WE WERE STANDING AT THE ENTRANCE to the Living Seas, Epcot’s aquarium at Disney World. Laughing children ran past an orange clown fish splashing in a tranquil teal-colored water fountain. And it was in this placid scene that my husband, freshly home from Iraq, announced he wanted to quit our vacation and go home — immediately.
“I’m under more stress here than
I ever was in Baghdad [Iraq] with bombs going off over my head,” my husband said. We had only been at Disney World
for two days, but the crowds, our crying 2-year-old — an infant when my husband left for his deployment eight months earlier — the traffic, and my general angst that we have “the perfect vacation” made everything go awry. It took a quiet conversation on a bench to keep the trip from going completely off the rails. But we’d learned a hard lesson: Vacations are not always ideal for someone who has just left a war zone.
More than R & R Unfortunately, this scenario is all-too-common among military families who attempt to leave on a getaway as soon as their loved ones return from deployment, say coun- selors. Vacation planning requires more than a visit to a travel blog or a cruise ship website, because your trip is not simply about getting some R & R. Rather, a post-deploy- ment vacation should help get you back in sync with your family, while
62 A MILITARY OFFICER AUGUST 2010
at the same time addressing your unique battle-weary needs. Here’s how to plan your dream
getaway, choose your destination, and get everyone to communicate his or her expectations — before you pack one suitcase: Cocoon with your family first. At a minimum, wait 30 days before you take a trip, says Neil Duchac, a retired Navy petty officer third class and a military family counselor for the past 15 years, based in Minneapolis. “We all feel safe at home, and
when you’ve been to a place where you haven’t been safe, it’s good to feel that safety net,” Duchac says. “A lot of people are very distressed. People are worried and concerned about how they’ll be viewed by people and perceive themselves as being different.”
Tailor-made vacation Rear. Adm. Paul Kayye, USNR-Ret., national president of the Reserve Of- ficers Association and a psychiatrist, says returning servicemembers often have delayed PTSD reactions. If vet- erans wait to take a vacation, coun- selors have a chance to assess how
they are doing and suggest the type of getaway that would best serve a particular servicemember and his or her entire family. If your family feels strongly about doing something immediately, plan day trips during your first month home and schedule a longer a vaca- tion after that, Duchac says. “Look for a common sense of enjoyment, something you share equally that you want to do together. It helps with dy- namics. I’m a big rock ’n’ roll fan, and a day trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame would be great, plus that’s reinforced if my spouse is a big fan, too,” he says.
Another option is a night at a bed-and-breakfast with your spouse. But mostly, try to plan day trips for the entire family, Duchac adds. “You want to take the kids with you. It’s essential if you’ve been gone for a whole year.”
Family dynamics and expectations “When you [return from deployment], it’s not going to be perfect initially or as idyllic as people will think. We do evolve and change,” says Duchac. That said, it’s not impossible to plan a trip that everyone will enjoy equally, says Eric Minton. From the mid-1990s to 2003, Minton wrote about the amusement and theme park industry and was associate edi- tor for Amusement Today. He’s also a military spouse; his wife, an Air Force colonel, retired in November 2008 after 29 years on active duty. One way to make everyone happy is to decide on a location or activity the family enjoyed before the deployment. “If you were talking about hanging out in the Smoky Mountains and everyone said, ‘Yes!’ that was a family thing. Whether it’s Disney, watching a shut- tle launch, or going to a stock car race, whatever the discussions were at that time, that’s your sense of what your family would enjoy,” Minton says.
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