Role Reversal : With Wives at the Front, Navy Husbands Learn to Cope With Kids, Home

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 now.

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 blonde 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,” he said.

Wyatt, a 39-year-old chief petty officer who joined the Navy in 1969, has been deployed so frequently that he has been home only 17 months of the last five years. When he shipped out, his wife, a 31-year-old 2nd class petty officer, took care of the kids. But this fall, with two weeks’ notice, she 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.

Wyatt and Jesse James Bell are only two.

“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.

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

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

And as the Jan. 15 United Nations deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait approaches, the fathers 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,” Wyatt blurted out. “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, 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, 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 could not 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 that 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 just in time to see his 4-year-old daughter astride her Big Wheel tricycle teetering on the edge of the outdoor stairs. Wyatt sprang into action, yelling: “Stop her! Stop her!”

After grabbing her, he ushered the children back inside the modest Lakeside house, 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,” the seventh grader said. “What if one of them was to get hurt--I think about it all the time.”

Father and son like to plan 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 for information from chambers of commerce in towns across Texas, Oregon and Colorado.

Recently, he impulsively traded in his 1979 Thunderbird and bought a 1990 white Ford Tempo as a surprise for his wife. He had planned to wrap a giant bow around it for her return, yet he couldn’t help telling her about the gift during a phone call.

But Wyatt 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 to welcome her home.

For the first time, 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.

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. Although 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 horrors 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.

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 first shipped out on a three-month deployment, Bell found himself in charge of then-13-year-old Sharon, who had been found to have a chromosomal disorder, Turner’s syndrome, that slows the body’s development.

Although 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. . . .”

Bell’s life today seems as empty as his wife’s easy chair. He finds himself watching 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.”