Deployment

#blogExodus 10: Join

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My husband was kind enough to allow me to share the story of how he joined together with his Jewish community aboard the USS Enterprise despite the difficulties of deployment in the spring of 2011. I’ll turn it over to him for today’s post. Enjoy!

I knew before the deployment started that celebrating Passover would be a little challenging. But, like most things, it’s just a matter of finding the community and going for it. The Navy is very good about arranging to have rabbis come out to forward deployed areas for Jewish holidays. The only question that remained was whether to enjoy the holiday aboard Naval Support Activity Bahrain or try to stay overnight on the Enterprise.

I made that call once I saw an old friend from Jewish Midshipman Club (JMC) aboard the ship. He was a submariner on a shore tour. But, since he was attached to the destroyer squadron as an undersea warfare specialist, it was one of those deploying kind of shore tours. So, counter to every single bit of COD guy training I had received since officially becoming a COD guy, I asked our officer in charge if I could stay aboard the ship for a night. On purpose. No mission requirement for such. He didn’t see a problem with it.

I rode in the back of the COD out to the ship. As I was walking through the Air Transfer Office shack, I spotted a man with a black kippah on his head. This, evidently, was the rabbi. The ATO shack is where all passengers going onto and coming off the ship via aircraft muster. He had conducted a pre-Pesach Seder the day before, with the intent of celebrating aboard NSA Bahrain on the actual day. But, he assured me there were plans to have a Seder-in-a-box shindig aboard the Big E.

A COD sits aboard the USS Enterprise beneath a star-strewn night sky. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Brooks B. Patton Jr./Released)

A COD sits aboard the USS Enterprise beneath a star-strewn night sky. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Brooks B. Patton Jr./Released)

I ran into one of the ship’s chaplains who got me the time and place for the Seder. We managed to snag the captain’s in-port cabin. Nice! With this critical question answered, I spent most of the day getting a sunburn out on the LSO (Landing Signal Officer) platform watching recovering aircraft. I even got up there to see a night recovery for the first time. The night was absolutely gorgeous.  A full harvest moon hung lazily on the horizon directly behind the aircraft coming in on the approach, illuminating some distant clouds. Directly over the ship, it was painfully clear, a million stars lighting the night.

Seeing flight operations at night is one hell of an experience. On the cat shot, the afterburner seems to leave a trail of fire behind each jet.  For landing aircraft, even with our exceptionally bright night, at first all you see headed towards the ship are a series of position lights. The LSOs record which wire the aircraft caught for each pass. In the day, it’s a trivial matter to see. At night, you have to catch seeing the sparks next to the capstan for whichever wire plays out. Once we completed the recovery, I went down to the in-port cabin.

A photo of the "Pre-Pesach Seder" conducted the night before Sampson arrived aboard the USS Enterprise. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Nick C. Scott/Released)

A photo of the “Pre-Pesach Seder” conducted the night before Sampson arrived aboard the USS Enterprise. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Nick C. Scott/Released)

The captain’s cabin was set up with a white lace tablecloth and plastic dinnerware. Two huge boxes contained our Seder supplies. For karpas, there was raw onion.  The charoset was this compressed stuff that looked like a PowerBar. The maror was in little single-serving packets. There were the obligatory boxes of matzah, plus round matzah, which I had not seen before. There were a bunch of plastic Seder plates as well. For wine, we had enough boxes of grape juice to supply a third-world country.

If the supplies were a bit, ah, expeditionary in nature, the company was fantastic. My friend from JMC showed up. A department head from HS-11, our helo squadron, was the only other pilot. There was a lieutenant from Supply who was born in Columbia and raised in Venezuela.  The Seder was led by an Intel ensign. On the enlisted side, there was one guy from the ATO with whom my detachment worked all the time, so that was another familiar face. There were four ladies, three of whom were nukes, one of whom was not actually Jewish, but came along to support her friend.

The Seder was conducted a bit quickly. Most of the crew had done a pre-Seder with the rabbi the previous night that was exceedingly lengthy. Just as we reached the Festival Meal, an alarm sounded over the 1MC.

“Man overboard, starboard side. This will be a helicopter recovery.”

When a man overboard happens, it is necessary to account for every individual aboard. The boat exploded into a controlled kind of chaos.  People in shower shoes and bathrobes started moving towards their work centers to muster. With my detachment not aboard, I didn’t actually have anyone with whom I had to muster. I decided to go down to the VAW-123 Screwtops ready room since the ship’s E-2 squadron is who typically takes care of us.

We watched the action on the PLAT camera as the helo spun up. On the water, someone had dropped flares to mark the position of the unfortunate individual. The helicopter lifted, cut back and forth several times, and within thirty minutes, plucked the man from the Arabian Gulf. Later we would find out that this was a suicide attempt.

Actually, many Jewish holidays fall on good nights for a high probability of rescue from the sea. That full moon provided 99% illumination. When the person you’re looking for doesn’t have a float coat, cranial, or any other reflective material, you need all the help you can get.

We returned to our Seder once the action stopped. There was no real Festival Meal to speak of, so after helping the mess cranks clean up, I went down to Wardroom 2 for some midrats. There are two basic foods aboard a ship that are almost always going to be delicious: omelets and soft-serve ice cream. The ice cream is called dog. The machine has an arm you lift that looks like a tail. Lifting the tail of the dog to get some ice cream is an appropriately crude visual metaphor for the environment. I don’t know how exactly, but I definitely want to integrate these foods into my Passover tradition from now on.

It was a wonderful experience to celebrate the holiday underway, about as close as one could get to celebrating with family while thousands of miles from home. It can be a strange thing to be a Jew in the service. You are a minority among your fellow sailors and the Jewish population at large. But, I just can’t see doing it any other way.

#blogExodus, the brainchild of Rabbi Phyllis Sommer, invites participants to chronicle the weeks leading up to Passover through blog posts, photos, and other social media expressions.

#blogExodus 5: Hide

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#blogExodus 5775 topicsHave you ever taken steps to hide your religious identity? Was it because your physical safety was at stake if the wrong people found out?

My husband is a Naval Aviator. Due to the location of forward logistics sites for his fleet squadron’s detachments, he chose to keep the fact that he was a Jew hidden while he was deployed. I talked with him a little about his experience with flying under the religious radar.

Thanks for this exclusive interview, honey.

[laughs] You’re welcome.

When was the first time you considered that you might have to hide that you were Jewish?

The mighty C-2A Greyhound, also known as the COD for its Carrier Onboard Delivery mission. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Gregory A. Pickett II/Released)

The mighty C-2A Greyhound, also known as the COD for its Carrier Onboard Delivery mission. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Gregory A. Pickett II/Released)

It really was preparing for a COD deployment… realizing that my base of operations wasn’t going to be with a bunch of other military personnel, it was going to be living out in town in an Arab country, not on a secure base. It was just a regular hotel room. It’s sort of a different thing than being on a forward operating base where you and all of your closest friends are carrying rifles. We were guests in a country that is by and large friendly, but the fact is there were some people there who might have actual, serious, no-kidding problems with Jews. I had no way of knowing who might hold these feelings and who might take it far enough to act on them if they found out I was Jewish, so I kept it quiet.

What were the steps you took to obscure your religious identity?

I got a set of dog tags that said “No Preference” instead of “Jewish.” I went through the luggage I planned to bring and made sure that I hadn’t left a kippah or other piece of Judaica in there… I kind of sanitized it. And when I gave out the FPO address to friends and family, I asked them not to send me anything for the Jewish holidays.

That last part bothered me more than I thought it would. It seemed like everyone else had all these cute ideas for care packages for Easter or whatever, and it didn’t even occur to them to worry about it.

Well, probably it was assumed that if service members were American, they were Christian. That didn’t necessarily add any additional animosity on top of just being American.

In fact, I had a friend who got sick and was stuck out in a hospital out in town. He’s Christian, but he happened to have the middle name “Abraham.” He was asked point-blank by his [local] nurses, “Is that the Muslim Abraham or the Jewish Abraham?” He definitely got the sense that the “wrong” answer would have created problems.

Did you feel like you were missing out by hiding your religion while deployed?

It felt like I kind of turned off being Jewish for a while. It’s not that I didn’t get to celebrate Passover, but I had to get myself into a safe place — either inside the gates aboard the American base or, as I did for my first deployment, out to the aircraft carrier at sea. Even something as simple as bringing my own kippah — I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring a prayer book or anything. I honestly don’t know how often I would have cracked it open, but there was no question, it wasn’t an option.

It wasn’t strictly about my safety. It might have made the people around me bigger targets, as well.

It did make me sad, because I thought about some of our forebears who went and fought in WWII and asked themselves the same question, Most of them kept their Jewish preference on their dog tags. But, the threat that they faced was a little different. I was in a friendly country, just with the understanding that a terrorist-type attack on Americans could happen. The ones who went overseas in WWII knew that they were going into hostile territory, and their plan was to get into a fight.

So, would it have been easier if you were on the carrier the whole time?

For the sake of getting to have a Jewish identity while deployed? Yes. I would have been able to bring whatever Jewish items into my stateroom that I needed, and I would have been surrounded by friends.

I should hasten to add that everything else about living out in town was way better. There were many wonderful restaurants, which meant that when I wasn’t flying, I got to eat delicious meals instead of being stuck with Boat food. There were great businesses run by really nice folks. I enjoyed talking with them, but they didn’t need to know I was Jewish.

How did you feel when you got home (other than thrilled to see me, of course) and could be “out” as a Jew again?

Getting home really made me appreciate the wisdom of the founders of this country. Separation of church and state helped to make a space where people of a wide variety of beliefs actually could live together in harmony, and not by one group completely hiding who they were to fit in with the rest.

Amen. Thanks so much for sharing your perspective with me and letting me put it up on the blog.

You’re welcome.

#blogExodus, the brainchild of Rabbi Phyllis Sommer, invites participants to chronicle the weeks leading up to Passover through blog posts, photos, and other social media expressions.

We Made It!

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It has been over two weeks since I spotted my husband in the crush of travelers and rolling carry-on luggage at the local airport, embraced him in the midst of frazzled folk trying to figure out which baggage carousel would soon spit out their suitcases, and officially kissed Sampson’s last scheduled deployment of this sea tour goodbye. There was no COD flyover this time, no picture-taking, no applause, no shared giddiness with other wives… and not a single thing I would have changed about our quiet reunion.

I tweeted about his return, but for some reason I found my time for blogging vastly diminished. Possibly that had something to do with all the laughter and life that once again filled up the house, the whirlwind overnight visit to both our families to let them see for themselves that Sampson was safe on U.S. soil once more, and the fact that he immediately jumped back into business as usual with home guard — including wake-ups at ungodly hours like 3:45 in the mother-loving morning. Such is life in a COD squadron when there are carriers out.

He’ll have a chance to take his post-deployment leave pretty soon, though, and we’re planning a kick-ass vacation to Lake Tahoe. I’ve been keeping an eye on the temperatures out in those mountains, and they sound positively delicious to us. Highs in the low eighties and lows in the forties? Yes, please, we’ll take it.

That Wacky Toe Shoe Couple

We both love our “crazy toe shoes” for a variety of activities, including light hiking on maintained trails, but they’re not great for colder temperatures.

I’m so excited about getting in some hiking, even if I haven’t been able to find the new hiking shoes of my dreams. Why does no one seem to manufacture women’s hiking footwear in wide sizes? I can’t even follow the advice I’ve seen to get men’s boots for a wider toe-box, as I wear a 6W in lady-shoes — that’s like a 4 in men’s, and hardly anyone seems to carry anything below a men’s 7. Grump. I am increasingly tempted to go minimalist even for hiking and pick up a pair of Vibram FiveFingers with a grippier tread than my current KSOs. I love walking in my “barefoot shoes,” but I’d been hoping to find something more traditional that’d work for cold weather. Oh well, I may be out of luck.

In short, Sampson is home, I am thrilled, and we’re going on vacation in the foreseeable future. Life is good.

Who’s Winning, Me or the Deployment? (Part II)

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In WWMotD (Part I), we took a look at the argument that this deployment is kicking my ass. I blithely promised that in Part II, I would enumerate all the ways in which I was actually winning at this deployment.

I never should have tempted Murphy so. He apparently took it as a personal challenge and thereafter set out to prove that this deployment is kicking my ass — now with added bonus steel-toed boots!

The fact that my air conditioner shit the bed today after I’d already had a repairman out to fix (“fix,” apparently) it on Friday is merely the icing on the cake. I get it, Murphy. You win. You have officially wiped the milspouse can-do, grin-and-bear-it, independent-and-proud-of-it smile off my face. I just want my husband to come home before a bolt of lightning from some unholy partnership between Murphy and Zeus fries all the electronics in the house just to punctuate my abject non-winningness, or something.

Happy frakking Independence Day. We have proven that I am not.

Who’s Winning, Me or the Deployment? (Part I)

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I can’t decide whether I’m rocking this deployment or whether it’s kicking my ass. I can point to arguments in support of both; I’m never sure which way the scales are going to tip on any given day. I don’t remember feeling this weebly-wobbly during last year’s deployment, but that could be selective memory on my part. Or maybe I’m just picking up on the nuances a little more clearly now that it’s not my first one. I don’t know.

Let’s look at the case for “This deployment is kicking my ass.”

The Ass-Kicking

Six-legged Invaders: Ants. They’re fascinating critters when they’re not swarming in my sunroom. The poison I dutifully sprayed around the perimeter of the room and all the windows has helped some, but I’m paranoid that they’re living in the walls and all I’ve done is cut down on the ones I see alive. The dead ones aren’t a whole lot of fun, either.

Drip… Drip… Drip… The remnants of Tropical Storm Beryl brushed by us yesterday, bringing a day of rain. I usually like rainy days for the pleasure of being cozy and dry inside our snug little house. It’s a lot less cozy to realize that the rain has decided that it would like to join me and the cats indoors. It’s not the first time this has happened, but we thought our intrepid homeowner roof-patching skills had taken care of the problem (which had previously only shown up in a crazy storm of the raining-sideways-and-tornado-warning variety, not light steady rain like yesterday). Apparently not. So, now I’m on the hunt for a roofer who can diagnose the problem and fix it — without, I sincerely hope, having to replace the whole roof.

PCS Panic: I know, I know, it’s a little early to start flipping out about orders that are supposed to come next April or May. Except OH WAIT, Sampson recently mentioned to me that if the stars align for the orders he really wants (sorry about the deliberate vagueness), we would have to be at the next duty station in January. That would make December the crunch time for the move, and that is this year. This PCS will be our most complicated yet:

  • We own our house and plan to rent it out. That means whipping a lot of things (such as the ant issue, the leaky roof, the overgrown bushes in the back yard, the fence, the shed behind the garage, the effed-up window in the laundry room…) into shape and finding a property manager and figuring out a whole lot of stuff that is brand-new to us.
  • We have pets this time, which we didn’t for the various flight school PCS moves.
  • We’ve lived here for just about four years now, and the Law of Expanding Crap has ensured that we have more furniture and stuff in general than we did before.

The PCS stress might not be fully attributable to this deployment, but Sampson’s absence points a horrible magnifying glass at everything that absolutely must get done before we move.  All I’m seeing is the inexorable expansion of the to-do list and the months my husband won’t be around to help with any of it.

Lest anyone interpret that as resentment towards Sampson, please note that it is his support and faith in my competence that imbues me with the strength to suck it up and get things done. Most of the time, it’s comfort enough to know that he would be here to do battle with Murphy if he could — most of the time.

Then there are the days where I can all but feel the to-do list looming over my head, mocking me with tasks at which I can wield no experience or expertise. Those are the days when I feel fragile, overwhelmed. I suspect that is a signal that I’ve let my focus drift too wide and I need to squeeze it back down to concentrate on a single step rather than the whole seething mass of Everything that Must Get Done.

And on the days when even tackling a single step threatens to drown me, my best bet is to shunt whatever is currently kicking my ass aside for the moment and contemplate the ways in which I am totally rocking the deployment. That’ll be my next post, “Who’s Winning, Me or the Deployment? (Part II).”