My husband, Dustin, retires from the Navy one year from now. We started dating after he graduated from the Naval Academy in 1997, and we were married in 1999 while he was in flight school. But we’ve known each other since 1976. That’s the year I was born and our dads were deployed together on the USS Franklin Roosevelt. Since then, there have only been six weeks (between my college graduation and wedding) when I was not a military dependent.

Although I can barely wait for civilian life (mostly, to have my husband home), I’ll admit I’m feeling a bit nostalgic. In the coming year, I will periodically devote columns to reflections on military life, what it’s taught me, and the things I will miss the most.

Growing up, I never thought military wives were that special. I was surrounded by them, even raised by one, and I didn’t know anything different. It never occurred to me that there was any other way for women to be. It never occurred to me that others did not (would not or could not) live the way military wives do. It never occurred to me that it was anything to be admired or celebrated.

To me, the way military wives were was the way all women were.

If this seems odd, let me add that for a long time, I thought everyone’s dad worked on an aircraft carrier, too. When I was going to a friend’s house to play, I’d ask, “Is your dad home, or is he deployed?”

That’s the thing about being a kid. Whatever you know is all that you know.

But here are a few things I know about military wives now:

• They can move mountains, or at least, whole households.

The “right timing” and Uncle Sam’s timing never align. It would take a small military miracle for a family’s move to coincide with the service member’s time off to help with said move. Most military wives end up moving their households and their families themselves. Sometimes, while their spouse is still at sea.

And they do it every 2-3 years.

Such repetition teaches a person a thing or two, and there is no more organized person on this Earth than a military wife whose husband just got orders.

• They can launch the ship themselves.

When I was pregnant with my first son and fretting about whether my husband would be deployed before the baby’s arrival, my grandmother, another Navy wife, said, “Honey, you need him to lay the keel, not to launch the ship.”

Indeed, I was born while my dad was deployed.

My son was born while my husband was home, but he deployed six weeks later.

As society adds to what women “need” in order to have a successful birthing experience, military wives know they just need a hospital and their identification card.

• Their “family” is unconventional.

If Uncle Sam wanted your mother-in-law to be around to help with babysitting and driving the kids from one activity to another, he’d pay to move her household, too.

But he doesn’t.

Military families rarely live near extended family. They are raising kids and having careers without the help of nearby relatives. No free babysitters, no one to watch the kids when you have the flu.

So military wives create a “family” with other military spouses and children, and these connections can be just as strong as the real thing.

• They do the heavy lifting on the home front.

Long before “women can do anything men can do” became a battle cry, military wives had been doing what men do. It’s more than just a motto, it’s a way of life.

Military wives fix toilets, cars and appliances. Then they get on roofs and fix those, too. And when a hurricane pops up, the ship and aircraft go out to safety, leaving the spouse at home to batten down.

For all the bravado of the military, it can be argued that they leave much of the heavy lifting back home to the spouses.

• They are not afraid to be alone.

When a husband tells his military wife that he is deploying for a year, she cries.

When a husband tells his military wife that he is deploying for six months, she feels relieved. (Only six months, phew!)

When a husband tells his military wife that he will be gone for a week, she’s annoyed. (Just a week?)

• But they don’t want to be alone.

Not every military wife’s husband comes home.

Although all of the above has prepared and proven military wives to be independent, self-sufficient and capable, they live with the fear that their husband will be the one who does not return. Through all the long deployments, hardships, family moves and stress, this is the greatest weight of all. And it never stops.

• They are the original “strong girls” role models.

Military wives were strong and independent before being strong and independent was a thing. The military may have removed their name from the old commissary bags (“Toughest job in the military …”), but as society searches for strong female role models, there are few more logical picks. From the time I was a baby, even when I didn’t know it, military wives have always been mine.