Lost In Translation

If you are a regular reader of SpouseBuzz you may or may not know a few things about me.  Lest I lose YOU in translation too, let me tell you two things.  First, my husband is deployed.  Second, we are in the middle of an international adoption.

That, apparently, is a combination ripe with frustrating possibilities.

Aside from the obvious inconvenience of discovering I need the signature of someone who is not on my continent anymore, I realized yesterday just how much I take for granted regarding my understanding of our deployment situation.  As a Guard Wife, I occasionally feel like I might not have the same depth of information, rote memory of acronyms, and understanding of all things military as my active duty counterparts do.  Admittedly, unless I have to think about the ins and outs of deployment, I don't.

I realized yesterday, though, that I may need to be a bit more sensitive to the information gaps of others or I may be filling out and re-filling out paperwork. 

To make a twisty story short, it began with a question of whether or not my husband receives income for his "Army activities."  When I explained that, "Yes.  Although we are an all-volunteer force, we are not, in fact, volunteers in the income sense."  Then, our caseworker became utterly befuddled by our income numbers and was unable to understand why we weren't putting down both my husband's civilian income and deployment income at the same time.  I realized after exchanging several confusing e-mails that the agency thought my husband's civilian job AND Uncle Sam were providing him with a paycheck during the next year.

If THAT were the case, I'd have enlisted too!

Luckily, this confusion came before we submitted our documents to the Embassy and to the courts such that we can provide supplemental information explaining how the National Guard works under "normal" circumstances and how it works when troops are activated and deployed by the federal government.

Just another example for our family record books of how things aren't quite the same when our soldier is deployed.

Have you had an experience where something was lost in translation?  If so, put them in comments.  Maybe I can learn from your experience and be prepared to save myself some confusion in the future.

Comments

[name must not be blank]

I had a lost in translation moment and my feelings are still hurt. back home in my way liberal community during my hubbie's deployment when church buddy asked in front of our chldren what deployed spouse was doing. Proud son said military intelligence stuff when church buddy said isn't that an oxy-moron??? Some months later when deployed hubbie was still deployed church buddy found himself dealing with himself through a lay off and an extremely high mortgage because of good old liberal community. Oxymoron??

[Deltasierra]

Oh my word, yes! I totally understand. My husband is also Guard, but now AGR. He had been working full-time for the state before he got his AGR position, but his orders ran out just a few months before we were going to have a baby, and they were scrambling to try to get him new orders, or something that would hold us out in the interim.

While all that went on, I discovered TriCare Reserve Select had just been launched, and we were eligible. However, no TriCare rep that I spoke to even knew what I was talking about. Unfortunately, we lived in a Navy community, and trying to speak Army to them was already confusing (I tried to update my husband's orders at the DEERS office at the Shipyard, and they said they couldn't do it because it was Army. If I hadn't been pregnant and extremely frustrated, I would have told them that they were DEERS, and it didn't MATTER what flavor of military we were! Thankfully, the people on the Sub Base were much more knowledgeable).

So, after going around and around about this Reserve Select plan at the Navy Hospital, I finally called TriCare, and they told me it was just like Standard, only we had to pay for it.

Suddenly, when I got to the hospital and said "Standard!" all the doors opened up and it was smooth sailing from then on (pun not necessarily intended).

Of course, my husband got his orders a month later to continue working for the state, so we jumped back on Prime again, but at least now I have the experience and can speak the TriCare language across the culture barriers. ;)

Now that my husband is the Readiness NCO for his Guard company, that knowledge has come in handy!

[MrsD]

I think, because we live with one foot in the civilian world and one foot in the military world, we of the National Guard constantly have to "translate". The thing is, we do it so automatically that we forget sometimes that others either don't make the translation or don't have the information to do so.

Hubby is a Technician (wears the uniform, follows the rules, but is a civilian) during the week and a soldier on the weekends. I volunteer on a military post. Neither the active duty folks (and we have all flavors here), our civilian friends/family nor even our Guard friends (most of whom don't live near post and/or rarely even go on post) seems able to make sense of our hodge podge mix of military/civilian life! Most of the time I try to adjust my vocabulary and approach based on who I'm talking to so *I* do all the translating, but sometimes I forget. That's when the fun starts! LOL