Tag Archives: military wife

IN THE SCENE

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When I gaze at the comforter of bright snow draped over my patio and beyond, the beauty of it all becomes a welcome distraction from the task in front of me, which is writing. Since I’m composing an essay about the memorable snows I’ve known, it seems only right that I stop to consider the snow that hugs my holly bushes like whipped cream, letting only sprigs of green remain topside, as if they were laurel wreaths. And since wreaths of laurel are symbols of triumph, I’d say last week’s blizzard has won Mother Nature’s contest and deserves such recognition.

Writing is my pleasure.  Since I live alone, I can write whenever it pleases me. My cottage is located within a retirement community, built on acreage which serves as a wildlife habitat. Not long ago, the snow plows cleared my street and driveway, giving me back my quiet world, so I can once again enter the scene.   

The chickadees burrowing into the depths of my pine trees make me wonder how they’ll ever survive. The fluttering creatures remind me of another bird caught in the snow, in Claude Monet’s oil painting of The Magpie—a blackbird who perches on top of an old fence, above the sparkling snow piled beneath him. Monet created this Impressionist snowscape–one of the 140 he painted—in the late 1860s during a time of severe French winters.  It’s a favorite of mine.  

The Magpie 1869 by Claude Monet, courtesy of http://www.fineartamerica.com.

While I trod along the pathways in my community, I find all sorts of animal tracks over the mountains of snow. I take close-up photos with my iPhone so I can research what creatures were there: a deer, a racoon, a fox?  And, when the sun shines a certain way, I’m delighted at how it makes the snow glisten, much like Monet’s. 

As I sit at my high table in front of my open laptop with my coffee mug at hand, I glance outside and see the fraternity of Canada Geese land next to the pond. I’m happy to see them again, and wish those entertaining characters would stay a while.  

Last week during my daily walk, I saw four geese glide in and touch down on the ice-crested part of the pond, leaving the open water to their leader who, after testing the ice, found it more appealing. I stopped to watch as the others cautiously padded across the ice toward him. Their awkwardness made me chuckle, as they lined up like good soldiers on detail, one behind the other. Without a quack, the last fellow in line sank through the ice in slow motion. The one ahead took his turn, as did the third, each paddling with great consternation toward their leader, who must have thought, What Dumbclucks!  

I turn back to my writing reluctantly, leaving the geese for another day, but feeling refreshed by the intermission–a pause that’s given me new ideas for my essay, and reminded me why I like living here.  

The Authors Show Interviews “My Pilot” Author Sarajane Giere

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MY PILOT – A STORY OF WAR, LOVE, AND ALS

CLICK BELOW TO LISTEN TO THIS COMPELLING INTERVIEW

Awoman recalls her life—never dull and sometimes terrifying—as an Air Force wife in this memoir.

The Authors Show interviews My Pilot author, Sarajane Giere.

Sarajane Giere offers a uniquely intimate glimpse into the life of a military wife as she tells the story of her fighter pilot husband, Bernie, a Vietnam Veteran who flew 214 combat missions in the Vietnam War and served twenty-five years in the Air National Guard’s world-class 106th Rescue Wing.

With searing love and explicit honesty, she recounts the terror of the Vietnam years and the lifelong sacrifices that affected her pilot’s life and death. In the telling she honors her husband, their family, and their extended military family, the community holds dear.

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Kirkus Reviews – MY PILOT

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A STORY OF WAR, LOVE, AND ALS

BY SARAJANE GIERE ‧ RELEASE DATE: NOV. 9, 2020
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/sarajane-giere/my-pilot/#

Awoman recalls her life—never dull and sometimes terrifying—as an Air Force wife in this memoir.

A woman recalls her life—never dull and sometimes terrifying—as an Air Force wife in this memoir.

When Giere married Bernie, the uncertainty of their lives presented itself as a source of adventure rather than anxiety: “We were so much in love that we never questioned what the future would bring.” But Bernie, an Air Force pilot, was eventually sent to Vietnam with the 557th Squadron, a separation that weighed heavily on the author, only 25 years old at the time. She was responsible for tending to their young daughter and preparing for the arrival of another child.

Giere did her best to manage her fears—she played bridge, joined a Bible study group, prayed—but nevertheless remained scared her husband, like so many other pilots, would not return. The author movingly depicts her predicament, which became intensely real to her when she learned another Air Force wife lost her husband in Vietnam: “After that the vulnerability of a pilot’s life became a reality that helped define my role in this new war experience. My friends from the past, who carried on their civilian lives as if there were no Vietnam, seemed disconnected, foreign.” Giere poignantly chronicles her eventful marriage, including the years following Bernie’s deployment to Vietnam and his struggle with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Still, her husband’s stretch of time overseas forms the dramatic backbone of the memoir. The author charmingly strikes an informal register, an anecdotal casualness that forges an even greater intimacy with readers in this admirably candid remembrance. And while of course she did not serve in Vietnam herself, she relates Bernie’s experiences, through conversations and letters, so vividly that readers receive a captivating peek into a soldier’s life there. This is an endearing reminiscence, a kind of love letter from the author to her husband, both sweet and wise.An affecting recollection of a memorable marriage.

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This review is provided by Kirkus Reviews, click here to see the original review.

Patty’s Christmas Memory

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Patty Nolan in 1927, age 17

My mother, Patty, showed me how memories from the past can enrich the present. Whether from her diaries, letters, or journals, be they sorrowful or sublime, she believed that memories were as precious as gold. During all the years since she’s been gone, I’ve treasured her memoirs. Their value enriches me, especially when I reread her Christmas Memory each December.

I was captivated by my mother’s stories of her childhood, and what it was like celebrating Christmas with 7 big sisters. Born in 1910, Patty was a talented writer who filled up diaries and journals, wrote poetry for Script– her high school writers’ club–and took to the stage. After she married my dad in 1931 and had her first daughter, she wrote about her childhood, typing out her Christmas Memory using onion-skin paper. She sent the story to her sister, Germaine, and I wish I could have been there as Aunt Jimmy read it for the first time. In the years to follow, they would move on from Christmas to tell amusing stories of sibling rivalries which I loved to hear, mainly because of their laughter in the telling which proved contagious.  

We were all at home—it didn’t seem crowded–just natural that we slept three in a bed, and I being the youngest smothered in the middle. From the day the first mysterious package was hidden away on Mama’s closet shelf we knew that Christmas was coming. 

On Christmas Eve the little church would be full to bursting. A spell was in the air when Santa Clause arrived to hand us each a little pictured box of candy. I wonder if Genevieve (her oldest sister) remembers one such performance when she played, “The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.” I remembered because I was one of the “so many children,” and had one line to say as I strung cranberries on the tree.

After we went home to bed, sleep overtook us, but only for a little while. Then, suddenly, we three awoke to a quiet, grey morning as we quivered under the covers and pinched each other. Teddy and Jimmy pushed me out of bed to run shivering into the hallway where I shouted, “Merry Christmas!” There was something of the Chanticleer in that –I felt that I, with my own voice, had startled Christmas into being. 

Oh Papa, I can hear you groan, “Great Scott! It’s only four o’clock, and Mama say, “Get up Will and light the tree.” We had to dress while this took place–long underwear, buttons all over, and those high-laced shoes. One of the things that we all loved, were tarlatan bags filled with an apples, oranges, nuts and candy, that mysteriously showed up in our bedroom on Christmas morning.

And then, that precious moment came when we were blindfolded by one of the older girls, and we made our way downstairs and lined up in front of the tree. When Papa said, “Now,” the blindfolds were removed. My awe, my joy, and my hopes were fulfilled as I gazed upon this twinkling tower of candles and tinsel, angels and icicles! For one brief moment, the gifts lay forgotten while my eyes, my very soul, drank in the beauty of this sight.

I’m glad I have a little girl, and my Christmas prayer is only this: that I may never forget the loving source of these precious memories, and perhaps in some measure give to my home and family the same spirit of love and happiness that shines through all the memories I have of home and Christmas.

A Legacy of Letters

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Letters from long ago intrigue me. Whether they be written by my pilot, from an alert- shack at a South Vietnam airbase in 1965, or one penned by my grandfather to my grandmother in the 1890s, the writers’ voices bring them back to life better than any other scrapbook could. Photographs talk, but letters shout.  

I’m a saver of old family letters and memorabilia.  My cousin once told me, “Sarajane, every family has an historian, and you’re it, kid.” I never met my maternal grandparents, Bill and Matea Nolan, so it was doubly satisfying to read his love letter to her, when on June 18, 1893, he wrote, “…I am going to a little stag party tonight. There is no pleasure in anything for me anymore except to be by your side. I have a great many more things to talk about but must wait until we meet again which will be soon. Then I am yours, forever. W.I. Nolan, Ergo Amo Te {I Love You}.”

My husband, Bernie, survived the Vietnam War and so did his many, detailed letters. As a 26-year-old fighter pilot, knowing there was a good chance he may not return, he didn’t rein in his emotions as he did later in life. His words spilled out and captured me, and I read them over and over. Just having his latest letter in the pocket of my robe made me feel close to him. One pilot I knew rarely wrote home. His wife seemed fine with it, but this baffled me. Once Bernie and I were together again, there were other ways to communicate. I stowed his letters in a tin box on a basement shelf, and didn’t revisit them until after he died, 47 years later. 

 When I reread Bernie’s war letters, that peppy, 1st Lieutenant came back to me, as did my memories of those turbulent 60s, and our adventurous marriage that began at the beginning of the decade.  I wanted my grandkids to see him as I once did, the grandpa they never knew as a young man, against the backdrop of a war they’d only read about in school.

 Stoked by my war letters, I harnessed my new-found energy onto the page in 2013 and began creating a memoir of our life together. As the recollections began to grow, chapter to chapter, so did my gratitude.  

 Seven years later, my memoir has become a reality, inspired by my pilot’s letters and my desire to soften my grief by creating something of value. 

My Pilot: A Story of War, Love, and ALS

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The highly anticipated autobiographical memoir My Pilot: A Story of War, Love, and ALS from author Sarajane Giere is available today!

Within the pages of this unique memoir from a military wife’s perspective, Sarajane frankly recounts her life with her husband from the their marriage, through the Vietnam War, and ultimately to his death as a result of ALS.

This is a heart-warming story that clearly illustrates their bond through time and distance.

BUY YOUR COPY TODAY!