Be Safe, Love Mom

When you enlist in the United States military, you don’t just sign yourself up for years of duty—you also commit your loved ones to a life of service all their own.No one knows this better than Elaine Brye, an army brat turned military wife turned military mom of four officers, each serving in a different branch of the military: Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, and Navy.Brye’s father and mother met while both serving in the US Army, and her childhood was that of a typical army brat, with frequent moves—some to faraway countries—dinner-table conversations full of military lingo, an ever-present anxiety during her father’s deployments to Vietnam and elsewhere, and family vacations to national monuments and battlefields. In 1976—the first year women were accepted in the service academies and ROTC—Brye herself enlisted in the Air Force, where she would later meet her husband, an Air Force pilot.Now Elaine Brye is a mom to four military officers, and for more than a decade she’s endured countless teary goodbyes, sparse communication from boot camps and training summers, deployments, emotional airport reunions, empty chairs at Thanksgiving dinners, and sleepless hours waiting for phone calls in the night. She’s navigated the complicated tangle of emotions—pride, worry, fear, hope, and deep, enduring love—that accompanies life as a military mom.In Be Safe, Love Mom Brye reflects on her family’s military service and offers a lifetime’s worth of insight, comfort, wisdom, and a bit of humor to fellow military moms who are navigating the unpredictable life that accompanies having a child—or children—in uniform.