Wedding Cake for Breakfast by Kim Perel Page B

specifically, but the army. A mistress who would always come first. I was the second wife to his primary wife, only having custody of him on off days. And on those off days, the men he worked with would almost always be included. By necessity; these were the men he depended on to save his life. And I had better treat them like brothers.
    At work, a full-time writing position opened. I got to do things civilians never do. Once, the Rangers had a family Range Day. We went out to a firing range, where I hunkered down with a machine gun and a rifle. The hot shells hit my side, and I’m scared of guns, but I didn’t dare flinch.
    It wasn’t long before I figured out if I was going to write anything critical, it had better be under a pen name. Every time there was an article vaguely critical of the army, even if I didn’t write it, Keith would get flack. I mostly wrote happy articles about the military. One of the new columns featured an inspiring military family member. I looked for Ranger wives doing interesting things. Once I picked a first sergeant’s wife, who earned extra income helping a shut-in. Her house was cinder blocks on the outside, but on the inside it was a homey woman’s domain that could pack up and move at a moment’s notice. She had a nearly wall-to-wall fluffy pink carpet she took on each move. “My husband knows this is my space,” she said proudly, her husband being a notoriously difficult guy, with his name tattooed across his knuckles. After his wife was featured in the newspaper, the first sergeant was, grudgingly, nicer to my husband. The wives became, if not friendly, polite to me. They invited me to picnics and the Christmas party.
    I, in turn, never got over my abject terror that somehow I’d say the wrong thing and my husband would be spit-polishing someone’s shoes for six months. The officers’ wives did not hang out with the enlisted wives; that would be even more fearsome. I still kept to myself. I learned how to be polite, not complain.
    And, for the first time, I learned I could get along alone. The independence required for a military life, it seemed, could be acquired. “I love it when my husband’s gone,” one woman confided to me. “I let the house go and I can do whatever I want.”
    Finally, my husband’s turn came up for Ranger school. He did the tests—push-ups, pull-ups, a run—and passed. He came home happy, ready to pack. Then, when he returned to work, he got this news. “You didn’t do all the pull-ups,” a sergeant told him abruptly. His squad sergeant was away training, and wasn’t there to speak up for him. “You’re not going.”
    That was that. Keith’s goal of going to Ranger school was over. Now, with a little over a year left in the unit, they transferred him to the headquarters unit, as close to an office job as you could get in his unit. The Ranger school slot went to someone who had reenlisted. Keith went on fewer training missions; he rode his bike to work, came home early most days. Just as I’d gotten used to the crazy schedule, it turned into a normal one.
    But though both our dreams and goals had changed that first year, sometimes disappointingly, we learned we could depend on each other, no matter what. And, in a strange twist, it was only by becoming an army dependent that I had finally become independent, someone who wasn’t afraid of loneliness. In marriage, I discovered my own small brand of toughness.

525,600 Minutes
    JENNA M C CARTHY
    Many people believe that the first year of marriage is one of the hardest, a transitional period of extreme sacrifice, compromise, and adjustment. I am not one of these people. In fact, I am pretty sure that if you find the opening twelve months as newlyweds to be tough, you are in for a long and rocky road to side-by-side cemetery plots.
    I say this based on the assumption that you married someone whom you knew