Norfolk and Virginia Beach. My parents meet toward the end of the night. When she gets ready to leave, Dadâpushed forward by his friendsâasks for her number. She gives it with a sugary smile.
Then he doesnât call for a month! I never find out why. He probably is just busy. He invites her to Annapolis for another dance. He is quiet. She is not. They like that about each other. They start going steady. Every weekend, she and a few girls carpool up to Annapolis. The girls stay in houses with housemothers who watch what goes on. Dad doesnât like this, so he borrows a car so they can go watch the submarine races. One weekend, she sits under an oak tree and watches Dad march off demerits for eating a cookie in math class. Thatâs when Dad knows she is the one.
Dad proposes down on the Cape, not far from Kennedyâs Camelot in Hyannis, on a summer weekend in 1963. Momâs ring is a little smaller than Jackieâs. Thereâs just one catch: Mom is a Baptist. She gets pamphlets in the mail from her almost father-in-law about mixed marriages. This confuses her. She thought mixed marriages were between black and white folks. Mom takes classes for six months and gets baptized just before Dad graduates from the Naval Academy in June 1964. Itâs a hot day and Dad gets a watch for being good at math.
He has leadership classes to take, so they put off marriage until after Christmas. Then, it finally happens. Dadâs family flies down to Norfolk; itâs the first flight for his brothers and sisters. Our Lady of Victory Chapel at Norfolk Naval Base is filled with naval officers, nanas in white gloves and Southern girls with bird-nest hats. My mother wears a white bridal gown of Alençon lace styled with long sleeves and a floor-length bell skirt. (Or at least thatâs what the Brockton Daily Enterprise says in a clip I dug out of Momâs closet.) Dad is in his dress uniform. The priest pronounces them man and wife. They leave church under an arch of swords provided by Dadâs classmates. They jump into Dadâs Corvette after the reception. Dad fishtails the car in the Virginia slush and they head south. Flight school starts in Pensacola in eight days.
Mom spends her first year as a Navy wife in a shotgun shack with a puke bucket by the bed. She is pregnant with Terry six weeks after the wedding. Momâs best friend, Brenda, married a Navy flier too, and she lives down the road. Every morning, Dad drops her off at Brendaâs on his way to work. She slips into Brendaâs bed, snuggles up until she has to puke again.
They move a few months later to Quonset Point Naval Air Station in Rhode Island, where Dad learns how to fly the E-2, a turboprop sub chaser. Terry arrives late on Halloween. There are no breaks. Mom becomes pregnant with me right after she recovers from childbirth. I arrive the following September, a month early and barely five pounds. Mom is twenty-four and has two children under the age of one.
It is September 30, 1966. We are an American family. Our story will never be this simple again.
Chapter Six
T upper and Beth watched Kindergarten Cop with their girls on his last night home. He picked at a piece of German chocolate cake Beth had baked especially for him and watched his girls curl up with their poodle, Gretl. He blinked back tears and thought to himself, âIâve taken command and itâs breaking my heart.â
He couldnât show the girls; that would be too much for them. Thatâs what his journal would be for. Beth had given him some leatherbound books for his birthday because she knew that writing his thoughts down calmed him.
The girls were getting too old for Tupper to tuck them in, but they made an exception that night. After the girls went to sleep, he and Beth went over the bills a last time and talked dreamily of some land they owned a mile away high on a bluff overlooking Burrows Bay. Someday they hoped to build their
Then he doesnât call for a month! I never find out why. He probably is just busy. He invites her to Annapolis for another dance. He is quiet. She is not. They like that about each other. They start going steady. Every weekend, she and a few girls carpool up to Annapolis. The girls stay in houses with housemothers who watch what goes on. Dad doesnât like this, so he borrows a car so they can go watch the submarine races. One weekend, she sits under an oak tree and watches Dad march off demerits for eating a cookie in math class. Thatâs when Dad knows she is the one.
Dad proposes down on the Cape, not far from Kennedyâs Camelot in Hyannis, on a summer weekend in 1963. Momâs ring is a little smaller than Jackieâs. Thereâs just one catch: Mom is a Baptist. She gets pamphlets in the mail from her almost father-in-law about mixed marriages. This confuses her. She thought mixed marriages were between black and white folks. Mom takes classes for six months and gets baptized just before Dad graduates from the Naval Academy in June 1964. Itâs a hot day and Dad gets a watch for being good at math.
He has leadership classes to take, so they put off marriage until after Christmas. Then, it finally happens. Dadâs family flies down to Norfolk; itâs the first flight for his brothers and sisters. Our Lady of Victory Chapel at Norfolk Naval Base is filled with naval officers, nanas in white gloves and Southern girls with bird-nest hats. My mother wears a white bridal gown of Alençon lace styled with long sleeves and a floor-length bell skirt. (Or at least thatâs what the Brockton Daily Enterprise says in a clip I dug out of Momâs closet.) Dad is in his dress uniform. The priest pronounces them man and wife. They leave church under an arch of swords provided by Dadâs classmates. They jump into Dadâs Corvette after the reception. Dad fishtails the car in the Virginia slush and they head south. Flight school starts in Pensacola in eight days.
Mom spends her first year as a Navy wife in a shotgun shack with a puke bucket by the bed. She is pregnant with Terry six weeks after the wedding. Momâs best friend, Brenda, married a Navy flier too, and she lives down the road. Every morning, Dad drops her off at Brendaâs on his way to work. She slips into Brendaâs bed, snuggles up until she has to puke again.
They move a few months later to Quonset Point Naval Air Station in Rhode Island, where Dad learns how to fly the E-2, a turboprop sub chaser. Terry arrives late on Halloween. There are no breaks. Mom becomes pregnant with me right after she recovers from childbirth. I arrive the following September, a month early and barely five pounds. Mom is twenty-four and has two children under the age of one.
It is September 30, 1966. We are an American family. Our story will never be this simple again.
Chapter Six
T upper and Beth watched Kindergarten Cop with their girls on his last night home. He picked at a piece of German chocolate cake Beth had baked especially for him and watched his girls curl up with their poodle, Gretl. He blinked back tears and thought to himself, âIâve taken command and itâs breaking my heart.â
He couldnât show the girls; that would be too much for them. Thatâs what his journal would be for. Beth had given him some leatherbound books for his birthday because she knew that writing his thoughts down calmed him.
The girls were getting too old for Tupper to tuck them in, but they made an exception that night. After the girls went to sleep, he and Beth went over the bills a last time and talked dreamily of some land they owned a mile away high on a bluff overlooking Burrows Bay. Someday they hoped to build their
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