A Landmark Decision
Monday, October 1, 2007 at 09:56PM 
Landmarks. In my largely nomadic childhood, conventional landmarks were scarce, and their scarcity made them all the more vital to my frail sense of security. When something I had identified as a landmark moved, I was dismayed. I still am.
The first time I lost sight of a major landmark, I was so young that I do not even remember it. At least, not in the way people normally remember things. I was two years old and my sister, Kay, had not yet turned four when our 28-year-old father, a tall, handsome former Air Force pilot, informed my mother in a long-distance phone call that when he returned home in a few days' time, she was to be long gone. Every trace of her -- and of us -- he wanted permanently removed. We lived in Phoenix, Arizona, at the time, but when he made the call he was in southern California interviewing for a new job. I think the story is that in addition to a new job, he found a new lady he wanted to be with. Hence the call to my 21-year-old mother, his wife of five years.
My frightened mother hastily placed a call to her own mother fifteen hundred miles away in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. This must have been hard for her because she and her mother had a tumultuous relationship even in the best of times. My mother claims that, in addition to having mental problems and being an alcoholic, my grandmother had always been jealous of her. My mother was the eldest of four children. Her dazzling beauty, even as a child, and the reactions it generated from virtually everyone she met, left an indelible imprint on my mother. She believed that her entire worth as a human being resided in that beauty. She had a vivacious personality to begin with and was very smart, so when you added that to an almost unnaturally pretty face, what you got was someone who could go a long way on a wink and a hundred-watt smile. My grandmother had also been a beautiful woman in her day, but not like my mother. Hence the jealousy.
So for my beautiful, bewildered, heartbroken mother to place a distress call to her beautiful, mentally unstable, oft-inebriated and jealous mother five years and two children after taking wedding vows, admitting a most ignominious defeat on the marriage frontier, must have been so difficult that it could only be motivated by the deepest fear of impending ruin, the most pressing need for help. For some kind of answer to the riddle. For a solution. My grandmother's solution was as practical as it was uncomplicated. She counseled my mother to "stay right where you are" and confront my father when he returned home, and "work it out." My mother did just that. Well, she did the first part.
I shudder at how naive I was on the beautiful June day in 1979 when I acquired the husband who has been the best and most valuable landmark to ever grace my horizon.
I have heard my mother describe the day when, my father's arrival from California imminent, she bathed and dressed Kay and me as adorably as possible -- in 1959 this involved the starching and ironing of little dresses with yards of fabric and many superfluous details, worn over clouds of stiff tulle crinoline and accented with lacy socks and black patent leather shoes -- and posed us angelically in the front yard where we were to "play." The rationale behind the strategy was simple: my father could not have meant what he said! He would certainly have had sufficient time to reconsider his dictum and repent of his unreasonable demands. The unexpected sight of his baby daughters in the yard, smelling of talcum and pinkly arrayed in abject dependency, would cause him to clutch us to his chest while begging my mother to forgive him and, of course, stay.
Except that's not what happened. What happened was, he stormed past Kay and me and iterated in no nebulous terms straight to my devastated mother's tearstained face that he had meant every word he had said, and then some. He assisted her in packing the essentials we would need for a fifteen-hundred-mile journey by bus and drove us to the Greyhound station. He did not wave as the bus pulled away, bound for Louisiana. None of us ever saw him again.
I was eleven years old when my father died in a tragic accident in September of 1968. He was the co-pilot of a corporate jet with no passengers aboard when the plane disintegrated in the air over Hollywood, California. In addition to the pilot and my father, an unfortunate lady on the ground was killed. It was Friday the thirteenth. My handsome, talented father was one month shy of his 38th birthday. In the nine years between sending us packing and his untimely death, my father had remarried and, in due time, started a second family. When he died, his son and daughter were approximately the same age Kay and I had been when we made the trip from Arizona to Louisiana. I have never met the brother and sister with whom I share a father who is not even a real memory.
I shudder at how naive I was on the beautiful June day in 1979 when I acquired the husband who has been the best and most valuable landmark to ever grace my horizon. He is the salt of the earth and, although I know it's an overused sentiment, my best friend. He is a sweet man, a kind man, a reasonable man. Most of the time. I wish I could say we have never had a disagreement and that our marriage has been one long romantic slow dance, but alas I cannot. Because although I have enjoyed many days of carefree play in the wind and the waves, I myself am no day at the beach. But with the help of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we've built a pretty good life and in the process have ourselves become landmarks to three daughters, a son, a fine son-in-law, and two adorable granddaughters. I hope that when I inevitably pass off the scene, one or all of them will remember me as a reliable -- and maybe even an interesting -- landmark.
I know that, even had my father not abandoned us, he might have died long before my children were born. But how I wish he could have known these children, and Kay's seven as well. I think he would have enjoyed being a father and a grandfather. My son, Andrew, bears a strong resemblance to my father and would also like to be a pilot someday. My daughters have expressed no interest in being pilots but I am sure they too would have had a great deal in common with my dad. Each year on Father's Day I let myself think about how that might have been. But not for too long. Life is for living, for living happy. And life is for being a landmark that remains even when that life is over.
Here is a picture of my son and one of the few I have of my father. That's me in the middle.
And here I am with my favorite landmark.
Reader Comments (2)
Jennifer, it was your comment on Mari's blog about your nomadic childhood that brought me to your blog. I was very curious about what that experience would be like as a child and how it affected you. My childhood was very overprotected, if anything, but on the whole safe and happy. I tend to push the line a bit, maybe as a perverse reaction to my Mum's hovering. Thanks for sharing your stories.
Sue, I thank you for taking the time to hunt for this long-buried post! I am currently writing a memoir about my childhood experiences! When it's finished I'll see to it that you get a copy.