MEET YOUR SON (Part 3)

In the days and weeks that followed, we talked about 'when.'  Despite my ‘leap of faith’ on leap year day, I was a little apprehensive about setting a date.  In March I reported to my first fleet squadron.  In the back of my mind, I wanted to wait until after our first deployment together as a couple to plan the wedding.  A six-month deployment seemed daunting at the time--it was a big unknown for me, and there were many voices advising me to wait until after deployment, to make sure it was right.  That advice seemed like good sense to me, and calmed the angst I was feeling from residual past bitterness.  I’m not sure I ever said this to my intended, though...it seems simple and logical now that I should have just told her, but I think I feared hurting her by making her think I didn’t trust her.  She was fine--it was the past I didn't trust. 


I got busy in the new squadron right away.  In April I would go to my new home-at-sea, USS CONSTELLATION, two separate times; as the newest pilot in the squadron, the Commanding Officer wanted to be sure I got as much practice at landing and operating around the ship as I could get.  My reputation was I was not a ‘natural‘ pilot--I had to work hard at the craft, learning through multiple repetitions--what’s known in the industry as being a ‘plumber.’  


The squadron went on a detachment to El Centro, CA, in May and June.  El Centro was a smaller Naval Air Facility (as opposed to Air Station) located east of the Laguna Mountains in the Imperial Valley of the Colorado Desert, about 30 miles south of the Salton Sea, about a two-hour drive from San Diego.  It is ideal for aviation because of its predominantly sunny weather, superb training facilities, and proximity to southern California and Arizona weapons and training ranges--fantastic stretches of mostly unpopulated land where noisy jets can do their business without bothering many people.

A-4 SKYHAWK near the front entrance to NAF El Centro, CA.  It looks like desert, because, well, it is desert.

NAF El Centro from the air looking south.  Don't be fooled by the green fields--the miracle of irrigation.  It's desert. 

It just so happened that the month of May 1988 was mentioned in a 1981 film called ‘The Man Who Saw Tomorrow.’  The film stated that medieval sage Nostradamus had predicted a major earthquake that would devastate "the new city" one May when certain planets and stars moved into a precise alignment.  "Fire from the center of the earth, the great Earthquake shall be in the month of May..." is the way it was presented in the movie; the passage from Nostradamus’ book Prophecies is alleged to read,  “...a very mighty trembling in the month of May...”. 

Poster from, "The Man Who Saw Tomorrow."  Never saw it, but  it  had a significant impact on my life.

Californians in general are a little off-balance from the rest of the country; nothing like a movie based loosely on 400-year old prediction about cataclysmic earthquakes to bring all the crazies into full bloom.  Despite her solid Midwestern roots, my bride-to-be got caught up in the nonsense.  I knew it was serious when she matter-of-factly described the ‘mass death, mass destruction’ that was coming, to a friend one day.   As the May detachment approached and the lunacy reached a frothing crescendo, she didn’t want to be left alone to endure whatever might happen while I went to the desert.  It may have been irrational, but she was legitimately worried about it.


I took a deep breath...and she took some vacation time from work and came ‘over the hill’ to meet me.  I endured no small amount of grief from my squadron mates--most of it justified--but she felt reassured and safer, and when the week came and went with no armageddon, she went back over the hill.  I finished the detachment and flew back home with the squadron a couple of days later.  Turns out there had been an alignment, of sorts, and a ‘very mighty trembling’ which did occur during that detachment...just not quite what Nostradamus had predicted.  On the next detachment in July in Fallon, NV, I got a phone call...Kelly Ann was expecting our first child.  

At that moment, everything changed for me.  Inexplicably, all the doubts and reservations, all my fears and concerns about the past, about commitment and marriage, simply vanished. Vanished as if never there.


We set about arranging a short notice wedding.  I would get home after the first weekend in August; after a week, we were scheduled to begin field carrier landing practice FCLP, or ‘bouncing,’ repetitive landing practice at the field to a lighted box on the runway the size of an aircraft carrier landing area, in preparation for the last major at-sea period before deployment.  It was a narrow window, but after some quick phonecalls and a visit with the Air Wing Chaplain (one of the best I have ever known--thanks again, Larry), the date was set for 14 August--the Sunday after Tomcat Ball.

Tomcat Ball was the F-14 community’s annual formal awards dinner.  It would take a whole story to explain the gravity of this event in the 80‘s: dinner dress uniforms and formal gowns; community camaraderie and fellowship mixed with intense squadron rivalries and one-upmanship; trophies for the ‘best’ and trophies for the most spirited; poignant remembrance of those lost, combined with good humor and no small amount of unapologetic drunken hijinks and chicanery; dignified presentations interrupted by sporadic outbursts of thrown dinner rolls.  

On the night of Tomcat Ball, 1987.  Not my car, but convenient backdrop.

We expected the wedding ceremony to be sparsely attended because it would fall the morning after the biggest night of the year for the Tomcat community; we booked the small chapel for that reason.  I got my first real glimpse of the true ‘family’ nature of a squadron that Sunday; despite the number of people with clinical hangovers who had better things to do, the chapel was packed to the rafters, standing room only.  Every member of the Ready Room was there, some wobblier than others, but they were there.  Every single one.  I was genuinely touched. 

Small chapel at NAS Miramar, booked because we thought most folks wouldn't come.  Standing Room Only.  I learned that day the squadron is like your family.

Wedding day.  Despite my hesitation leading up to this day, it is without a doubt the best thing that has ever happened or will ever happen to me in my life.

The fathers of both bride and groom got lost on the way to the chapel and delaying the start, but aside from that, the wedding was perfect.  Perfect day, perfect setting; the reception would be a barbeque held in the courtyard of my apartment building on the boardwalk in Mission Beach.  It couldn’t have been better.  

Reception at our first apartment on the boardwalk in Mission Beach.   It was a matter of convenience because of the short notice wedding; I can't imagine a better place to have held it.  Low stress.

But I was needed back at work the next day, and on the flight schedule by Tuesday: ‘bouncing’ to get ready for the challenge of the next at-sea period, the last work-up before deployment, nearly two months long.   Honeymoon, delayed.  And as it worked out, it would be nearly seven years, three deployments, three sets of orders, and two children, later, when my wife and I had time for a real honeymoon, in Hawaii, after we had already been stationed there for a tour.  Life is unpredictable, and sometimes won’t yield to your plans.

In the minutes after my bride had phoned me in Fallon with the news that she was expecting, I did the math.  In about thirty nine weeks from my personal interpretation of Nostradamus’ ‘mighty trembling,’ it would be around the end of January--just about in the middle of a six month deployment that would start right after Thanksgiving.

Service in uniform implies many things; among them is missing key events in your family members’ lives--birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, weddings, funerals, even the birth of your children.  Yep, the wicked irony would continue--I would miss the birth of my second child.  The difference between the first and second was profound, though, for me--there was no doubt I was the father.  I would approach the date knowing I was about to become a father.

As deployment approached, we made the best... 

MEET YOUR SON (part 2)

On to better days.   By the summer of 1987 I was living in a rented one-bedroom apartment on the second story right on the Mission Beach boardwalk.  The address was a walkway, not a street; the parking area was off an alleyway.  It had a good sized picture window with the best view I’ve ever had--overlooking the Pacific.  Every morning I would open the front door and let the sea breeze come rushing in; at night I fell asleep to the sound of the waves on the beach.  I still miss that place.  

My first apartment in San Diego...

Not a postcard.  View of San Diego sunset taken not far from that first place,
 about 20 years later.  No wonder I didn't have a TV then.

In June a good friend and former high school teammate, Brian, who had just been commissioned as a Marine, was crashing on my couch for a few weeks, while he was going through his USMC Judge Advocate General Training course at the Marine base near the airport.  Brian was with me when I met the ‘keeper’ wife, Kelly Ann.  

My friend Brian in 2005, at a change of command

We met at a traditional Navy ‘wetting down’ celebration that I and thirteen other students threw that month, on the 14th, to be exact, of June 1987.  The tradition for an officer’s promotion is that he/she takes the difference in a month’s pay at the new rank, and donates it at the bar in celebration.  In 1987, the difference in one month’s pay between Ensign and LT (junior grade) was about $275; when combined with 13 other new LTjgs, we’re talking about a damn good party.  We collectively rented the beach facility at NAS North Island’s Breakers Beach, bought ridiculous amount of food and beer, and invited the whole Gunfighter Ready Room--my estimate is that about 300-400 instructors, students, spouses, girlfriends, passers-by, whoever, were in attendance.  My future wife came as a guest of an instructor’s wife, with whom she worked downtown.     

It was epic.   

One odd thing was we knew about each other before we met.  Some months prior my future wife had met another good friend of mine from flight school while he was traveling through San Diego, a fellow aviator who had helped me survive the hellish time in Texas.  My friend Tyler had played hockey at Northern Michigan and was wearing his college team shirt; Kelly Ann, born in Detroit and in love with all things Michigander, saw the shirt and immediately struck up a conversation with the hand (Michigan natives do the thing with the hand, where they hold up the hand like a map and point to what part of the state they are from).  

Michigan Hand Map.

If you see people doing this, you know they are from Michigan.

Tyler (married) liked her instantly, knew I was on my way to San Diego to start training in the next few weeks; and told her, “I know this great guy for you who will be here in a few weeks...”.  He then called and told me about Kelly Ann to try and set us up--I was appreciative, but didn’t feel like it was time to meet anyone yet, and I wasn’t even in California yet.

When Kelly Ann and the instructor couple got to the wetting down, she asked them, which one was me?  Call it timing, but at that moment I was carrying a classmate’s young son on my shoulders.  Nothing offsets a wardrobe of obnoxious beach shorts, $3 flip-flops, unfortunate sunglasses, and a ratty t-shirt more than the ‘cute kid sitting on your shoulders’ accessory.   She came up later and introduced herself.  We took a walk on the beach almost right away to get away from the noise of the party--and the rest, as they say, is history.  My good friend Brian just happened to take a picture of that moment.  I still smile today when I look at it.

About 10 minutes after we met.  Thanks, Brian, for taking the picture 

The rest, as they say, was history.

It didn’t take long for me to know that I was way out my league with this girl.  What she saw in me still mystifies me a bit to this day.  But there must have been some kind of power in that first meeting for her, too, because it kept her from hauling ass when she found out in short order that I was: 

- still married; 

- involved in a bitter, protracted divorce (that would take over a year from that day); 

- my soon-to-be-ex was pregnant; 

- the reason for the long divorce was because of a paternity question; 

- that ended up with my unanticipatedly being the father of a child, determined several months after he was born.

There were certainly some white-knuckle moments when I thought all my baggage would be too much for her to take; but each time she weathered the waves of the storm, and decided to stay.  And as I look back on it, her presence in my life settled out the rough spots, and kept me looking forward, instead of wallowing in the bitter wreckage of what had been, or at least wallowing longer than I did.  On some level, it probably saved me. 

As February 1988 rolled around, I was pretty sure she was the one--but let’s face it, I wasn’t even completely extracted from my first failed marriage, was still a little wary, too, based on that experience: once bitten, twice shy, and so forth.  The uncertainty how we she (and I) would handle the pressures of Navy life with its separations and long deployments (my first was pending), was definitely on my mind.  I had thought that if the relationship was strong enough to get through that first cruise, then we’d see where it would go.  But in the meantime, we were having a great time.  It didn’t take much to put the worries out of my mind.   

Two events conspired against me, such that I would be married (again) before the end of the summer; one was Sadie Hawkins’ Day, the other was precipitated by a prediction made by Nostradamus over 400 years earlier.   

Nostradamus played a part in my getting married a second time.

Back to Saint Bridget and TD Hays on the beach.  I never saw the marriage proposal coming.  I had one flight left in the training squadron; on my way to the fleet, finally.  Dinner out with my beautiful sweetheart, in a restaurant just up the boardwalk from my place in Mission Beach.  I think I even remember that morning hearing something about Sadie Hawkins Day on the radio station while we were driving in the car; I remember thinking, how silly.  Kelly Ann just giggled and looked out the side window.  

After dinner, for dessert the waiter brought out a little ring box on a platter and put it in front of my face.  I thought it was a mistake, and tried to shoo him off.  ‘Dude, you’ve got the wrong table.’  He looked back at me like I was a big dork.  She just beamed at me and said, ‘look inside.’  No ring, but a piece of paper which read, ‘Will you marry me?’  Stunned.  I was completely stunned.  

If you had painted that story for me before that moment, and asked me what I would feel, I would have told you: apprehension, reluctance--it was too fast too soon, it should wait until after deployment, until after the divorce was final.  But her act of faith in me, the sweetness of the gesture, the flattery of having someone like her make such an effort for someone like me, the courage and confidence of that person putting herself out there for you...well, I’m a little embarrassed now to say it, but I think it kind of swept me off my feet.  Because of that unexpected role-reversal, I think I understand (a little) what the that fuss of engagement is all about.  Most dudes probably don’t.  I smiled and said yes.  Smartest thing I ever did.

In the days and weeks that followed,...

MEET YOUR SON 1

MEET YOUR SON

(Part I)

If you had asked me a year prior to my wedding if I would get married when I did, I would have confidently bet a paycheck against it.  That sounds terrible.   And when my lovely bride of the two-plus-decades reads this, she will thump me on the head.  But let me explain.

My wife and I were married in August 1988 in the small chapel at Naval Air Station Miramar, San Diego.  

NAS--now MCAS--Miramar Chapel.

It was a perfect day, perfect setting.  When I look at pictures from that day now, I know without a shadow of a doubt it was the best possible event that could have happened to me, that will ever happen to me.  And when I think about the road leading up to that day, and where it’s led in the years since, I cannot imagine my life being any different now.

But life is complicated.  And messy.  It has a curious way of throwing curve balls, taking you through unforeseen detours.  It even hides the ambush of disaster.  It has a way of denying you that which you think you want most, in the process crushing dreams and breaking hearts...only to bestow unexpected, priceless gifts, and restoring faith and trust in some hidden ‘master plan.’  None of which you ever see coming.  Though perhaps sometimes you could have seen it coming if you were paying a little more attention.  

We got engaged in February of 1988, in San Diego, as I was finishing flight training.  But I did not ask my wife to marry me.  I couldn’t, as I was still married at the time to another woman.  

So she asked me.

Saint Bridget

In fifth-century Ireland, as the story goes, Saint Bridget complained to Saint Patrick about how women had to wait for men to propose marriage.  It was unfair, Saint Bridget argued.  Saint Patrick agreed, but thought it best to proceed modestly; so he decreed Leap Year Day, occurring once every four years, the one day where it would be an acceptable custom for the woman to propose to the man.  Whether this account is accurate or not, by the 19th century, it was acceptable in Britain for women to propose to their men on Leap Year Day, or February 29th, once every four years.

In the United States, this tradition has been informally named ‘Sadie Hawkins Day,’ after a character in the famous cartoon strip ‘L’il Abner,’ from the 30’s and 40’s.  In the comic, one day out of the year the Sadie Hawkins Race was held, during which if a single woman caught a single man and carried/dragged him across the finish line, he was legally bound to marry her. 

L'il Abner's Sadie Hawkins race

Though the comic Sadie Hawkins Race occurred annually in November, in some American urban legend, the Irish and comic traditions merged.   Many in the US have come to know ‘Sadie Hawkins Day’ as February 29th, when it’s whimsically acceptable for a woman to propose marriage to the man.

T.D. Hays used to be located in this building,
second story.  Scene of the crime. 

On February 29th, 1988 I was at dinner with my soon-to-be-but-that-was-unknown-to-me future bride at a beachside restaurant facing the ocean in Pacific Beach, called TD Hay’s.  I was uplifted with the realization I would actually finish training and make it to the Fleet, as I only had one flight left from earlier in the syllabus; I had already successfully carrier-qualified, day and night, in December, and had somehow plodded my way through the most difficult parts of the tactics syllabus.  

It was a good time to celebrate in general, things were looking up after a hard year.  I still felt the sting of events which occurred in the fall of 1986: I survived an aircraft crash and ejection; one of my best friends from AOCS had been killed in a tragic car crash; and my first wife deserted me for another man.  All within about six weeks.  

And that was not the worst of it.

I begin this part by telling the ending--I wouldn’t call it completely happy, but it’s pretty good.  My oldest son, born of my first wife, is everything a father would want his son be.  He’s grown into a fine young man, and I feel as proud of him as a father can feel about a son.  My ex-wife and her family did a wonderful job raising him.  She made sure my son knew my parents while they were still alive, knew my brother and my sisters, and their families.  My ex-wife eventually remarried, and the man she chose to be my son’s step father is a fine, steady man who I genuinely like.  My ex has never been anything but accommodating and understanding when asked if our son could drop what he was doing and come out and visit.  Zero drama in the long-term aftermath.  Zero drama is good.

She even invited me to come to Indiana to watch my son’s last high school football game, the Indiana State Championship, in 2005.  It was remarkable, generous gesture for which it took some courage on her part to reach out.  She didn’t want to tell him beforehand because she thought it might make him more nervous.  It was a close game decided by a missed extra point, and the other team won--and I didn’t care, at least not much.  My son played great.  At the end, when he saw me in the stands, finally recognizing the idiot who was yelling his name after he stood with his crestfallen teammates, I think it may have taken some of the sting out of the loss for him.  His biological dad had never been in the stands at one of his games before. 

AP Photo of the 2005 State Championship.  I was watching #69.
He played an awesome game.  

  

So that’s the good ending.  But the beginning is not so pleasant.  Because of my ex-wife’s actions in the fall of 1986, I did not believe I was my son’s father when he was born. 

I don’t quite remember all her words of the conversation which led me to understand the depths of her betrayal.  But I distinctly remember the conversation.  The feeling of numbness, the shock, when she told me she was pregnant, and then told me based on the amount of...time...she had spent with the other man...which started on a 'business' trip she took with him out of town over my birthday...she said the child wasn't mine.  Later my neighbors and friends would tell me things which made me realize I was one of those, “last to know” guys, in that small Texas town.  

Well, that’s it, I thought.

The worst of it wasn’t the fact that she abandoned me in the most difficult hour I had faced, and would ever face; it wasn’t the lies, or the infidelity, or the financial cost I would eventually bear for her actions.  The worst was her actions deprived me of the joy of knowing I was a father, until after my son was about eight months old.  And when I finally knew, after thinking he was not my son, after knowing his birth had occurred, experiencing it with a mix of angst, uncertainty and ambivalence, “joy” does not accurately describe what I felt.  It was an unsatisfying, hollow mixture of bitterness and loss, with the surprise of fatherhood.  The joy was stillborn.  I had “missed” the birth of my son in all respects: physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.  Bitter, wistful loss.      

Man, I thought, what have I done to deserve all this?  I now know the answer to that question, is, ‘Nothing.’  As Clint Eastwood’s character says in Unforgiven:

“Deserve’ s got nothing to do with it.”  

"Deserve's got nothing to do with it."

I don’t wish to sound judgmental, but some things that people do to you, you can’t forget.  Time may help you find a way to forgive, and you yourself can learn to dilute the power that such events hold over you, by moving forward, by living your life.  But, some actions you can’t forget.  At least I can’t forget.  The thought that karma took care of the dirtbag who was my ex’s accomplice in the affair--he ended up in jail after a drunken car crash in Texas--well, that thought still gives me a warped sense of satisfaction.   And justice.  I wish I were a better person about that.  

But I’m not.  ‘Deserve’ had everything to do with it.

On to better days....