12 April 2011

women on the front line & the Army

Greetings all,
I'm not joining in the politcal & military debate on the announcement this week that they are opening up the final few jobs in arms corps - to women - enabling them to fight on the front line.  I grew up with a father in the Navy who loved his daughters but wrote papers on why women shouldn't be on submarines & encouraged my brothers not to join the military.  Let me just add in that he met my mother when she was in the Women's Royal English Navy.  It was also another time, era, way of life.  Anyway, we were certainly raised to debate, at length, anything & everything in my family!!  We were all highly educated & if we had an opinion, we had to back ourselves.  
My idea of women on the front line, was & still is - we wives who are left at home to run the family.  There is a saying "if the military wanted you to have a family, they would have issued you with one".  I watched my mother change belts on broken vacuum cleaners, fix washers on dripping taps, pump or replace flat tyres on bikes or cars & clear the roof gutters (she didn't like heights).  Mum set a great example of how to "mend & make do", never complained & invested in her husband's career.  No wonder i cruised into the role of military wife so easily.     
I have to do all things engine oil, mowing lawns & fixing/ replacing/ changing too . . . like this incident which i faced on Saturday afternoon in my son's bedroom. 
 So off i went to the hardware store to purchase a tack hammer & tacks, something light to bang these planks into place.  Want female inequality, go to a hardware store, most of the men there assume all women are idiots. 

Is my son the only boy on earth who doesn't have a single piece of Lego, puzzle or stray sock under his bed?? 
 So, $11 & 30 minutes later, da dah, my son's 6 month old bed is fixed.  I was thinking, gosh, shoddy workmanship, this cost a fortune & i want this bed frame to last 10 years, how did it fall apart so easily when the girls' beds are all fine??
 I made his bed up & tucked him in.  He asked if i'd take some photos in the dark - now i know what he gets up to at night, a bit of bed trampolining, still, aged 7!! 
As for heated debates on work place relations & what women can do in the military, it requires so much more thought & discussion.  Hello, we've had 5 different pathetic, weak, male Defence Ministers in 12 months, maybe start with appointing a tenacious, strong, female Defence Minister there or at least some consistency??  Top down people.  Love Posie

12 comments:

Alice Becomes said...

go you!

what a wonderful job you did and a great example to your kids, love it!!

Gill xo

Lisar said...

Who would have thought that a 7 year old boy would use his bed as a trampoline!!!
This made me laugh out loud....and what a fantastic wife and mother you are...Good on you for your committment to your husband and children....Love your blog.

Kylie said...

:) Bed Trampolining will do it every time - lucky he did not snap them - hehe - tell me about handyshop men - gahhh they are a pain. When my DH (like yours - always away) was deployed it was I that went out looking for a lawn mower - I came across a lovely man and he helped me spend almost $800 on a lawn mower - that lawn mower is still going strong 10 years on though so money well spent (and DH was happy when he returned as I had replaced his Honda car with a Honda mower:)

Liz said...

It is a hot issue isn't it? I'm of the 'women can do whatever they want' school. But seriously, they have to want to do it first, me I'm happy to have doors opened and someone to do the heavy lifting and grateful for both our men AND women of the ADF...
Lizzie
xxx

Anonymous said...

As soon as I saw the bed base I wondered if it was from jumping on the bed...how do I know this? Because that is what me and my siblings did as children :) only we snapped the slats.

A Red Ham said...

Hi there Posie
I was wondering if you have announced the winner of your 300th post give-away. I have been eagerly waiting to see if it was me! I hope I haven't missed it!

Ruby Star said...

Oh Posie, my thought is they've made this brash decision to take the heat off 'the other' situation. It upsets me that the silliness of a few is said to be the 'culture' of the adf. Anyway, you're doing better than me... my tools are a butter knife and a shoe... they fix everything here :)

AllIsClear said...

Good effort Posie - and from one Army wife and Service daughter to another I hear you... have just come in from mowing the lawn, unblocked a blocked toilet yesterday (bleurgh) and gawd knows what I'll be doing next! I also used to be in the Army, but I reserve judgement on the front-line issue - I'm in the UK, so we have yet to have that debate.

Love your blog btw - always a go-to page for me. You sound like a top woman!

Anonymous said...

Luv it! My WHOLE family was military! Dad, career, Mom a WAC nurse, both "Papa's", all 3 brothers AND my son! I was a single Mom of 4 for 13 yrs., I was on the front line! I stood and defended my children, their home, their freedom and signed up to exchange my life for them. We're all on the front line as women!

Anonymous said...

Hi - I am really glad to find this. great job!

NessaKnits said...

Women in front line ... such a difficult debate. I wouldn't want my beautiful daughter there, but aren't American women already on the front line? I guessed about the trampoling before you confirmed it. We see some of that here too, fortunately the bottom planks are screwed in by my husband on assembly, but my son this morning was jumping on my bed in a spiderman set of pj's and boy was he cute and his grin was from ear to ear.

Miss Prudence said...

heh heh heh, not that you wanted to enter the debate!!!
Love it!
Good work on the trampolining fix it job! I think most women are naturally self sufficient or they just band to gether and get things done...hear hear for a female minister recruited from the ranks of military wife would be an excellent idea!