Married to the Thin Blue Line...

I should begin by saying that my husband is not a policeman in a "big city". He does not confront gang violence, drug rings, or homicides on a daily basis. But he is a policeman nonetheless and he faces plenty of unknowns and "big city crime" even in the picturesque "drinking village with a fishing problem" where he works.

I always knew that he would end up in some type of emergency response career. When we were kids in grade school, he would burst through the doors to recess wailing like a siren. It was his calling. He detoured for a split second in college but quickly realized that architecture was not for him. He had a singular focus – something I have long envied – to become a cop and then to become the best cop he could be.

When we reunited in our 30’s, it did not surprise me that he had become a police officer. I wouldn't have had the opportunity for surprise even if I had wanted it as his mother updated me about his doings every time I saw her in the store where she worked. “A got married.” “A has a baby.” “A is a police officer.”  (and the one that should have clicked before it did...) "A got divorced." I thought I knew all I needed to know about him but was pleasantly surprised at who he had grown into during our 20 year absence from each other’s lives. But that is another story.

Our reunion, to the relief of our mothers, was swift and solid. During an early conversation between our homes – his on Cape Cod, mine in Vermont – he talked about his career choice with passion. He loved his job. He loved everything about it and never regretted for a moment the path he had chosen. I knew that he would never leave his chosen career for any reason and I admired that. I found comfort in his stalwart commitment to it.

During the first years that we were together, we still lived in different states. I didn't really get the full introduction to being the girlfriend/fiancée/wife of a cop until a year after we were married. My short visits weren't enough to really help me fully understand what I was marrying into.

What does the partner of a cop marry into? Simply put, they marry into a life that is not their own. It is a schedule that is dictated by moods, moons, money, and seniority. It is a life that is not easy on marriages or children or extended family.

I consider myself to be lucky as I have always been pretty independent. I have learned to travel alone, attend social gatherings alone, and be the sole representative from our union at family and other events. Having been unmarried until my late 30’s, I had developed those skills quite solidly. A year after we were married, we finally moved in together (another story) and it took a while to begin to realize just how handy those skills would be in my marriage.

For several years (and more often than not to this day) we arrived at locations in two different vehicles because we came from two different places. For several years we left events and went back to two different places. In fact, we landed at the Manchester, NH airport after our honeymoon and while he headed south to go back to work, I headed north. Odd? Yes. Necessary at the time? Definitely.

We are beginning of our seventh year of marriage and it is only in the past two years that I have fully come to realize how beholden I am to the schedule of a police officer. Each year we forecast his holiday schedule just after the changing of shifts on October 1 and figure out when we will squeeze in celebrations of Thanksgiving and Christmas – often early or late in the day around his schedule – sometimes on a completely different day from the rest of the world. Sometimes the stars line up so that he has Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off. Most often he has to work at least one of them and fairly often he gets stuck working both. Each year we invite people to come visit us for New Year’s Eve as he always has to work – no exceptions. 

Holidays are relatively easy to plan for – you adjust and bend and it becomes the norm after a while. It’s the other 362 days of the year that are harder to adjust for most of the time. Three months after forecasting the holiday schedule we start all over again trying to figure out what the next quarter will bring with the next shift change on the horizon knowing that now he might work midnight shift or evening shift or swing shift. (Luckily the more senior he is, the more control he has over this choice... usually.)

More than once have we had plans to meet for dinner or at an event and the call comes that he has been held over because they arrested a drunk driver 10 minutes before shift change. Or he is stuck because they have to transport a prisoner to the county jail or the hospital and he can’t leave until the escorting officer returns. Or that his day has been so crazy busy that he needs to stay late and finish all of the paperwork.

More than once I have had to drop back and punt – rearrange the schedule so I can pick up my step-son or call our hosts or dinner companions to beg off or make a new plan. Most of the time, I don’t mind. It’s okay because he is really committed to his job. He loves it. He is well-liked, he is highly respected for the excellent job that he does, and more importantly he truly enjoys what he does.

Does that always help me keep my cool when I've done 100% of the parenting-laundry-cleaning-shopping etc for the past month because his schedule has been so crazy? No. I am ashamed to admit that I occasionally get hazy about how hard he is working and only focus on how much more work I have to do around the house. I usually talk myself straight before I dump those irrational thoughts on him but occasionally he has to put up with me until the anvil drops on my head and I wake up. Luckily he’s a very patient man.

Being the wife of a cop means that even at 5:30am or 11pm when you don’t even want to be conscious, you wake up enough to kiss him, hug him, look him in the eye to tell him that you love him and send him on his way with two words, “Be safe” to which he responds (or you can’t go back to sleep), “Always”. 

Being the wife of a cop means that he might leave at 6:30am and not be home until 1:30am the next morning if he's pulling a double shift. It means dinner alone, dog-walking alone, shopping alone, movies alone. It means figuring out how to entertain yourself at a moment's notice.

Being the wife of a cop means that you make a lot of the decisions about your home life on your own or manage these conversations between dispatches or via text message. It means giving up the notion that you are ever going to have a "normal" family evening every night.

Being the wife of a cop means that in order to stretch his salary, you have to put up with last minute overtime shifts or traffic details that he can’t turn down - Not because someone is forcing him but because he never knows when the next overtime opportunity might come and the money always comes in handy. And with the overtime shift comes the odd sleeping schedule – getting home at 6pm, going to sleep by 7pm, showering at 10:30pm and leaving for work at 11pm. And the odd eating schedule - making dinner for him at 11pm so he can eat it at 5am. And being a cop's wife means that you have to listen to people tell you how "over paid" cops are when they see their year-end salaries in the annual report. It means exercising  restraint and keeping yourself from launching into this list of everything cops and their families sacrifice for their "huge salaries" at the top of your lungs.

Being the wife of a cop in a relatively small town doesn't give you the luxury of knowing that he will be coming home that night. Tonight might be the night that some drunk driver hits him while he is standing on the side of the road making a routine traffic stop. Today might be the day that the mentally unstable person decides to end it all and wants to take a cop with him. Today might be the day that just about anything can happen and the man that you love, the one you pledged to love forever, the one who swore to protect and serve is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Being the wife of a cop means really listening to him when you express your concerns about his safety and he explains all of the ways he is trained and vigilant about avoiding all of those situations. It means trusting that he knows how to protect himself. But being a policeman's wife means aching when you hear the news of an officer killed in the line of duty knowing that somewhere someone is getting the call you hope and pray you will never get.

Being the wife of a cop means being flexible, able to rebound, independent, supportive, a good listener, and a bit of a politician.

Being the wife of a cop is not easy. But being the wife of a man that you are proud of in every way sure makes it a lot easier!