Mommy was also happy because Daddy was succeeding. Almost every move we made was, in her words, a "vertical mow." He was climbing in rank and in importance. and I thought there, was little doubt in her mind that someday he would became an admiral. They joked about it all the time, with her calling him Admiral Houston, Once, when I was only seven. I even told my classmates my father was already an admiral. I had heard it so often at home. I believed it. Of course, the older boys and girls made fun of me.
The only fleet your father is admiral of is an enema," a much older teenage boy said. and I ran home and told my mother, who surprised me by laughing. I know I looked as if I was going to cry.
"That's all right. Grace," she said. "Don't pay any attention to anyone. Someday your father will be an admiral, and they will have to swallow their jokes whole or choke on them.'
'But why do you call him Admiral if he isn't an admiral?" I wanted to know.
She sat me down in our small living room in a house situated in what was the married naval officers' housing complex and explained to me how, when two people are as in love as she was with Daddy and he was with her, they often teased each other
affectionately.
"When I first met your father, in fact, he pretended he was already a captain. I didn't
understand the stripes and ranks then. so I believed him."
He lied to you?" I asked. astounded. Daddy was my straight arrow. Lying, deception, betrayal could never be any part of who and what he was to me. He was perfect, a model for a navy poster, incorruptible, unadulterated, pure, and forever strong.
Physically he looked the part, too. He was six feet two and weighed 180 pounds that were always trim. Gym training was as much a part of his daily routine as eating, and I loved to sit and watch him play tennis or even half-court basketball with some of the other junior officers. Whenever he did something good, he would turn my way and give me that salute. It was almost as if his smile and mine were connected, his laugh becoming my laugh. I could no more take my eyes off him than a moth could stop circling a candle flame.
Mommy scrunched her nose and shook her head at my question and surprise.
"It wasn't a lie exactly, Grace. It was a little embellishment which he later described as part of his effort to win my attention. He was afraid I wouldn't give him the time of day if he wasn't an officer, but I was young and foolish, and nothing mattered but what I saw in his eyes."
"Why was that foolish, Mommy?"
She sighed, "You can't help being a little foolish when you're young, Grace. You're almost supposed to be a bit reckless." She thought for a moment, and then her eyes narrowed the way they did when she became very serious or very sad, and she continued with. "You know what love really is, Grace?"
Of course. I shook my head and held my breath. I knew it was something special, but I had no idea how to put it into words, especially the love between a man and a woman.
"It's an investment, taking a chance, and any investment involves some risk, and some risk means being somewhat foolish. In my hea
rt of hearts I knew your father was going to be a big success. Every part of me believed it. so I wasn't afraid even though we were married and lived on a shoestring, and I had to be willing to send him off time after time, willing to contend with great loneliness until..." She smiled. "Until we had you, and I would never be lonely again," she said.
She hugged me.
And everything was all right. Everything would always be all right. Even if it was raining or snowing, the sun always shone when either she or Daddy beamed their broad, happy smiles on me. How I miss that feeling, that faith in our lives being one everlasting summer's day. Yes, we weren't rich, but if we lacked something necessary, I was unaware of it. Mommy was always buying me new things to wear, especially if we moved to a different climate. We always had a late-model automobile, and my room, no matter where it was, was decorated with all sorts of dolls and pictures and mementos Daddy brought home from each and even sea duty.
So much of that is buried in trunks now. I don't even look at them anymore. Memories can be very painful, each like a separate needle piercing your heart, bringing tears to your eyes and an ache into your chest. Better to keep them out of sight and out of mind.
Be careful about whom you permit to touch you deeply, a voice inside me warned and continues to warn even to this day. Your heart hardens around their words, their promises, and their touches like handand footprints in cement, and you carry them within you until you die and maybe even afterward. The more you love someone, the deeper the pain iswhen they are gone, and they will be gone, the voice insists. It makes me tremble every time someone tries to be close.
A few weeks before my fifteenth birthday Daddy came home with what Mommy would say was the best possible present he could have brought. A year before. Daddy had been transferred to San Diego. We were living in what was a little smaller house than the one we were in previously. Nevertheless. I had my own room. and I was in it doing my homework because I wanted to be free to watch a music special on TV. I also had an English test the next day, but I was confident about it.
As soon as Daddy greeted Mommy when he came home, he boomed a loud "Where's my Sailor Girl?"
"That sailor girl is nearly fifteen. Roland. You are going to have to stop treating her as if she was five," Mommy told him, but Daddy shook it off.
"She'll always be five to me." he declared, his arms waiting for me. Then he held me out with his hands on my shoulders and said. "Take a seat. Gracey,"
"Oh, no." Mommy cried, her hand to her forehead. "Whenever you call her Gracey. Roland Stemper Houston, that means anchors aweigh."
-This is good, it's good," he insisted, waving her into a seat as well. Then he stood back with that catate-the-mouse grin,
"Well?" Mommy asked. "Don't keep us sitting here like steamed-up ships in the harbor. Launch or drop anchor. sailor."
Daddy laughed. "First." he began, "I've been assigned to HC-8 in Norfolk. 'Virginia. That's Helicopter Combat Support Squadron Eight, the Dragon Whales."
"What do they do?" Mommy asked quickly, her eves narrowing with concern and worry.