Beginning to regret it.

Seth has duty tonight, and I'm beginning to regret all the anxiety I cultivated over his impending separation from the Navy. I had forgotten how lonely one gets, how stressful it can be, when one's husband works 36 hours at a stretch, comes home to catch a good night's sleep, works another 12 hours, comes home to sleep, and then disappears for 36 hours again.

For those relatives who haven't heard the explanation yet, duty means standing the night watch on board Seth's submarine. Every position aboard the sub must be manned by at least one person at all times just in case something goes wrong. Seth watches over the nuclear reactor which is a very technical piece of equipment. Even when a reactor isn't on, it has the potential to go wrong. Nothing ever happens, but many things could (what, I don't know, and I don't want to know. Those are Navy secrets, and I'm sure being in on the loop wouldn't help my peace of mind.).


The number duty days that a person has in a week depends on the number of people in a division or department. Some stations have five-day watch rotations; others have ten-day rotations. On carriers, they might go as many as 13 days between duty days. We've done three days or four. Once every three nights, instead of coming home after a twelve hour day, my husband stays on the boat and works at least six hours in addition to the full day he has already put in. He packs some leftovers with him when he leaves in the morning and makes sure he has his Kindle(tm) and his laptop. He stashes a blanket and a pillow in his bunk. He stands at least six hours of watch between the time when the other guys go home and the time they come back again in the morning. And then he goes back to work. I see him again when he comes home the following night. I'm not used to this.

For the past three months, Seth has been on "off-crew." (To all Navy wives who do not have off-crew, I bow my head and beg that they would please put up with my whining.) All Trident class submarines have two crews: blue and gold. Having two crews keeps the boat in constant circulation. "Off-crew" means that Seth's crew (gold crew) has been engaged in training exercises while the other crew (blue crew) has been handling the boat. The guys generally regard training periods as a waste of time, but training has the advantage of normal work weeks. They leave home at a reasonable hour. They come home at a reasonable hour. Sometimes they come home before noon. There are no duty days while we are on off-crew. I guess I got spoiled.

This past weekend, Seth had duty on Friday. According to custom, he should then have Saturday and Sunday off as in any normal work week. That's one of the perks of Friday duty. Weekends are still weekends. But Seth's chief is anticipating the birth of a child soon, so he wants to get as much maintenance done before said baby comes as possible. I appreciate his motivation. Seth would feel the same way. However that means that instead of coming home on Saturday, Seth worked another twelve hour day. Just before dinner, he called me and confessed that he'd forgotten his keys on the boat and he did not want to go back. I put Boogaloo in the car and drove down and picked him up. He nearly fell asleep over dinner.

Then we dropped him off the next morning at 6 because the Chief wanted to get a few more hours of work done. Boogaloo thought we were dropping him off for a deployment, and she was hysterical the whole way home. He didn't make it to church like we'd hoped, but he did stop at the store and get lunch. We drifted in and out of football all afternoon, and this morning, after a few hours of extra sleep, he went back to work for Monday duty. Over the past four days (102 hours), I have seen, held, spoken to, and slept next to my husband perhaps 24 hours total. Over the past week, he has worked seven days and three nights. It's been a hard week. Schedules like that weigh on our health, our happiness, and our home maintenance, and they don't do much for our sex life either.

As the command would be quick to point out, even those 24 hours are more than I would have gotten if the boat was gone. However, as the command also acknowledges, sometimes these maintenance periods can be worse. There's no period of adjustment or time to build up emotional competence. There are just nights without my husband and the emotional whiplash of uncertain schedules. I know some women who look forward to duty days. They say they get more done in a duty day than in the rest of the week combined. I really can't identify. I also know women who look forward to deployments. They say they have "a good Navy marriage." As soon as they get sick of their husbands, the Navy takes them away for a few months. Nope, not me.

When we first moved to B-town and were assigned to the boat, an experienced Navy wife told me, "Oh, don't worry about duty days. You might actually want a night to yourself." That was nearly five years ago, and I can safely say that the night hasn't come yet. Maybe I'm not as independent as my friends, but I miss him even when he's only gone 36 hours. I start listening for him to drive in around four in the afternoon, and I don't stop listening until six when he would reasonably be home. That feeling that I get when I've made myself remember that he won't be home tonight is one of the lowest in the world, at least in my experience. It's not a feeling that I'm going to miss when Seth is out of the Navy.