Sunday, December 20, 1998

Christmas lights! Real ones, plugged into a real outlet! After last year I will never take electricity for granted again. Every house in housing went overboard this year. I think we all did it on purpose.

Andy's been gone a hundred and one days. Who's counting. (Me.) He'll miss Christmas and New Year's and be home in January. We mailed him a videotape: Taylor singing in her kindergarten Christmas program, Max saying "Merry Christmas, Daddy" eleven times in a row because he liked how it sounded, and the tree, and the dog the Estrellas' son is trying to talk me into adopting. (No.)

Christmas Eve we're going to Cynthia's mother's in the village. Auntie Nieves called me herself to make sure, which she has never done, and said, "You don't stay alone with those babies on Christmas." Christmas Day is at Kerri's. Between the two of them I don't think I've been allowed to be alone since September, and I've stopped minding.

One year ago this week I was mopping my hallway with bath towels in the dark. This year I bought a fancy dehumidifier at the Exchange and I'm complaining about my shoes mildewing. That's progress.

Monday, October 19, 1998

The baby would have been due next week.

I knew this was coming and I thought I'd be all right, and mostly I am. I just wanted to write it down somewhere so it was written. I'm not going to say much more.

Taylor has a loose tooth, her first, and wiggles it during dinner to make Max scream. Max has decided he's done with naps. I disagree. We are at a standoff. Kerri and I walk every morning at six before it gets too hot, pushing Max in the stroller, around and around the housing loop like two old ladies at the mall. Andy writes every few days, short letters that sound like him, and calls when the ship's in port somewhere, always at the worst possible hour. I don't care. I'd take a call at four in the morning every night.

Doing all right, really. One day at a time, like my grandma used to say.

Saturday, September 12, 1998

The ship pulled out Thursday morning. Four and a half months, home in January.

For anyone back home who's never done this: you go down to the pier with all the other families, and everybody hugs and nobody says much, and the sailors go aboard, and then you stand there and wave at a gray ship while it goes out of the harbor, even though you can't tell which one of the little white dots is yours. Taylor waved until it was gone. Max waved at a seagull.

Then I drove home and cleaned the oven. I don't know why. Kerri says everybody does something like that the first day.

Andy left me a list taped inside the cabinet: when to change the air conditioner filter, where the spare car key is, how to check the oil, and at the bottom, "You're tougher than a typhoon. Love, A." I'm leaving it up till he's back.

Wednesday, August 26, 1998

Taylor started kindergarten Monday! She wore her new sneakers and carried a Mulan lunchbox and did not look back once. I did. I looked back the whole way to the car.

Andy deploys in two weeks. It's the first long one since we got here. I've done short ones, three or four weeks, and I've done long ones before, at our last station when Taylor was a baby, but never this far from home with two kids and no Mom to drive over. I'm making lists. I'm good at lists.

Kerri says the trick is to plan one thing for every weekend, so there's always something coming. So far we have: a beach day, the Estrellas' son's birthday, a church potluck and Halloween. Fred says he'll come over and fix anything that breaks, "and on Guam, something breaks." Auntie Nieves sent word that she's going to teach me to make red rice the right way, finally. I've been asking for a year.

I'm OK. I'm going to be OK.

Tuesday, July 21, 1998

Today is Liberation Day, the big holiday here. It's the day in 1944 when the Americans landed to take the island back from the Japanese army, which had held it since right after Pearl Harbor. There's a huge parade downtown along the bay, with floats and marching bands and the Liberation Queen and every politician on the island, and then a carnival. We took a cooler and sat on the curb with the Estrellas from eight in the morning. Max fell asleep under a beach towel during the bands.

Auntie Nieves came with us and sat in a lawn chair. When the old veterans rode by, the men who fought here, she stood up, and everyone around her stood up too. She was about fifteen in 1944. I asked her, carefully, what she remembered, and she said they were hungry, and they were afraid, and when the Americans came she cried for a week. Then she handed me a plate of kelaguen and said that was enough about that.

I didn't know any of this before we came. I knew about Pearl Harbor from school. I didn't know there were people here who went through it all, and that they are still here, sitting in lawn chairs, feeding me.

Sunday, May 10, 1998

Mother's Day.

Thank you to everyone who wrote after my last entry. I read every one. Some of you I've never met. Some of you told me it happened to you too, and I had no idea, and I'm sorry. The doctor at the hospital said it's more common than people think, and that nothing I did caused it, and that we can try again when we're ready. I believe him with my head. The rest of me is catching up.

Taylor made me a card at Sunday school with a flower on it and three people inside: Mommy, Taylor, Max. And then she said, "and the baby's in heaven, so I didn't draw it." That's what Andy told her. I've been carrying the card around all day.

Kerri took the kids for two whole days, and Cynthia brought enough food for a fiesta, and Auntie Nieves told me she's been praying for us at Mass every morning. I'm not Catholic. I said thank you and meant it.

The dry season is almost over. It's been blue sky every day for months, and I'll almost miss the rain.

Thursday, April 23, 1998

We lost the baby.

At the appointment Tuesday there wasn't a heartbeat on the ultrasound. The doctor was very kind. They took care of me at the Naval Hospital yesterday, and I'm home, and I'm all right physically. Andy is home with me all week. Kerri has the kids this afternoon.

I don't really know why I'm writing this here. I guess because I told all of you about it, and I can't stand the idea of somebody back home asking me in a month how I'm feeling.

I'll write more when I can.

Sunday, April 12, 1998

Happy Easter! We went to the sunrise service on the beach with the chapel people, and the sun came up out of the ocean right on cue behind the chaplain, pink and gold. I've been to a lot of Easter sunrise services in Ohio, in a parking lot in my winter coat. This was different.

The kids hunted eggs in Kerri's yard, and the chocolate ones melted, and the plastic ones got carried off by Max to a secret location we haven't found yet.

Eleven weeks along and finally not sick every morning. We go in for my twelve-week appointment a week from Tuesday. Taylor wants a sister. Max wants a dog. Andy says a dog is not one of the options.

Sunday, March 8, 1998

OK. Mom and Andy's mom both know now, so I can say it here.

We're having another baby! I took a test Thursday morning, and then another one Thursday afternoon because I didn't believe the first one, and then I called Andy at work and said, "Can you come home for lunch," in a voice that apparently made him think the house was on fire.

Due around the end of October. Which means I'll be big and pregnant through the hottest, wettest part of the year, and Andy might be gone when it comes, because his ship is supposed to deploy in the fall. We'll figure it out. Navy families always figure it out. I've already had one baby with my husband on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic. He found out about Taylor from a Red Cross message two days later.

I told Kerri. She screamed. Then she brought over a box of saltines and a jar of the ginger candy they sell at the Korean store and said, "Here's what you do."

Monday, February 16, 1998

Taylor is five! Her birthday was Friday the 13th, which she thinks makes her extremely spooky. We had the party Saturday, on Valentine's Day, in the yard. Twelve kids, a Barbie cake I made from a picture in a magazine (Barbie came out a little lopsided but nobody complained), Kerri's boys, a pack of the Estrellas' nieces and nephews, and a piñata that took twenty minutes to break because Fred hung it too high on purpose.

The dry season is here and it is wonderful. Blue sky, breeze off the water, no afternoon downpours. It still isn't cold, I should say, for anybody in Ohio who's reading this in a snowstorm. It's just a little less like living in a steam iron.

And the trees came back. Fred was right. Two months after Paka took every leaf on the island, it's all green again, greener than before, like nothing happened. Some of the big trees are gone for good, but the rest just went right back to work.

Today was a holiday, so we went to the beach park in Tumon and Andy took Taylor out in the shallow water with a mask and snorkel. She came up screaming, "THERE ARE FISH IN HERE," like it was a personal betrayal. Then she went back down for an hour. Max sat at the edge of the water and ate sand. A normal family day.

Saturday, January 10, 1998

THE POWER IS BACK!

Thursday night at about seven-thirty, every light in the house came on at once, and the air conditioner kicked on, and the television came on in the middle of a commercial, and up and down the street you could hear people cheering out their windows. Taylor danced around the living room. I stood in front of the refrigerator with the door open, which I always yell at Andy for doing.

Since then I have: done eleven loads of laundry, taken three hot showers, run the air conditioner on high, and typed in all the entries from my spiral notebook. You can read them on the 1997 page. Some of the villages are still waiting, so I'm trying not to brag too much.

I've also figured out fonts! And how to put the little palm tree next to each entry. My old entries are still plain because I'm too lazy to go back and fix them. From now on, it's fancy.