Prologue
Goodbye, Sailor Girl
.
My last memory of my daddy was watching
him walk out to his helicopter at the Norfolk Naval Base, where his student pilots waited respectfully at attention. their helmets under their arms.
They saluted him, and he saluted back. Then he turned to smile at me the way he always did whenever Mommy brought me to see him take off in a helicopter. He and I called it putting sunshine in our faces. In the years to follow, that smile would fade slowly like an old photograph until my imagination did more for it than my memory.
His face would always brighten with a fresh, happy surprise when he looked back at me standing beside Mommy. The specks of hazel in his otherwise light blue eves would become more prominent. He used to call me Sailor Girl, and we would salute each other with only two fingers. He did it one last time that day. I responded with my salute, and then he turned back to his men.
My eyes drifted to a sea gull that looked lost, confused, even a bit frantic. It did a quick turn and dipped before shooting off toward the ocean as if it had seen something that had terrified it. I watched it until the sounds of the helicopter motors ripped the air and pulled my attention back to Daddy.
I stepped closer to Mommy. Something dark had already put its cold fingers on the back of my neck. My heart sank, and my stomach felt queasy. I had to feel Mommy beside me. Even at fifteen. I needed to be within the walls of her security. She and Daddy were my fortress. Nothing could harm me when I was with them.
"How he stands that noise is beyond me," Mommy said, but she looked so proud and so beautiful with her shoulder-length apricot brown hair dancing about her chin and checks. She was five feet ten and always stood with an air of confidence. regal. Anyone who glanced her way stared at her for a few moments longer as if he or she were hypnotized by her beauty.
Mommy's eves were almost navy blue. which Daddy said proved she belonged with him, a navy man. She was as loyal to him as he was to the flag, her devotion and her admiration for him unflappable. My eyes were more turquoise. but I wished they were more like Mommy's so Daddy would think I. too, was meant to be always at his side.
"C'mon. Grace," she said. "I have errands to run, and you have studying to do and a guest for dinner."
She nudged me, and I followed along reluctantly. Something was telling me to stay as long as I could. I looked back only once as the helicopters lifted. I didn't see Daddy, and that disappointed me. They whirled off toward the ocean, following the sea gull.
A cloud blacked out the sun, and a long shadow fell around us as we continued toward our car.
I would remember that.
I would remember it all for a very long time.
And then, like the sea gull, it would all disappear into the distance and leave me standing alone, yearning for just one more smile, one more salute.
1
The Life
.
When I was very little. I thought everyone lived
the way we did: moving frequently from one place to another. Houses and homes were like way stations, scattered not only across the county but across the world. School would always be interrupted and changed. As soon as a new neighborhood became comfortable or even before. I would be taken to another, and the process would begin again. Friendships weren't meant to last long, and so it was always better not to get too friendly or too dependent on anyone. It was hard to keep from doing this, especially when it came to my teachers. I remember growing so attached to my third-grade teacher that I cried until my stomach ached the day Mommy came to take me out of the school and load me along with our luggage and other cherished belongings in our car.
Daddy had been talking about the new naval base and our new living conditions for days, trying to make it sound as if everything would be nicer for all of us. As a naval helicopter pilot, he was away often on his aircraft carrier. Occasionally we would get phone calls from him, and lots of letters, always with a separate one for me inserted in with Mommy's. Mine always began 'Dear Sailor Girl." and he would go on and on about how much he missed me. He wasn't permitted to tell us where he was, but we knew that wherever it was, it was far away.
So whenever he was being stationed at a base for what looked to be a prolonged period of land time. Mommy was the happiest and more than willing to pick up everything yet another time, load our car, and be off. The women she knew as friends were all like her, naval wives, and were just as accustomed to the nomadic existence as well as the short friendships and months without their husbands.