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Day-to-day life a struggle for partners left behind while a soldier is deployed

By Michael Gisick
Monday, October 15, 2007

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For many of the spouses of deployed soldiers of the New Mexico National Guard, the difficulties of an absence likely to last at least a year play out through - or sometimes because of - their children. When the kids are misbehaving, the wives miss their husbands. When the kids miss their dads, the wives miss their husbands.

For many of the spouses of deployed soldiers of the New Mexico National Guard, the difficulties of an absence likely to last at least a year play out through - or sometimes because of - their children. When the kids are misbehaving, the wives miss their husbands. When the kids miss their dads, the wives miss their husbands. Watch »

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Sometimes when her dad calls from Iraq, Caley Romero doesn't have time to talk to him - because she's 4.

Because she's 4, sometimes Caley talks to her dad, Jonathan Romero, on her toy phone. Like the other day, when she and her mom got in a fight over buckling her seat belt.

"She said, `That's it, I'm calling daddy,' " Robynn Sena said, recounting her daughter's conversation.

"You want me to tell Nana?" Caley told her dad, via toy phone. "Okay, I will."

Then she hung up.

"And next," she announced, "I'm calling Santa."

A few hundred miles north, in Farmington, 7-year-old Nathaniel "Bear" Montoya keeps vigil with his father on the family's big-screen TV, watching and re-watching the DVD of pictures his dad brought back from his first tour in Iraq.

For many of the spouses of deployed soldiers of the New Mexico National Guard, the difficulties of an absence likely to last at least a year play out through - or sometimes because of - their children. When the kids are misbehaving, the wives miss their husbands. When the kids miss their dads, the wives miss their husbands.

"It's not like you have good days and you have bad days," says Karin Montoya, whose husband, David, is a 36-year-old staff sergeant now deployed to Iraq for the second time. "It's like you have bad days and you have worse days."

Montoya drove her three kids down from Farmington for the weekend late last month, partly for the New Mexico State Fair, partly because Albuquerque is her hometown and being there, at her parents' house, helps take a little of the pressure off now that her husband is in Iraq again.

But the long dark drive back up north on Saturday night put a quick end to their little vacation. She and the kids had a "meltdown" on the way, she says, and then they got home to discover their pet goats had broken through the fence into the yard of a neighbor, who'd called police and had the goats hauled in.

"It's like, it's not his fault, but it wouldn't have happened if he were here," Montoya says. But it's not just the goats. It's about raising a rambunctious trio of little ones, alone. About the bills. About the nights without a man she's known half her life, and all of the adult part.

Some days, Montoya says, she wishes she had a uniform of her own. A badge or a star. Something she could wear.

"We'd go somewhere and he's wearing his uniform, and everybody's like, `Thank you, thank you for your service,' " she says. "But it's like, if you're a kid that your dad's gone or your mom's gone, or you're a spouse, it's like, sometimes I wish I looked as beat up as I feel."

Both David Montoya and Jonathan Romero deployed in May with a Rio Rancho-based National Guard unit - A Company of the 200th Infantry. After three months at an Army base in New Jersey and another month in Kuwait, the unit arrived in Iraq and is stationed in Baghdad alongside a Las Cruces-based infantry unit. Both have about 150 members.

It's Montoya's second tour in Iraq, and Karin Montoya says it's no easier on her than his first tour.

"For some reason, it seems like it's harder," she says. "I think that's because this time, I know what to expect. I know there isn't going to be any coming home early."

Montoya says her family and friends are supportive but often can't really understand what it's like to be a soldier's wife. In a tradition as old as war, she's found quick bonds with the wives of other soldiers deployed with her husband's unit and with one in particular, Robynn Sena.

"We talk every day," Montoya says. "It's like, if I'm having a bad day, she might have had the same bad day yesterday. . . . Battle buddy."

The two women have their differences. Montoya left her job to raise her children after her husband, a compressor mechanic, left for Iraq. Sena, a lawyer who handles divorce and personal injury cases, continues to work from her Downtown office now that her fianc‚, Romero, an Albuquerque police detective and lieutenant in the National Guard, is deployed for the first time.

But aside from their similarly off-color senses of humor, the two women have other similarities. With her boisterous personality, Caley Romero could be the younger sibling of Montoya's three - 12-year-old Nicholas, 9-year-old Kristin and 7-year-old Nathaniel, known as Bear. And both women say their differences complement each other.

"She knows how the military works, and I'm just learning," Sena says. "I'm always wanting to go straight to the general."

As she wades into her first stint as a soldier's wife, Sena's finding a lot to learn. The postage for a care package to her husband: $55. A month of unreliable Internet access: $70.

She and Montoya have started a group called Silent Rank, named after a poem about soldier's wives. It aims, among other things, to raise money to help defray some of those hidden charges.

"A lot of us are supporting kids," Sena says. "Not all of us are lawyers."