Red, White and Bold
Lily Burana’s a pistol with a pen and delivered one of the strongest milspouse memoirs of the year.
by Josie Cellone
Lily Burana is not your typical military spouse.
Edgy and rebellious with a past that will make you blush, Burana tackles the emotional roller coaster of her unlikely marriage to an Army officer, the initiation into military life and their first deployment in “I Love a Man in Uniform.”
Yet beneath her quick-witted tales, Burana comes off as ultimately relatable. And that’s her underlying message: there is no stereotypical spouse. 
Just as our guys may wear a uniform, they couldn’t be more individual under that camo.
MilSPOUSE.com spoke to Burana about the unique – and sometimes extreme – lifestyle that unites us:
Do you think military spouses are misunderstood, or misrepresented?
There’s one image of the wife who’s a hot mess while the husband’s gone and she’s overwhelmed. The other story is of the Betty Crocker in the superhero cape – the calculated, flawless diplomatic ambassador’s wife who’s always on, the miraculous poised hostess. Both are a little insulting.
The military has definitely taught me how to be thoughtful and considerate, and how to take care of other people almost as a reflex. But every woman in her power pumps has an Achilles heel. We’re not Superwife, and we’re not the disheveled Star-Spangled wreck either.
It seems like there’s been an explosion in military spouse memoirs. Why did you write this book?
Everyone has a natural desire to document our lives, and there’s also an urge to correct the standing record. It’s an absolutely organic and almost unintentional movement to say, “I don’t want you to tell me who I am, I want to tell you who I am.”
Why do you think there’s been a surge in the conversation now?
The ongoing War on Terror is not some blip, and it has profoundly changed the way military families function. There are dozens of well-written and frank military wife blogs out there dealing with these perceptions.
The Internet has created a way for these wives to talk to each other in a way they didn’t before. You can be honest without the social repercussions because you’re anonymous, and you now have a fixed community of support, no matter how many times you move or wherever you are in the planet.
I like to call it the “era of the mouthy spouse.” It seems like we have this very long-standing image of the silent support for the Almighty Soldier, and now they’re developing their own voices as spouses, which has caused some wonderful conversations to happen. Maybe we can change the status quo.
You chronicle your experience during deployment, just months after you got married and uprooted to West Point. What was the most unexpected part of deployment?
One would be anger. I would become strangely angry at things that would be very unrelated. I was completely emotionally volatile. Sadness would have made sense for me, or fear, but why anger? I feel sorry for anyone who was immediately around me at that time.
Then there were almost moments when I wasn’t worried at all, times when I could almost create a fantasy world where I was single and living on Hot Pockets and diet soda and making the bedroom as messy as I wanted. I lived like a pig – you don’t do that when you share a house with someone – but I had convinced myself that it was just me on my own again.
I was also surprised that my husband and I would still fight – we would still get in these petty little arguments on the phone. I thought when we’d we talk on the phone we’d just be all schmoopy schmoopy schmoop, so when I found myself being short with him, I was really surprised. Just the whole emotional roller coaster.
Now we’ve got to read one of our favorite quotes from the book: “There's pleasure in skinning a guy out of his camouflage – those boots at the bedside and the clinkity-clink of dog tags hitting your chest.”
That’s dirty, man, who wrote that?
Sounds different out loud, huh? As somewhat of an expert in sexuality, what is the allure of a man in uniform?
Even in this politically correct, gender-equal society, there’s something incredibly appealing about the physical strength, respect and ritual that uniform represents. It’s like the best of the Boy Scouts – they’re courteous and very service-oriented – and the best of the bad boys – they’re physically strong and gonna throw down for you, not just for this country, but for you.
Our guys can be maybe a little distant, or ahem, maybe a little bossy (not that I said that) but the uniform itself represents so many things – male glamour, masculinity. It’s something a lot of people find exciting but you actually know it.
Tell us about your free burlesque workshops you call Operation Bombshell.
When Mike was deployed, I thought about what I could have done to make it better, and I needed an opportunity to get out of the house and do something fun.
I travel around the country to different bases and teach a very simple but super fun routine very much in the style of a Bob Fosse musical to “Big Spender.” It’s totally gratifying for me because it gives me a chance to meet other military wives, and it’s a wonderful way for me to combine two parts of myself. There’s one part of myself that’s always going to kind of be a showgirl and like feathers and things that sparkle, and there’s also the military wife who can do my part to give back.
Women linger after the class a long time, and the lessons I’ve learned from them, the level of blood-and-guts loyalty women have shown me has completely overwhelmed me. You know the saying, you don’t understand motherhood until you’re a mom. I say, you really don’t understand sisterhood until you become a military wife.
We did have one incident with blue feather boas. I bought red boas, blue boas and white boas for one of my workshops, and afterwards, the women that had blue boas – their hands and necks were completely covered in blue. I want people to learn but I don’t want to turn them into an army of Smurfs! I guess you don’t go to Bob’s Boas Discount Store online. Hard knocks, baby.