LEFT BEHIND Navy families navigate life at home
Waiting for Daddy’s return is tough on kids
Groton — The three of them are huddled in the bathroom one morning getting ready for school.
Kelsey Smith, 32, has just drawn a mustache on her son Colton’s face with a black marker for spirit week, while sister Hadley, 2, looks on.
Then they hear the distinct ringing sound the phone makes when Dad is trying to video chat. They pick up, excitedly. The connection is spotty. He is in port in Spain, which seems like a world away. They have time for a quick hello, before they kiss the screen and head off to start their day.
While Colton and Hadley are not alone in having a father who serves on a submarine — “it’s sonar,” Colton says of his Dad’s job, “They get to find other boats that have bad guys on it” — it doesn’t make months apart any easier.
In the beginning of the deployment, Josh’s boat, the USS Minnesota, had several port calls close together so the sailors were able to call home more frequently. Kelsey was surprised by this as the families were told by the Navy to expect minimal contact.
When the sub is in port, “you put your life on hold ... because you don’t want to miss a call,” Kelsey Smith said.
When the boat goes back out to sea, it’s like starting all over again.
“We’re not waiting for Dad’s phone call anymore,” she said. “We have to get back to a routine.”
The deployment has had a different impact on the couple’s two children.
Hadley, who is almost 3, is too young to understand the concept of time, or why Dad is gone. Just the same, she says that everything she owns — toys, clothes, books — were bought for her by Daddy. She sees pictures of Josh around the house and points to them and says “Daddy.” As the days wound down, she’d hear noises in the house, and would ask “Daddy?” thinking Josh was home.
“I’ll say, ‘Daddy is still gone,’ and that’s the end of it,” Kelsey Smith said.
For Colton, who turns 7 this summer, the deployment has been more difficult. He was dealing with a lot initially — a new school, new friends, all without his father. Josh missed his son’s first basketball season, but he’s hoping he’ll be able to help coach his baseball team this spring, or his first football season next fall. During one of his basketball games, Josh happened to be in port and was able to watch the game via video chat. Though the connection was spotty, Colton thought it was pretty cool that his dad could watch from far away.
Asked halfway through the deployment whether the time was passing slowly, Colton replied, “It feels like twenty hundred weeks.”
Mom was doing a good job while Dad was away, he said, “but I’m the man of the house.”
Colton misses cuddling with his father — who has a spot in the corner of the couch — and watching movies. They like to dance and sing together. On Halloween, Colton saved all the Snickers bars he got, Josh’s favorite candy, and put them in the freezer to save for him. When his mother cooked a meal that his father likes, he’d say, “Let’s save this for Daddy.”
He’ll send jokes by email to Josh. “There were 10 cats on a boat. One jumped off. How many are left? Zero. They’re all copy cats.” In another email, he shared what he learned about sharks that day at school. The Christmas lights are still up outside the house because Colton wants Josh to see them.
Josh wrote several chapters of a book for Colton called “The Adventures of HMS Millennium Spoon” in the same style as Geronimo Stilton books, Colton’s favorite, about a mouse who is a journalist and editor for the fictional newspaper The Rodent’s Gazette and often gets caught up in adventures.
The family didn’t do a countdown until there were eight days left in the deployment because it makes the days pass more slowly, and Colton becomes too consumed by it and gets upset.
One day, Colton came off the bus crying. When Kelsey asked him about it, he said that he misses his father the most when he sits in the back of bus, “because it reminds me he’s so far away.”
He often doesn’t verbalize how he’s feeling, Kelsey said. When he acts out, her instinct is to punish him, but she has to think whether maybe he’s misbehaving because he misses his father.
Frequent moves and separation from parents are routine for military children. The reactions to these stressors vary, but younger children may struggle in school, act out or withdraw. Research has shown that the mental health of the parent at home has a big impact, especially for younger children, on their distress level.
Charles Barnum Elementary School in Groton, which enrolls about 400 students, 75 percent of whom are military dependents, holds a weekly deployment club as a way for students with parents deployed to talk about how they’re feeling. During a Veterans Day ceremony at school, a seat with a yellow ribbon was left open in recognition of Josh.
“We’re looking forward to going to the park with him, playing on the playground, just being here with us is what we’re looking forward to most,” Kelsey Smith said. “Just having him in the house.”
“It feels like twenty hundred weeks.” COLTON SMITH, 6, ON HIS FATHER’S ABSENCE