My Life, 1st Qtr

Base Housing, Japan

The First  Qtr 

1956 Back in the states from three years living in Japan. New to a one room country school in Perry, Kansas, we were teased by the kids at school. My brother & I told Mom. She left after dinner, went to see Mrs. Nichols, the teacher. Nobody teased us after that.

I remember 

watching the lights of the car in the gravel driveway as it pulled out onto the lane. It felt good seeing Mom to have been so strongly moved to leave that very moment after supper, teaching me a sense of advocacy. Knowing what’s right or wrong and calling it out when necessary. 

Those early days Mrs. Wisin was the alcoholic mother of my best friend Francie, fast Francie, I would eventually find out. And her sister Tina, a cheerleader & lesbian, I would eventually find out. A fact I had no understanding of its meaning.  The alcoholic & her glass of tinkling, ice, & Tina with all her girlfriends riding in the top down convertible. 

A  friend in Topeka lived two doors down in the working class neighborhood we’d moved to.  There were a bunch of kids in her family like ours, & there were fried potatoes on their stove for supper every night. The house was dark with the shades drawn, no light, not cozy & bright like our house.  

I remember the move to Rome, New York, right after falling in love with Gene Wittmen when he held my hand during the Elvis Presley movie during the Wisemen Say song & I felt for the first time the tingle of a crush that went eventually nowhere. That summer another nowhere crush on Dave a lifeguard at the public pool I walked to regularly & swam in the water beneath his lifeguard stand, me flirting & not knowing that was what I was doing. He gave me a ride home & walked me to the door & told me, standing on the sidewalk, we couldn’t date because I was a Catholic. 

Catholic & a transient from the Air Force base which I would learn my senior year in high school when I didn’t get the secretarial scholarship because of this fact. My dad called the base commander. I got it, proud, again, that my parents stood up for me.  It was the right thing to do & he did it. 

When  President Kennedy was assassinated Dad cried, right there in our living room while I hosted a sorority meeting. It was a big deal because I was the first daughter of a sergeant to be invited to join the sorority. All the other girls’ fathers were officers. I learned I could step out of my social economic class & be friends with anyone, including Lorraine a Mexican. She loaned me a sexy white dress so I could wear it to the dance on the base & flirt with the guys I’d be going to school with in September. 

And,yet, I had an attitude about the greasers in the shorthand & typing class, like I thought I was better than they were. It didn’t take me long to figure out in 1964 that going to college was not in the plans, but finding and marrying a good man was. So I did & he was good & uncomplicated & we had our first child, a perfect pregnancy. You were built to have babies, the doctor said. Of course I breast-fed. It was not a discussion. It may have been the first time I walked with attitude. I know what I’m doing & don’t tell me what to do.