Thursday, June 17, 1999

Kerri isn't coming with us. I knew that, obviously. The Navy doesn't move best friends in pairs. But her husband extended for another year, so they're staying on Guam until next fall, and somehow that makes it worse. I'll be the one who leaves.

We did a girls' day to make up for it. We left all four kids with the husbands and drove the long way around the south end of the island, just the two of us with the windows down. The south is all hills and red dirt and little bays, nothing like the north. We stopped at the old Spanish bridge, and the monument for Magellan, who landed on Guam in 1521, and an old lady at a stand by the road sold us coconuts with a straw stuck in the top. We sat on the seawall and drank them and didn't talk about October at all, on purpose.

On the way home Kerri said, "Do you remember when you screamed at the snake?" I said, "Do you remember when you held the flashlight on it so I could see it better?" We laughed until she had to pull over.

Sunday, May 9, 1999

Mother's Day, and I finally learned to make red rice.

Auntie Nieves has been promising to teach me since the fiesta, which was a year and a half ago. Yesterday she decided I was ready. Here is what I learned, in her words and mine. You wash the rice in your hands until the water runs clear, and if it doesn't run clear you're not done. You soak the achote seeds in warm water and squeeze them with your fingers until the water turns deep orange, and then you strain out the seeds. That's the color. Onion, garlic, a little oil, salt, the orange water, the rice, and then you leave it alone. "Don't stir it, don't look at it, don't talk to it." Some people put in bacon or peas. She said that's their business.

Mine came out a little sticky. She ate a spoonful, thought about it a long time and said, "Next time." Cynthia says that's the nicest thing she's ever heard her mother say about anybody's rice.

It's been a year since the baby. I thought about it today, at Auntie's table with my hands orange to the wrist. I think about it less, and I don't feel bad that I think about it less. Andy and I talked, and we're going to wait until we get to Norfolk and get settled before we think about anything like that again. For now, two is a lot. Two is wonderful.

Monday, April 19, 1999

Max is three! Yesterday. He wanted a dinosaur cake, so he got a dinosaur cake: green frosting, chocolate chip eyes and a lot of teeth. He blew out his candles and then blew on everybody else's plate to cool off their cake, which nobody had asked him to do.

He's an island kid. He was a baby when we got here and he doesn't remember anything else. He says "Hafa adai" to the cashiers. He likes his rice red and his chicken with finadene, and when we went to the beach yesterday afternoon he walked straight into the water with no fear at all and Andy had to run after him. When I tell him we're moving to Virginia he says, "Is there a beach?" I tell him yes, but it's a different ocean, and the water's colder, and he looks at me like I'm making things up.

I'm scared he'll be cold. I'm scared he'll miss it here and not know what he's missing.

Friday, March 26, 1999

Orders came.

Norfolk, Virginia. Andy reports in November. We'll fly out around the end of September, take some leave in Ohio, and then drive down. He's happy: it's a good job, and Norfolk is where we started, and his brother lives an hour away.

I'm happy too. I'll be one long day's drive from Mom instead of halfway around the world. Taylor can go to school with snow days. We can go home for Thanksgiving. Everything I wanted, that first year, I'm going to get.

So why did I go into the bathroom after he told me and run the water and cry?

I think I'm going to miss this place. I didn't think that was possible. I didn't even notice it happening. Somewhere between the typhoon and the fiestas and Kerri's kitchen and the sunsets, which are ridiculous here, a different color every night, and Auntie Nieves telling me my rice is wrong, this got to be home.

Six months. I'm going to pay attention to every day of it.

Wednesday, February 24, 1999

A day off for Andy, a day off from preschool for Max, and Taylor home with a cold that wasn't bad enough to stop her from going to the beach, so we went to the beach.

We drove all the way to the north end, down a long rough road through the jungle, to the beach under the cliffs. White sand, the water every color between green and navy blue, the cliffs going straight up behind us covered in green, and nobody there but us and one other family and a crab. We ate peanut butter sandwiches with sand in them. Andy taught Taylor to float on her back. I lay on a towel and didn't think about anything at all for maybe the first time since 1993.

On the way home, the kids asleep in the back, Andy said, "I could live here." I said, "We do live here." He laughed. But I was surprised to hear myself say it. Two years ago I counted the days.

Saturday, January 23, 1999

He's home.

The ship came in Thursday afternoon. We were at the pier two hours early with all the other families, and everybody had signs. Ours said WELCOME HOME DADDY in glitter that Taylor did herself, and most of the glitter is now on me, the car, and the kitchen floor, forever. When the sailors finally came down the brow I couldn't find him, and then I did, and I don't remember anything after that for a few minutes.

Max was shy. He's been without his daddy for a third of the life he can remember. He hid behind my legs and peeked around, and Andy got down on the ground right there on the pier and waited, and after about a minute Max walked over and said, "You got a beard," which Andy did not, he just needed a shave. Then he climbed up into his arms and didn't get down for the rest of the night.

Andy took down the list he'd taped in the cabinet and read it, and then he put it back up. He says it stays there until we leave.