Working 60 - 80 hour weeks for Uncle Sam meant precious little free time! The only military leave (authorized vacation time) I was able to take for the last 2 years as an Instructor was completely spent doing only take-home midterm and final exams for my Master's program in counseling psychology. I earned A's in 9 out of 10 courses because of the quality of the typed term papers and typed answers to multiple essay-question tests. Exams & papers were much more time consuming compared to the one course with in-class exams from a social worker who insisted all of us students go to his office downtown for class instead of meeting at the base like all the other instructors. Unfortunately, the civilian college didn't issue student course critiques like Nav School did. That instructor is probably still making teaching mistakes & misusing students because of no feedback. He was the only instructor available for that required course or I might have DROPPED it to take later with someone better. I had never dropped a course before -- it was not allowed at the AF Academy! I still did not understand the politics of GPA-building at civilian universities, even after a BA & a year of nav training and advanced school.
Many activities that others would have seen as routine or normal had to be turned into our family's "special outings." Going to a big parade downtown, driving all around Sacramento in a road rally that the Instructor Sq'dn sponsored ending in a Folsom eatery, other squadron-sponsored activities like student vs instructor soccer games and dress-uniform dinings-in or dinings-out, visiting Aunt Blanche & Uncle Ken in North Sacramento, driving to nearby Davis to Grandma Affonso's nursing home til she was 94, etc. Ivan was not yet in preschool so Raquel was well-occupied most of the time taking care of him which she said she wanted anyway, not to work outside the home.
If Raquel had not gotten herself pregnant before I went to Vietnam (she did not consult me), it would not have bothered me at all for her to have finished her college degree or found a job. I counseled her in a debrief for one of my Master's classes in career counseling that she was well inclined to a career in nursing, child care administration, or elementary school teaching. She said she preferred staying at home, instead. In our on-base housing neighborhood, there were a few other faculty & staff officers' wives with whom she formed fast friendships. At that time, she clearly preferred the domestic life which did not put many demands on her. I found out later that she had NOT stopped watching soap operas ("novelas" in Mexican parlance) as she had promised. The physiologist's wife next door seemed to like her afternoon wine a little too much & I wonder now about Raquel's frequent chats with her. (Raquel just never mentioned anything she didn't want discussed--I also found out later.) Another friend was the sexy blonde wife of the pilot across the street. She had the biggest bullet-shaped boobs of any slender woman on-base -- Raquel might have thought they would rub off on her, somehow. I wish we'd have thought about breast implants -- it might have made a difference for Raquel's psyche. But they were not openly available or talked about back then -- like so many other things.
Thankfully, weekends were our own as instructors at Nav School! We had time to spend together then with little interruption. We made the mistake of seldom having private time going out without our new little son, though. We had been forced to get married before ever having spent any significant amount of time as a couple. We fell into the common-sense mistake of viewing family life as something excluding a separate couple life (except for the bedroom). We DID see each other at least once a day -- because all flights took off and landed at the same base we lived on. Even if I was flying early or late, I saw Raquel at least when she was sleeping. (She never got up with me to fix us breakfast during my work-week; this established a pattern that lasted for 20 years.) But all things seemed pretty normal for an AF couple whose husband was working very hard to advance in his professional career at the same time he maintained and guided his family of adulthood through a new environment.
posted by Richard A @ 11:40 AM
