Regarding Completely Dependent Spouse

I'd like to correct something here. I posted about some spouses I've been encountering, and this was one:

-Completely dependent. She speaks very little English, has no drivers license, and expects someone to pick her and her 3 children up and find some car seats for them, and transport them to the welcome home ceremony. What?!

This was what I was led to believe about one of our spouses. Turns out, she is from the Philippines, and is much more fluent in English than the person who has been her link to the Army throughout this deployment (a very nice, but very busy lady whose first language is Spanish and who is constantly volunteering for things and not following through). And no, she doesn't have a driver's license, but I'm not convinced that she doesn't have one in her country, or maybe she doesn't need one there. She DOES have car seats, but they are in storage and she didn't bring the ones she had been using at her family's house because she believed that she could get to her things in storage when she arrived to Fort Riley and that's not the case. She also never expected anyone to take her to the ceremony, the no-follow-through (NFL) spouse told her she would LOVE to take her and her kids and then decided that wasn't convenient for her and asked the FRG Leader to do it or figure out how to make it happen.

WELL, I had the honor of spending several hours on two separate days to work this out. It doesn't technically fall in my job description, but it needed to be taken care of, she lives RIGHT by me, it really was a no-brainer. I took her and her 2, 4 and 6 yr old boys to the ceremony in my car using the NFL spouse's car seats (on loan). This is one of the highlights of this redeployment for me. She was so sincerely grateful. Her boys were dressed in button up shirts with ties and sweater vests and she in a nice dress, very attractive but not slutty and not inappropriate AT all (some people don't make good decisions when choosing an outfit for their husband's return). She was ready when I arrived even though I was suppose to collect her at 10:30am, but we got a change of time at 3am and I called her at 8am to say I needed to pick her up at 9am. She was obviously very nervous when I told her I would be there in an hour, she was concerned she couldn't get everyone ready. But she worked it out.

All the way there we visited about the Army and military spouse life. She and her husband are going to Germany from here, to Heidelberg, just down the road from where we were in Mannheim. She told me all about the Philippines and we were in agreement in our dislike for Kansas weather.

At the ceremony she cried, the boys cried, the Soldier cried, I cried. Her Soldier was so glad she was there, but never in a million years expected people to go out of their way and make it happen. Everyone was happy. It was a good day to be an FRSA.

FRSA=Family Readiness Support Assistant. For those who aren't following along. :)