Reluctantly, oh so reluctantly, I forced myself to move from our little village paradise on the economy into quarters on base a month after Adam was born. Dad was so relieved to have finally been able to get us on base, as he was getting concerned about getting called out into the field for an extended period, and felt we would just be safer and more able to take care of ourselves there if he were gone. Broke my heart, but nothing is forever.
The plus side of it was we had so much more room. 8 bedrooms! I didn't realize it till just now when I saw that in black and white that there would literally come a time when that's exactly what we could use, but who knew? Think when we got the 8 kids, we had 5 bedrooms, then 3. And we so could have used a dormitory. Life.
Anyway, the down side was that the reason for the bedrooms was that we got the maids' quarters on the very top floor. During the War and/or after, the Officer's families lived on the lower floors and were well taken care of by the German women who lived above. So it wasn't set up for families exactly. But it worked for us. Back then we had a room for us, a room for you, a room for Adam, a couple rooms to just hang laundry, and several for you just to explore. We even let people who were returning to the States come and stay with us for a week or two so they could get checked out of their housing early. The best part though, was seeing you walk, and run and hop down the long hallway. I could throw a ball for you to run after and have time to fix my hair or make a meal before you returned! Well, almost.
The down side was the stairs. Oh sure, great exercise. 3 or 4 giant double flights of stairs. But it was an issue when having to take you guys up or down, one at time meant leaving one of you alone upstairs and one alone in the car. Carrying you both at once invited disaster. And leaving you both in the car or at home while hauling groceries from the PX could invite catastrophe as well. But we were there only for several months, and with luck, we managed to get by.
So we ended up enjoying our time on base, even though it lacked the picturesque, peasants-living-in-a-fairy tale quality we had heretofore so relished.
One thing about on base housing was the availability of teenage babysitters. I think we tried that twice. Kids who grow up in military families are a different breed. "Yessir, yes ma'am,"--politeness over the top. Did I say over the top? The girl we had come to watch you one night knew all about that. When we came back from our date, we opened the door and stepped into...someone else's house. This little sprout had taken it upon herself to entirely rearrange the entire house! The furniture was moved completely around, everything in every way was different. I was stunned, speechless. I mean, I would go ahead and do the dishes if there were any in the sink when I was a babysitter, but moving couches? I have no idea what she was doing with you kids when she was practicing being the future Martha Stewart, but you were alive. I was happy for that. But I was in no hurry to ever go out again. Maybe I missed the boat.
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