‘Mr. Mom’: Home-Front Husbands Cope : Military: Deployment of wives leaves some husbands scrabbling to handling family duties delegated to the women.

My wedding vows didn’t mention Operation Desert Shield. But there I was on a recent Sunday night, standing in the small, stuffy passenger terminal at North Island with my wife, Lynne. I held on to her tightly, reluctantly waiting for the planes to Alameda to begin boarding.

Standing with us were three other couples. I hadn’t met them before, but we shared a common bond. At the end of August, in the middle of the night, our lives had been turned upside down by a telephone call announcing that most of the reservists from Hospital Unit 519, a unit of medical personnel that drills at Balboa Naval Hospital, were being called up.

As we exchanged small talk at the terminal, someone suggested that the husbands get together for a coffee klatch. I looked at the other men. Like me, they were smiling, aware of the irony of our situation.

We weren’t the ones wearing military uniforms or flying back that night to Alameda after a weekend in San Diego. It was our wives who had been called to active duty and sent, together with six other nurses from Unit 519, to the Oakland Naval Hospital. We were the men staying behind.

Driving home later from the terminal, I decided to talk some more with the other husbands I had just met. I wanted to find out what staying behind was like for them. For me, it wasn’t much fun; it was a lot of work.

Since Lynne left, I’ve taken over our household. On paper, it shouldn’t be a big a job. With our 21-year-old daughter away at college, there’s only a medium-sized condo and Gracie the dog to care for. But running a household by yourself, even a scaled-down model like ours, takes time. If I’m not paying bills or doing laundry, I’m buying food or giving the dog a flea bath. It never ends.

The other husbands I talked with feel similar pressures. Like me, they’re trying to juggle their obligations at work with new responsibilities at home. What’s more, they confront a dilemma I’ve been spared: young children at home.

Take Norm, a busy lawyer whose new household and parenting role have earned him the nickname “Mr. Mom” at his office. Before his wife was called up, Norm didn’t have to worry about his 12-year-old daughter walking into an empty house after school. His wife, who worked part time, arranged her schedule so she could be home most afternoons. Now Norm must rely on three sets of generous neighbors to fill the parenting gap left by his wife’s departure.

Jeff is another father filling gaps. As a naval officer who periodically goes to sea, he’s no stranger to separation from his wife. But having his wife away, while he stays behind caring for their two kids, ages 4 and 5, is a new experience.

It’s also demanding. Besides getting the kids ready in the morning and feeding them at night, he shuttles them to and from day-care. Parenting chores have forced him to shorten the normal work day on his ship. Fortunately, the ship is being overhauled, so Jeff probably won’t have to decide what to do with his kids if he was ordered to be at sea while his wife was still on active duty.

Paul, a surgeon, may not be so lucky. Like his wife, he’s in the reserves and vulnerable to being called up. With four kids under the age of 8, a second call-up in his family would be a nightmare. But Paul doesn’t worry about the prospect--he doesn’t have time.

Before she went to the Oakland Navy Hospital, his wife stayed at home full-time taking care of their kids. Now Paul does the job by himself. His mother-in-law helps out by staying with him three days a week, but he must drive the kids to the school and sitters, and to the soccer practice and other activities that their mother used to take them to.

Paul’s day starts at 6 in the morning and doesn’t end until late in the evening, after he’s put the kids to bed and dictated some patient charts. Before his wife left, he usually did that work at the office. But parenting demands have forced him to cut back the time he spends at the office, a step that’s hurt his medical practice.

Like the other husband I spoke to, Paul remains upbeat. We all realize that our wives are the ones who have been displaced, and that complaining about our lot won’t make their lives any easier.

And we all figure that we’ll learn something from this experience. I already have. Ever since we married, Lynne and I have both worked full-time. I’ve always subscribed to the principle that we should split household chores 50-50, and I was convinced that I did my share. The sobering reality, I now realize after being on my own, is that my contribution probably never averaged more than 25%.

But learning is not all that I and the other husbands are doing. We’re also worrying. Our wives were given orders for 90 days, but they might be on active duty a lot longer than that. And right now they are in Northern California where they can call us and come home for occasional visits. But they could be sent to the Middle East.

That’s scary, and it gives us the same kind of goose bumps that throughout the ages have been felt by thousands of military wives.