The initiation of a firefighter’s wife

When my husband first mentioned the idea of leaving his tech job to pursue a career in firefighting, I assumed he wasn’t serious. Not because industry pivoting wasn’t familiar—he had a three-year run in banking before switching to renewable energy sales and eventually landing in e-commerce—but because the industries he chose were. I could wrap my head around the general arc of a 9-to-5, but firefighting? It seemed as implausible as suddenly deciding to pursue acting.  

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The timing was also less than ideal, as it somehow always is. We were deep in the trying-to-conceive trenches of ovulation tracking and I was a newly promoted editor juggling the fresh responsibilities of people management with the increasing demands of site operations. What would this mean for the family we were trying to build? And what about my own career trajectory?

His career-change pitch had its selling points, money being one of them. We were living in the notoriously expensive San Francisco Bay Area where I grew up. The region’s fire departments offered a competitive salary, health benefits, and a retirement pension that could help us make student loan debts disappear in the short term and possibly lead to home ownership in the long term.

“While the thought of him living outside of our home for days at a time rattled me, he pointed out that his schedule of being at the fire station for two days and home for four could actually work in our favor if we started a family.”

While the thought of him living outside of our home for days at a time rattled me, he pointed out that his schedule of being at the fire station for two days and home for four could actually work in our favor if we started a family. On his off days he could take over the brunt of the household and childcare load.

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Most importantly, I could see how much he wanted this. As a natural-born helper with mechanical aptitude and an uncanny ability to remain calm in the eye of any shit storm, I realized that he’d also be great at it. We decided to take the leap.

In hindsight, we were pretty naive, which may have been for the best. It took five years of him grinding through countless volunteer hours, two unpaid Firefighter 1 academies, community college fire science courses, an EMT certification and working ambulance experience before he finally received a fire department offer letter. I had worked my way up to a director-level position at the media company I worked for and we were swimming in the all-consuming currents of new parenthood with a 3-year-old and a newborn. It was all happening.

“The things no one tells you about stepping into this life are the parts that are impossible to prepare for. The countless holidays, birthdays, milestones, and weekends he’ll miss. That the two days on, four days off schedule won’t account for mandatory overtime that happens more often than not.”

The things no one tells you about stepping into this life are the parts that are impossible to prepare for. The countless holidays, birthdays, milestones, and weekends he’ll miss. That the two days on, four days off schedule won’t account for mandatory overtime that happens more often than not, especially with California’s expanding wildfire seasons, where he can be gone for up to 21 days. That the exhaustion and constant exposure to trauma that comes with a 24-hour rescue position can spill into his off days.

I underestimated my own grief that came not only from his persistent absence but from the distance I needed to create from every aspect of marriage and parenthood I had romanticized. I wasn’t the only one learning how to share him with his work — my kids were sharing their father too, as though it were part of an unspoken contract that they never signed. The unpredictable schedule compounded by the inherent risk of his job meant that every time he left, we never really knew when he would come back.

A couple of years into his firefighting career, I met another firefighter wife at a Super Bowl party. Her kids were teens and she had over a decade of this lifestyle under her belt. I cornered her, anxious to unload and dying for whatever nuggets of wisdom she could share.

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“When does it start to feel normal?” I asked in between sips of the espresso martini I was nursing. I was hoping she would divulge a timeline that would help me orient to this strange and new life. 

She smiled compassionately, her hazel eyes twinkling. “It doesn’t,” she said simply.

This was hardly the response I was banking on, but as a recovering codependent and firefighter wife newbie, it was the one I needed.

I didn’t know it then, but the realization that I had to build a life that was mine regardless of whether he could always be a part of it kicked into full gear. That same year, I took my own leap and quit my full-time job, entering the scary and unpredictable yet deliciously freeing world of freelance writing. I began exercising regularly for the first time in my life, started therapy, made new friends, and most importantly, began trusting in myself.

The things no one tells you about how you’ll grow from this life are the parts you have to uncover for yourself. The grace you’ll learn to give yourself on the hardest days. The people who will come into your life that you’ll lean on and love. The communication skills you’ll foster through sheer necessity. That unpredictability might be the thing that forces you into the present.

source https://www.mother.ly/uncategorized/what-its-like-to-be-married-to-a-firefighter/