Reaching Out to Your Clueless In-laws
Tips to dial-in family members.
by Heidi Evans
Some service member’s parents couldn’t tell you the difference between a commissary and a commander. When deployments arrive, those parents can be challenging if you are the military spouse. They don’t mean to be annoyingly clueless, but they are.
By way of example, I will share “The Birthday Cake Incident.” When my husband reported to his first submarine, he arrived with a classmate I will call “Todd.” Todd was single and mothered by a doting woman I will call ‘Shirley.”
As time for the submarine’s first deployment approached, Shirley would call me with questions. I would help her because she was a loving mother who was caring for Todd’s finances and apartment.
But Shirley didn’t know anything about the military. Primarily, she didn’t comprehend that her precious baby would be underwater for three months working his tail off with no communication home and no port calls. This became clear when she asked who she should call about Todd’s birthday cake.
“Todd has had the same special chocolate birthday cake since he was 1,” she said. “He will celebrate his birthday near the end of the deployment and I need to make sure they prepare his special cake.”
After three months at sea there would be no fresh food on board, including the milk and eggs in the cake recipe. The kitchen serving food to more than 150 men is not much bigger than a laundry room, so special requests are difficult. Menus for a deployment are chosen in advance with each food item carefully squirreled away in boat crannies by genie people.
I explained this. She didn’t care. She insisted her baby would have his cake.
Eventually, she routed her request to the correct crew member. Believe it or not, they baked the cake. And her son was given numerous, permanent nicknames like “Cake Boy,” “Momma’s Boy” and stuff I can’t print.
If you happen to have military clueless parents as in-laws during a deployment, I pity you. They will think your deployed spouse can come home when grandma has bunion surgery. You will have to explain that won’t happen. They will try to send massive shipments of banned substances to foreign countries. You will have to dissuade them. They will think your returning spouse wants to spend his or her first evening home sitting around the kitchen table until all hours regaling them with war stories rather than having wild reunion sex. You will have to firmly send them to a hotel for the night.
Now that I am a mother, I better understand these crazy parents. Parents don’t want to think their son or daughter is in danger, especially not danger they willingly chose to enter.