Appreciated

For the past 25 years, the Friday before Mother’s Day has been Military Spouse Appreciation Day. For the past four years, I’ve been rather grumpy about the day, because it was another reminder that unmarried significant others don’t count.

It didn’t matter that I had waited out a yearlong deployment and undertaken two Army-related moves, or that my sweetie and I were serious as a heart attack (which I would’ve been able to incur, since I’d managed to hang on to my job and thus my own health insurance). We did not have that one piece of paper, so I did not exist.

This year is different. Thanks to the 10 minutes we spent at an Arkansas courthouse last summer, I’m in the system. I have the EZPass to everything -- my military ID (with my husband’s rank on it, which I still think is highly weird) -- and I’ve been invited to our local festivities to mark the day. I’m the same person, in the same relationship, but suddenly I count. It doesn’t seem right.

If I had firm principles, I suppose I’d avoid the hoopla. But I’m learning that one thing military significant others are good at is playing the hand they’re dealt, and if a decent live band is coming to post, I’m not going to fold and stay home to pout. That would be drinking the poison and expecting the other guy to die, as Mom puts it.

I might carry some residual bitterness, but really, my issue was resolved with the stroke of a pen. There are others for whom it isn’t as easy. Some life partners of service members aren’t acknowledged on any day of the year. They can’t go to the unit barbecue or the division ball; they have to be careful about being seen together in public at all. They certainly aren’t entitled to benefits, and if the worst happens, they’ll hear about it secondhand; being listed as next of kin might raise the suspicions of someone who follows every article of the Uniform Code of Military Justice to the letter.

I will appreciate all military significant others this Friday -- I’ve met some amazing ones in the past few years -- but the ones we’re not supposed to talk about will get an extra helping of compassion. They could use it.