Ted and Ginger and Dianne

My grandfather served on the USS Salute in 1945. That year, on June 8^th, she sank, broken in two pieces after striking a mine in pre-invasion activities off Brunei Bay. Each year since 1985, the sailors of the Salute meet during the week of that anniversary. They bring their families, exchange tall tales, and tell the stories of their childhood and their service to a historical volunteer. The last couple of years the interviews were filmed. We sit in the meeting room and watch the stories unfold, each the same and each quite different. As the years pass, the men age and are slowly lost to sickness or to time.

For the last couple of years, they held the reunions here in Oklahoma. I’ve been close and lucky enough to attend. This year we all traveled to Bartlesville, an oil-boom town in the northeastern part of the state. My grandfather and my mother grew up there, my father and I just across the county line to the east. It’s familiar country, a place sprung from Delaware and Cherokee Indians, hard-scrabble pioneers, back-breaking work and the bounty of a part of the state deemed “Green Country”.

I’ve never been close to my grandfather. Ted is a small, handsome man who’s led a hard life, mostly by his own choice. When he tells stories of the war, he speaks of women he chased through California where he was stationed, the buddies who accompanied him, and his repeated instances of being absent without leave, which he casually refers to as “jumping ship”. His first wife, my grandmother, was Californian by way of Illinois. Ginger, as she was called, caught rheumatic fever as an adolescent. Her heart badly damaged, her parents moved the entire family out west for the sunshine and the clean air. That’s where they met. He tried to marry her when she was just seventeen, but her father blocked the union. Ted went to war. Ginger waited.

When the Salute sank, my grandfather sustained a head injury, spent about two weeks unconscious, and woke up state side. With his medical discharge in process and a keen sense of his own mortality, he picked Ginger up, took her to Arizona and married her there. Ginger stood four feet, eleven inches with blonde hair, pale skin, and light eyes, a lovely, tiny young woman. My mother was born in California in April of 1946. By May of 1949, Ginger’s rheumatic heart failed. She died at the age of twenty-two leaving behind her husband and a three-year-old daughter.

My grandfather quickly remarried a woman who preferred to pretend his first wife did not exist. I know very little about Ginger, only hearing how my grandparents met for the first time last year, after the second wife died. Ginger is a cipher, a beautiful face in a black-and-white photograph, an almost entirely unknown quantity.

My daughter, at twenty, stands about five feet, two inches tall, with blonde hair, luminous pale skin, and hazel-green eyes. She is a lovely, tiny young woman. In the hotel this past June, as the reunion group lingered over breakfast, my daughter came to visit. I was upstairs in my room, still preparing for the day, so she went down to the lobby with the old sailors and their families. My mother asked my daughter questions about college and my daughter, an animated student of theater and French, began telling stories. My grandfather watched her with obvious delight. When I came into the room a bit later, she rose to hug me and the conversation lulled. My mother overheard my grandfather say to the sailor next to him, with a smile on his face, “She reminds me of my first wife.”

My daughter, unbeknownst to her, gave my mother a precious gift that day: an idea of what her mother may have been like. It’s a sweet and precious debt, one that will never be repaid.

Happy, Happy Birthday Baby

Today my youngest child turns eleven. He is in his last year of elementary school. Sam is a voracious reader, a good student, and an expert at video games of all kinds. He is a sweet, good-natured boy and quite sensitive. This is a hard age for kids in many ways, and one of the hardest for me to deal with as a parent. The little boy is still there, but he is beginning to grow up. Sometimes I baby him too much, and he lets me know. Other times, he needs that little bit of extra attention from his Mom. He is pulling away and coming back, advancing and retreating, in that familiar childhood dance. This is not the first time I've been a partner, but the long promenade changes with every child. I wouldn't miss a beat.

Happy birthday, sweet Samuel.

a busy week

I have been very busy.

Last Friday I drove to my old hometown to pick up my mother-in-law's bichon frise. I had agreed to keep him while she is on a cruise to Alaska. Toby is about fourteen years old. He is partially blind, doesn't hear well, has a bit of an incontinence problem (in my brand new house!), and for some reason, no matter how clean he is, he has a terrible smell. On the other hand, he is sweet and loveable and my mother-in-law adores him.

I can't wait for her to get home.

Jack, our adorable nine month old schnauzer, wants to play with Toby all the time. Toby wants to play with Jack about twenty minutes a day. A terrible combination, I must say. I spend a lot of my time just separating them. They have to be walked in succession, because Jack practically runs a mile before he does his business, and Toby barely moves faster than a turtle. At least he only has to walk about six feet before he's ready to go.

The kids went back to school on Monday. Our lovely daughter went back to her high school, even though we've moved into another area. She is driving to school for the first time and is pleased with her schedule. Both of the boys went to new schools, the older one to middle school and the little one to elementary. The fourteen year old is very unhappy after two days of school. I can only hope it gets better. The little one, though, is doing very well. He is delighted with his teacher and the school, and he's made two new friends.

This afternoon I am meeting my daughter at a drug testing facility so that she can take the drug test for her new job! I am excited for her but also slightly worried; she was offered a position in a local drug store after she had filled out one application and had one interview. I hope this experience doesn't make her think it will always be that easy to find a job!

My parents are coming to see the new house this weekend. I am still unpacking and things are really a bit of a wreck. I don't miss the other house, but I do miss the storage. The closets in this house are wonderful and the kitchen storage is amazing, but the general storage for things like games and books and photos isn't quite as good. As a result, I still have boxes full of CDs, DVDs, video games, and books stacked in the dining room. Then there are the miscellaneous items whose perfect storage place always eludes me, regardless. At least in the last house, I had a couple of empty cabinets under the wet bar to stash things. I know it's completely passe to have one these days, but I miss that wet bar.

Add to the above the normal laundry, shopping, and cooking duties as well as the whirlwind of back to school shopping, and I'm amazed I found the time to post today. I suppose I'd better go work on those boxes now. Oh joy.

little sacrifices

I woke up to rain and my father's huge shadow in my bedroom door. He told me to get out of bed, he had something for me. In the living room floor sat my mother, a short haired black and white cat in her lap, my baby brother on his knees beside her looking on with his robin's egg blue eyes.

My father worked midnights and it was early morning when he left his office in the pouring rain. He drove a 1972 Chevrolet pick up truck in those days. The back was loaded with farm paraphernalia: baling wire, feed sacks, a fence stretcher, his tool box. As he walked to the truck he heard pitiful meowing from the bed of the truck but could see nothing. Finally he found her hidden underneath feed sacks trying to stay dry.

Daddy is allergic to cats. I had been asking for one for months. The drive from his office to our little town took him right at an hour. The grateful little cat curled up in his lap on the drive home and purred. By the time Daddy woke me his eyes were red and swollen. But something made him bring her home to me.

We named her Katie and within a few months she had gotten pregnant. She lost that litter of eight and the next one of six. Mama talked about having her spayed then she popped up pregnant again. Four this time, and three of them lived. All black and white, one long haired. I remember crawling behind my mother's olive green wing back chair to watch the kittens, amazed at the new life. My brother had just begun to talk. The long haired little boy had a face of mostly white, with an inky spot decorating his nose. My brother dubbed him Blacknose. He lived until I was seventeen.

Daddy is still allergic to cats. When my children found a pair of kittens someone had dumped on my parents' farm, they ran for their Pa-pa to help them. Daddy loaded the children and the kittens into his truck and took them all up to Mama. When I arrived to pick them up my mother was sitting in the middle of the floor with kittens in her lap and my children gathered around her.

I had no choice but to bring them home.

remembrance

I still read news from home most days. I noticed a name from my past today, the little brother of a long ago friend, someone I haven't seen for years. I drew breath sharply, hand to my mouth, when I read it. A car lost control and rolled near my parents' home; it was fatal. I called Daddy right away, there's no answer; then Mama at work, but she didn't pick up her classroom phone.

In my mind's eye is an image of a small dark-haired boy with glasses. He was sweet and quiet, much younger, really just a child. But that was more than twenty years ago. I am confident I saw him grown but for the life of me cannot bring adult features into focus. I keep seeing the little boy.

Daddy calls and I tell him. They didn't know and it surprises me. It was hard to tell him over the phone, more difficult than I anticipated. The bulk of the conversation is spent on deciding who will phone my little brother. Daddy will make the call and I know it is to spare me the trouble and the emotion. Regardless of my age, I am still his child.

That face in my memory was someone's child, I think. And I know them. Only then do I begin to cry.