I am slowly reading The Fireman’s Wife. I am honestly reading more words per sentence than usual. I’m a quick reader that usually skims a lot.
As I’m reading it’s very difficult not to write an answer to each chapter. My life started at a different aspect in the whole mix. I’d been with my man since 17. I’d seen him miserable for years in construction before we got on the department. I spent years as a volunteer firefighter wife before he got hired on. Anyone wanting to complain about a 24 hour shift needs to do a year as a volunteer wife first. lol 24′s are a different animal without compare. But him working 60 hour weeks and then going on calls all week is night and day in my book.
I guess that is why I need to keep writing my book. But I am still enjoying this one. I don’t have any others that talk about the day to day. I’m a B shift wife. We don’t complain, we deal, we play, we party. lol
My husband got this book as a gift for me after I threw a fit about his volunteer firefighting disrupting our lives (he can be quite obsessive…and I do support him, but there just needs to be a balance and time for family too)… sweet gesture, but boy was it ever the wrong book, haha…I took it as a “suck it up and let him be.” :X Not to mention, IMO, volunteering vs it being your job are just different… I don’t whine and complain when he goes off to work, I plan around it and do my own thing. Hard to do with the volunteering. Then you throw in that I was a military wife for 6 years… we’ve been apart wayyyyyy more often during that time period and for much longer than 24-shifts…so that doesn’t seem like anything to cry about to me. My only beef is with the volunteering when it gets “out of control” for lack of a better way to describe it.
Wow, that is so totally not what I got from the book. I read it as see, “I knew it would happen, this is why I didn’t want him to do this job.” But anyone that has had that incident happen or worse can say that.
I GET YA HUN! Yes, there is a point that I would put my foot down and make him turn off the pager. Considering I knew a call may not get answered very quickly if he didn’t show up, I had some major guilt. But he married me first and I had to look out for our’s and his healths best interest at times.
Military definitely got you prepared for shift work. 24′s or even 72′s won’t be as big a deal.
I’ve really got to get my act together and get my book review up. Thanks for commenting Danielle
I think a lot of what I got out of it had to do with my attitude and my guilt at the time for putting my foot down about the amount of his time spent volunteering. I totally get feeling guilty about it too… it’s actually kind of hard for me to talk about, because I feel so bad for being upset in the first place considering what they “run off” to do. I’m sure that had a lot to do with how I perceived what I read. It’s been awhile since I read it, I wonder if I reread it now if I will get more out of it. If I recall correctly, I remember being let down that it didn’t validate any of my feelings…not sure why I expected it to, haha. I’ll be interested to see your review!
I can see that mindset at time of reading would really make a difference with this book. I didn’t connect with her much as even by reading I could tell her personality is not like mine. Ok, OK, I’ll get review started tonight. lol