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...