Salute to Spouses: Ann Marie Detavernier

Ann Marie Detavernier is a military wife and mother of three who lives in Baumholder, Germany. She runs a blog called Househould 6 Diva that chronicles the challenges and triumphs of military family lifestyles.

Her husband, Army Staff Sargeant Seth Detavernier, returned home from deployment two weeks ago.

There are stacks of letters everywhere in the Detavernier household. Most fill up binders, some are collected in shoe boxes or gallon-sized storage bags. One day, Ann Marie muses, they’ll have to be organized. Though she and her husband Seth have tried email, phone and everything else technology has to offer, after four deployments, they find they always go back to letters. The immediacy of online communication “made the war way too close, too real for me,” she says.

When the first letter came almost ten years ago, Seth and Ann Marie barely knew each other. They had met by chance at a Civil War Living History ball, a hobby Ann Marie took up while studying for a Masters Degree in Plant Breeding and Genetics at Michigan State. Seth was a young soldier home on leave from Iraq. “It was last minute,” Ann Marie says. “I’m pulling my dress on, my roommate is doing my hair, and I told her, don’t worry about it, I’m not going to meet my husband tonight.”

After the party, the couple swapped emails, then that first letter came from overseas. The rest, as Ann Marie says, is history. She and Seth were married on New Year’s Eve, 2004. 

With military precision, the Detavernier children followed, all born 22 months apart. The oldest, Jacob, is six. Seth, away on duty, coached her through labor via cell phone. Then there was William, then Maggie. “We definitely punched the Army card,” Ann Marie laughs.

The family is now stationed in Baumholder, Germany. There is a community garden here, the first of its kind on a U.S. military base in Europe, and for Ann Marie, it’s a small patch of home. She helped start the garden not only to give military spouses like herself a way to come together during the lonely months of deployment, but also for the sheer satisfaction of watching living things grow.

“It’s a piece of life that I want my children to have,” she says. “Living in an apartment, I don’t have a plot of grass that is my own for them to play in or for them to plant flowers.” “Picking a pepper plant, planting a green bell pepper and passing it between them and taking a bite, I’m able to say, this is where food comes from.”

But the community of military spouses Ann Marie belongs to extends far beyond her temporary home. She runs a blog called Household 6 Diva, named after a military term “Household 6.” It means Commander of the Household, and fittingly, was a nickname Seth used for her when they were first married.

“By sharing the things that have gotten me through, I could help others, or just share with others and be inspired,” she says. “I have connected with people whom I have never personally met, but are going through deployment at the same time, are going through many of the same experiences.”

Ann Marie used to follow the accounts of about 20 or 30 other military spouses. Wanting to keep them all in one place, she made a list and wrote a post on her blog inviting others to share their blogs for her to add. She now has over 700 on the list, and that number grows every day.

“I love being able to share our story, and show that military life isn’t just venting about how difficult it is,” she says. “It is a phenomenal adventure that I think, like anything in life is about enjoying where you’re at and savoring the small stuff and admitting that, yes, sometimes life is really hard.”

And when life does get hard, sometimes the small stuff comes at just the right time. Every once in a while, as Ann Marie is going about her day, she will find a small love note written on a Post-it that Seth has left behind. They’re short. One under the washing machine lid just said, “Laundry stinks. I love you.” Another was in her iPod case. A note left in her winter boots read, “It must be getting cold if you are wearing these... close to coming home.” They are small reminders that make him seem not so far away.

Now that Seth is home, the family must look forward to a move in the summer to a new duty station, a new home. Where that will be, they still don’t know. With military life, nothing ever stands still, but Ann Marie has managed to find some constants. There will always be friends and family, far and wide. There will always be letters.

And hopefully, there will always be gardens.