Trading Places : Women Called to Duty Leave Spouses Wrestling With New Roles as Househusbands

Before Deborah Wyatt shipped out to the Middle East, her husband Bill reassured her, saying it would “be a piece of cake” for him to run the household and tend their four children, whose ages range from 2 to 12.

“I was wrong,” he sighs today.

His daughter, Kerri, 2, now calls him Momma. When Wyatt asks 4-year-old Cathy to clean her room, she plants her hand on her hip, tosses her blond ponytail and says: “I don’t want to.” And Greg, 6, began wearing Rambo-style headbands and recently came home sopping wet from getting thrown into a ditch.

“Every guy should go through this just once,” said Chief Petty Officer Bill Wyatt, 39.

Wyatt, in the Navy since 1969, has deployed so frequently that he has been home only 17 months of the past five years. When he shipped out, 2nd Class Petty Officer Deborah Wyatt took care of the kids. But this fall, with two weeks’ notice, Deborah Wyatt abruptly sailed to the Persian Gulf--her first deployment and her first time away from their children.

In an unusual twist of traditional roles, 1,400 Navy women have been abruptly called to duty in what could be the nation’s next war--leaving behind children and households, and men unaccustomed to taking charge of either one.

Jesse James Bell finds himself talking about boys with his teen-aged daughter.

Echoing the sentiments of many, Paul Freeman recently wrote: “My wedding vows didn’t mention Operation Desert Shield.”

“It’s damn near unnatural,” Wyatt said.

Women represent about 6%, or 21,900, of the U.S. military deployed in the Middle East, an unprecedented number of deployed females. Though women are prohibited from combat, they have been summoned to serve in support roles.

And, as the Jan. 15 deadline for war approaches, the fathers also are wrestling with their fears--and feelings of guilt, as though they should swap places with their wives.

“I am scared my wife will get hurt. I am scared she won’t come home, that she will get hurt and never come home again,” Bill Wyatt blurted out. “I can raise the kids, but I wouldn’t want to raise them without their mom. The closer Jan. 15 comes, I am getting more scared about my wife getting hurt. She wouldn’t be there if I made enough money to be able to live on one income.”

In a rare moment, Bill Wyatt sat still and began to talk about his feelings. His eyes became teary. The four children almost faded into a backdrop as they practiced jumping on the living room couch.

Clearly, Bill Wyatt is coping. But it’s not easy. And some days fly by more quickly than others. Sometimes he sees his wife’s photo on his desk at work, and it just tears at him. Then he comes home, where her picture sits by their bed, and he feels like his guts are twisting inside.

At Christmas, Wyatt couldn’t find the tree decorations, which his wife always carefully stored in the shed. So he went out and purchased a new set. But it meant the tree didn’t have any of the old favorite ornaments. As though to compensate the children for their mother’s absence, Wyatt stacked 32 parcels and two new bicycles beneath the short, stubby tree. Even so, Christmas was not the same.

Wyatt was shaken from his musings as he turned around in time to see his 6-year-old son herding his 4-year-old daughter astride her Big Wheel tricycle down the outdoor stairs. Wyatt sprang into action, yelling: “Stop her! Stop her!”

After snatching his daughter to safety as she teetered on the edge of the stairs, Wyatt ushered the children back inside the modest Lakeside house. He posted himself at the kitchen table, admonishing 12-year-old Chris to watch his siblings. But for Chris, Wyatt’s son from an earlier marriage, these are also difficult days. Chris’ mother, a member of the Army Reserves, deployed earlier this month.

“Now my mom and step-mom are gone. What if one of them was to get hurt--I think about it all the time,” the seventh-grader said. “When I go to sleep is the only time I don’t think about it.”

Instead, father and son prefer to plan more hopeful days, like what they will do when the family is reunited. Believing the family might be able to live off one income in a cheaper state, Wyatt has written requesting information from Chambers of Commerces in towns across Texas, Oregon and Colorado.

Recently, he impulsively traded in his 1979 Thunderbird and used the money to help purchase a 1990 white Ford Tempo as a surprise for his 31-year-old wife. He had planned to wrap a giant bow around it for Deborah Wyatt’s return, yet he couldn’t help telling her about the gift during a phone call.

But he still intends to surprise her with a three-tiered wedding cake. The top tier will be an actual wedding cake in honor of their nine-year anniversary. The second tier will be decorated to commemorate Christmas, and the final one will be a welcome home.

Wyatt does his best to keep the rules established by his wife. He enforces the 8 p.m. bedtime. He serves instant cocoa now that he has assumed his wife’s job of refreshments chairman for Greg’s scouting troop. He has expanded his cooking repertoire to include Po’ Boy Floyd, or hamburger wrapped in bacon and doused with A-1 Sauce. And, remembering his own deployments, he mailed three care packages of cookies, jeans and film to his wife.

For the first time, Bill Wyatt believes he is getting to know his own children. In the past, he would read his wife’s letters and figure that she was exaggerating their shenanigans as well as their endearing moments.

“Now I am not reading about it, I am living it,” he said.

Recently, he took his brood to the movies for the first time. He sat feeling warm and proud, with a child on each side. They all ate popcorn, drank soda and watched “The Rescuers Down Under.” When they returned home, each child threw up.

“But hey,” he said, “isn’t that part of parenting?”

Jesse James Bell, 1st class petty officer, plans to improve his marriage once his wife, Linda Kay, returns from the Persian Gulf. He vows to quit using bad language, be more loving, go to the theater, and to lift up the toilet seat.

“I am not a feely-touchy kind of guy. To me, saying ‘I love you’ sounds hokey-pokey,” said Bell, 39. “But I am going to become the man she wants me to be.”

With Linda Kay, a 2nd class petty officer, deployed in the Middle East, Bell has a new appreciation for his wife and the life he believes they could share. Though his wife has shipped out twice before, her absence is more poignant than ever because the stakes suddenly seem very high.

Bell has served 11 years in the Navy and almost eight years in the Air Force. Having fought in Vietnam, he knows the dangers of war, and it’s nothing he wants his wife to learn.

At first, Bell feared most that his wife’s ship would encounter mines, so he carefully instructed her to avoid certain decks. But, after a ferry sank in Haifa killing 21 sailors as they returned to their ship Dec. 22, Bell realized that there were plenty of unforeseeable dangers that could claim his wife’s life.

“Everybody else has their wife, and your wife is gone in the Middle East somewhere. You’ve got to say ‘damn,’ and you listen to the silence of the house,” said Bell, who lives in National City with his 17-year-old daughter, Sharon.

Linda Kay Bell, 36, joined the Navy three years ago after her husband kept nagging her about getting a decent job. Finally, one night he asked his favorite question, and she turned to him, saying: “I have one. I am going to boot camp.”

Bell could hardly believe it. But he was, and is, very proud of her--he can still recall her class standing in boot camp. When Linda Kay Bell first shipped out on a three-month deployment, Bell found himself in charge of then-13-year-old Sharon, who had been diagnosed with a chromosomal disorder, Turner’s syndrome, that slows the body’s development.

Distressed over her slowed growth, Sharon became depressed. Suddenly, Bell was forced to cope with the throes of adolescence. Though his daughter had always gone shopping and chatted more with her mother, Bell found that he was able to talk to her about boys. And, during his wife’s recent deployment, Bell and his daughter have rediscovered their closeness.

“She depends on me, and I depend on her,” said Bell, who has the number of a pizza delivery shop posted by the phone. “I am already tuned in to the role reversal thing, though my wife is more in touch with female anatomy stuff like ‘are you spotting.’ ”

Bell’s life today seems as empty as his wife’s easy chair. He finds himself watching the television shows like “Cheers” and “Designing Women” that his wife likes--even though he always used to protest when she watched them. More than ever before, he watches news channels for some word about his wife’s ship or developments in the Middle East. And he thinks about how he will change when Linda Kay comes home.

“I want to start a new life together,” he said. “I want to appreciate what life has to offer being married. I want to clean up my act.”

When she returns, Bell is considering a trip to Las Vegas or to the Long Beach Grand Prix. He would like to go on a cruise but figures she might be tired of being surrounded by water. Sometimes he sits making these plans or figuring out care packages to send, and the quiet of the house just overwhelms him.

“Makes you feel bad--sometimes you almost crack a tear because you are all alone,” he said. “All alone and there’s nobody here. You do sometimes find yourself cursing the Navy. Goddamn Navy. How come we didn’t join the Air Force together?”

Seeing his wife in her military uniform makes Paul Freeman feel proud. It never occurred to Freeman that his wife, a reservist in a hospital unit, might one day be called up. And these days, her uniform also makes him anxious.

“I don’t think it ever crossed my mind that she would be activated. All I saw is that she donned a uniform once a month and two weeks in the year,” said Freeman, a free-lance writer and attorney.

But last August, Freeman and his wife, Lynne Shira, a nurse manager at Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation, received a call in the middle of the night that set their world spinning. Shira dropped her life in San Diego and began a new one working at the Oakland Naval Hospital--a move that cut her income by about 25%.

Freeman readily acknowledges that his lot could be far worse--he is able to see his wife on weekends and she has not shipped out to the Middle East. Rachel, his 21-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, does not live at home. Today, he tends the couple’s condominium and their dog, Gracie.

But he lives with a gnawing fear that his wife could be assigned to a war zone. Suddenly, the prospect of combat with Iraq has directly touched Freeman’s life. With equal speed, he realized his own powerlessness--that he can do nothing to intervene on his wife’s behalf. And for a middle-class civilian, accustomed to calling his own shots, it’s frustrating and terrifying to watch the nation veer toward a possible war that might involve a spouse.

“I have felt my life dramatically changing--it’s a feeling of a loss of control,” he said. “There is no guarantee that she will stay in Oakland and that’s an uncomfortable feeling. I try not to think about it because there’s nothing I can do.”

The uneasiness has spilled over into Rachel’s life. A senior attending college in Connecticut, she decided to take her final semester off and is considering working in California to be closer to her father.

“I feel I have to be there for Daddy, that’s something I am grappling with. I almost feel like I need to be home,” she said.

At school, when her male friends spoke of going to Canada to avoid a possible draft, Rachel viewed them with more distance.

“I don’t want to see my friends go to war, but somebody has to go and why shouldn’t it be you? Because you have money?” she said. “At first, everyone was ‘go get Hussein, George, get him out.’ But with Lynne, I felt, ‘Oh no, don’t go to war.’ ”

These days rumors abound. Recently, the couple heard that Lynne Shira would be transferred to the Navy hospital in San Diego by February, but it turned out to be untrue. Feeling a cloud of anxiety, the couple--married three years--try to spend as many weekends together as possible.

For Freeman, who never joined the military, the novelty of his situation still strikes him.

“I am old enough to be raised in a sexist era, and it strikes me as very ironic that there are women, like Lynne, serving and the males are staying behind and taking care of the home front,” he said. “It’s a strange twist. I don’t think it’s a bad twist if you are going to have equality; you have got to have it across the board.”