Jacksonville, N.C. ? With two kids at home and a third on the way, Lisa Smith says she can’t let herself be paralyzed by her husband’s deployment with the Marines in the Persian Gulf.

“Only in the quiet of the night, you come down and you deal with the feelings,” she said.

“You cry, you get it over with, and then you wake up the next day and you make the kids’ breakfast.”

Smith, mother of 6-year-old Wes and 3-year-old Gillian, is one of thousands of military spouses left behind in the Jacksonville area. Well more than half of the 36,000 Marines at Camp Lejeune and New River Marine Corps Air Station are overseas.

Smith said she didn’t let the details of her husband’s deployment worry her. In turn, she’s not about to let him worry about the minor problems at home: “I don’t want to tell him about that mouse in the attic and how his five-months pregnant wife is going up there trying to get it out.”

“You don’t have any other option,” she said. “You have to have a certain resolve.”

Smith speaks in vague words to Wes and Gillian about their dad’s dangerous assignment.

“He’s fighting a really, really bad guy,” Wes said.

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Norfolk, Va. — As a wife, Cyrinthia Olson is worried about her husband, a sailor aboard the USS Donald Cook, a Norfolk-based destroyer that took part in the first strike against Iraq.

As a sailor herself, though, Olson is a bit jealous that her husband, Daniel Olson, got to see action while she stayed behind.

Lisa Smith unpacks groceries while attending to daughter Gillian, 3, and son Wes, 6, in the family's Jacksonville, N.C., kitchen. Smith's husband, a Marine helicopter pilot, is on the edge of war in Kuwait. She is one of thousands of military spouses and family members left behind while their loved ones fight in the war against Iraq.

“The sailor in me is so excited when I think about it,” she said. “The wife in me is wondering, what are the ramifications?”

Olson said she wished that she, too, could be fighting the war. But then again, it’s good to be at home with their 7-year-old daughter, Ashleigh, and 5-year-old son, Braeden.

As both a sailor and a sailor’s wife, Olson is used to such separations. She has deployed twice, for at least six months at a stretch; her husband is on his third deployment. Since the

9-11 terrorist attacks, the Olsons have spent a total of three months together.

“It’s a delicate balance between being the wife and being the gung-ho sailor that wants to protect the country,” she said.

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McGuire Air Force Base, N.J. — Melanie Grieve sat on the floor of the base library, holding up her 14-month-old son, Culley.

“Blow kisses to Daddy,” she told him.

“See? He’s over there,” she said, pointing at a tripod-mounted video camera filming her from across the room.

“Over there” for U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. David Grieve is somewhere in the Persian Gulf. The videotaped message will do what telephone calls, e-mail messages and letters can’t: enable Grieve to see his son.

“At this age, he’s doing something different every day. He’s learning how to stack his blocks, and he knows 16 words in sign language,” Melanie Grieve said.

Mother and son sit down for dinner each night with a picture of Grieve, so Culley will remember what he looks like.

It’s tough, she says, being a single parent so suddenly.

“But I think it’ll be worth it in the end for the Iraqi people, who may get to enjoy the freedoms we enjoy here.”

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Fort Campbell, Ky. — Unlike many wives of troops in the Gulf, Sandy Bruner was able to speak with her husband Thursday afternoon — well after the start of the war against Iraq.

“He wasn’t able to make any comments, to say yes or no,” said Bruner, who has three young children. “But as long as I was able to hear his voice, that was plenty for me.”

Bruner’s husband, part of the 101st Airborne Division, was deployed March 1.

Since then, she and other wives have banded together in a search for any news from their husbands.

Many have turned to family readiness groups, and chaplains have seen a surge in families attending religious services. A crisis line at the post fields about 60 calls per week.

Many wives just need help with minor day-to-day things like mowing the lawn or finding someone to baby-sit for them when they need to go out, said Krista Boyd, a resource group leader whose husband has also been deployed.

Then there’s dealing with curious children wondering where their fathers are.

“I just tell them daddy’s working,” Bruner said.