Flashback

Himself and I are finding that recently the topics of our conversation together go back in time to our earliest years together. I suppose that this is typical for people who have been together as long as we have. The other day we talked about something we have never talked about before and it has stayed with me because it is something I had never thought about in depth.

We hadn't been married six months when we left everyone and everything we knew to move to a state two-days drive from Near Philadelphia. It wasn't our choice. This was 1968 -- you may remember this as the Vietnam War Era -- and when the draft board promised Joe that he'd be called up in just two weeks to serve in the Army or Marines for three years my then-fiancee considered his options. Soldiers were needed in Vietnam and there was every reason to believe that would be where he would go once his basic training was complete. A lying bastard Navy recruiter assured him that if he enlisted for four years, with his education as a draftsman, he'd spend most of his time on shore duty; there was no call for draftsmen in Saigon, Danang, or other places in the news. We had a cartoon showing a young man being chased by the draft board, running into the arms of the Navy recruiter. This was us. We married with a three-month extension before active duty began.

So once basic training was completed, we were off to Pensacola, Florida for a one-year stint. Arriving in mid-January, we quickly found and rented a cute little duplex house with a blooming camellia bush  on the front lawn, adopted a kitten, and set up housekeeping. We were 22, about to turn 23.

Then Joe reported in for duty and learned that the draftsman he was replacing, Paul, was leaving shortly for a one-year tour in Vietnam, replacing the draftsman he had replaced in Pensacola.

The physical manifestations for me began almost immediately. I had intermittent bouts of gastrointestinal distress. Worse than that were the headaches: The first one was so horrible that Joe took me to the emergency room where it was diagnosed as a tension headache. They were to occur once or twice a week for almost that whole year, putting me to bed with heavy pain medication.

Until this past week, more than fifty years later, we never talked about the strain we were under during that year. Or how my health suffered from the stress. Until this past week, I never put into detailed words the many questions needing answers that would be a year in coming: Would Joe go to Vietnam? Would he return? Would he return as a whole person? Would his hands -- his livelihood -- be intact? Would I become a widow at 23? Where would I spend that year? Would I stay in Florida where I had a secure job and could rent a small place (because by then we were living in enlisted housing that we'd have to leave once Joe was no longer on staff) but where all my relationships were short and transient? Would I return to Near Philadelphia and spend that year living with my in-laws? Would the in-laws allow the dog and cat? Would I be able to find a job Near Philadelphia that would allow me to rent a place that would allow the dog and cat? Would the very young marriage survive a year apart?

As it turned out, the answer to the first question was "no," rendering all the others moot. When the year was nearly over, the Navy Captain that I was working for kindly offered to have Joe extended for a second year in Florida; at the end of that time, this same man arranged for him to spend the remainder of his enlistment on the most benign kind of sea duty possible, a tender that seldom left port and even then for only four days at a time.

All of this has been swirling around in my mind for several days now, almost as though I were living this on-going trauma again. I am writing it all now to see if that might make it go away.