So we had been married a couple months and having moved to Seattle in 1968 when my husband got drafted, and we packed back up and headed out to Idaho, his home state, where his notice came from. His mother and I drove him to the train station in a small town miles and miles away, and then cried in the car all the way back to Geneva.
I was going catch a plane back to Illinois and stay with my family until we got word where he would be stationed, so we could make plans. And then before that could happen, he showed up, having been rejected by the Army due to back injuries from a motorcycle mishap that year. YAY! So we packed the car back up and headed northwest again to find a new apartment in Seattle.
From then on, every month he would be drafted again, rejected again. Only this time his papers had been transferred to Washington so we at least didn't have to move. And his work held fake going away parties for him every month to celebrate, unlike the first party when we all thought he'd be shipping out.
Rinse and repeat, the months went by. Such a joke! They laughed, he laughed, I laughed.
So somehow we thought it would be an opportunity to start a family. And six or seven months after the wedding, we did. Fortunately, I didn't have a problem with morning sickness. However, the smell of the dry roasted peanuts he would buy was all of a sudden the most egregious of odors in the entire universe and I would have to leave the room if and when he opened the jar. Still can't stand them.
Of course, it worked out that as soon as we found out we were going to be parents and actually have to grow up, he went to report again as usual for the draft that March. But he didn't come home that night. Timing is everything, no?
I locked myself in the bathroom for two days and nights and cried and screamed relentlessly. Stopped laughing.
And I never heard a word from him for two long, unbearable weeks. At long last I got the phone call and found out he was at Ft. Lewis in Tacoma, WA. And I would be able to visit him on Sunday afternoons for the next six weeks of basic training.
I didn't even recognize him the first Sunday. Seriously! His hair had been shaved off and he wore dark rimmed glasses instead of contact lenses.
It seemed more prison like. You had to sit at a table across from your husband in a big room with everyone else doing the same. But you had an hour to talk, so what could be better?
I quit my job and packed everything into our little car and moved myself down to a bad area in Tacoma. A lot went wrong there, so I couldn't really focus on being pregnant. Immediately got a job at Penney's in a Mall there, but after a month got fired when one of my coworkers told the manager I was pregnant. Against the rules back in the dark ages.
It's ironic to be broke and unemployable when you're most needful, but good life lessons. Our cat, who was the only creature I knew within 1200 miles, and meant the world to me, went out one night and was hit by a car on the road. I picked up his body the next morning. Devastated.
I was a military wife, wife of a Private, and so not really anything the Army was obligated to deal with. The saying was, "If you were supposed to have a wife, the Army would have issued you one." Besides, most of the guys he was stationed with were 18 or 19 year old kids, he was 25, having had college and mission deferments. They all called him "Grandpa."
When he was assigned six weeks later to Ft. Ord in Monterrey, CA, I again packed up our little car with all we had and moved myself down there. Actually we had so much that I had to drive with my left hip up on the driver's door armrest.
Two days down the coast, and I made it to Seaside, CA. on our first anniversary! Immediately found an apartment and went out to find my husband. No idea how I arranged that without cellphones, but I did manage to pick him up and kidnap him for a couple hours to celebrate. By then I was almost 6 months pregnant and finally beginning to show a little.
I don't think he ever was able to get off base again to even see my apartment.
Until in August, he was transferred to Ft. Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, IN. This time, I didn't have to move alone, he had a week off. Just before we left, I went to the small animal compound on base and adopted the runt of the litter, a small pup the size of a hamster who barely had a chance of survival. And "Oink" became the focus of our trip to another very temporary home in the Midwest. Good practice for infant care.
Having been to an OB/GYN probably in March to confirm pregnancy, I really never had the opportunity to go again for quite awhile. It was fortunate I did so well. Or maybe just didn't know better.
So I was dropped off in Illinois at my parents' home mid August and he went on to Indiana, coming to see us on the weekends. Or I would drive out there. I became addicted to banana popsicles.
Finally, I was able to get in with a civilian OB group six or seven weeks before my due date, the Army having to pay because I lived too far from an actual base to have to travel to Army Docs.
By the end of September, I was pleading with the Dr. to have my baby induced.
Instead of getting orders to Virginia as I had dreamed of, D. had just gotten orders to Germany. I wept. Naturally he was being shipped out on Oct. 10, my due date. And there was no way to know at that time where precisely in Germany he would be stationed, so how to even let him know about the birth? I was not happy.
The Drs. had little sympathy, saying they had been notified about their own babies being born when they were overseas during the Korean War. But eventually they acquiesced, and I was scheduled for induction at the local hospital in Elgin on the morning of Oct. 8th.
It all went perfectly. (Only a local injection for the episiotomy.) Pain? Sure, but just when I became panic stricken and thought I was going to die because I could handle no more, the nurse directed me to look in her eyes, and unequivocally reassured me I could handle it. Comforted by her absolute confidence, I managed to ask her how many children she had. None, she said. I knew was going to die right then.
After four hours of intense labor, ta da... "IT'S A GIRL!"
And I was handed the most beautiful baby you could ever imagine. (Dads couldn't be in the delivery room back in the day.) I was so overwhelmed with joy, I couldn't speak. Heaven was close, so close. Silently I was wondering when the Tabernacle Choir was coming into that sacred room to sing. Where were they?
When the proud new Daddy went down the elevator to the Lobby to tell my Mom we just had a baby girl, she said his smile was beaming like nothing she'd ever seen before, it lit up the entire hospital. We brought Afton home the next day, before he had to leave, to share a precious few hours. And two months later, we joined Daddy in Bavaria, Germany.
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