they thanked the school and they thanked the nonmilitary kids for being their friends and supporting them. The kids, their parents are all in the same unit so they all left—the majority of our military kids were one parent down for that year.”
Katrina is not only the temporary single mom of three. She also cares for a nephew and her mother-in-law. Dare we say it again—she’s flexible.
“I’ve never known anything else.”