1957 • Honolulu, Hawaii ~ I remember that Christmas Eve. I wanted us to have a tree, so I made it from a beautiful branch of dark wood I found near our house earlier that day. At each tip where its small thorns crooked out I stuck a sugared gumdrop, then carefully bow-tied the mid stems with colored … [Read more...]
Archives for May 2018
2.33 Come Hell or High Water
Nov 29, 1957 • Honolulu ~ I remember the Friday afternoon the hurricane hit. I was walking home with a girl from school who’d invited me to her house, me doing a small skip alongside her, happy to have made a friend. I heard it before I saw it. I turned my face to the sky and felt the insistent air … [Read more...]
2.32 Worrisome Prayers
1957 • San Francisco ~ Letter from Aunt Elizabeth to her brother, my father: March 13, 1957 Dear Carl: Just now writing the date, I happened to remember that this is Carleen’s birthday. If it weren’t so late, I would call her. We are having Mass on Wednesday evenings during Lent and with a … [Read more...]
2.31 Needs Improvement
October 1957 • Honolulu, Hawaii ~ Once again I was in a new school. There were four other haoles (mostly the white children of Navy families from the States stationed in the area) in my class and the rest of the kids were locals of mixed heritage, Chinese, or Japanese descent. The locals … [Read more...]
2.30 Manoa Valley
1957 - 1958 • Honolulu, Hawaii ~ Mom and I settled in upper Manoa Valley, a trolley ride from Honolulu. A valley with a higher elevation than sun-drenched Waikiki, it squatted at the foot of a tropical rainforest shrouded in low rain clouds. When they passed, brilliant rainbows broke through, … [Read more...]
2.29 Off to Paradise 1957
October 1957 • San Jose to the Islands ~ A year and a month into Bobby and Claudia's marriage, Bobby was transferred to Barbers Point, a naval air station about 20 minutes from Honolulu. My mother got the notion that she and I would move there too. Mom wanted to be near Claudia, she and Ray had … [Read more...]
2.28 Gaggle of Girlfriends 1957
1957 • San Jose ~ Things were bad between Betty and Mom. My sister wanted to do what she wanted to do, and Mom couldn’t control her. Betty moved out in her senior year and took over Claudia and Bobby's San Jose apartment when Bobby was transferred from Moffett Field to a naval air … [Read more...]
2.27 Year of Change 1956
A year of family comings and goings ~ January 1956 • My maternal grandmother, Nellie Chatfield, at the age of 82, died in Chico, California. She outlived her husband by 14 years along with two of her ten children. Gordon, her sixth child, died in 1948 (the year I was born) from injuries … [Read more...]
2.26 Lovebirds
1956 • San Jose ~ Claudia was secretly relieved when Mom said she’d have Bobby shipped out. She didn’t know how to say "no" to him, even though it hurt so bad to have sex. She would marry him when she was older, after she’d finished school, when she'd gotten a job teaching junior high. But Bobby … [Read more...]
2.25 The Great Pretender
1956 • San Jose ~ Betty was part of the older crowd and on Saturday nights she and her girlfriends ice skated at the El Camino Skating Rink. All the cute boys were there, circling the arena, showing off to the girls and skimming across the frozen floor backward to the music of "Rock Around the … [Read more...]
2.24 Hoity-Toity
1956 • San Francisco ~ When they married, Dad was renting a small place on Clayton Street in the Haight. He moved into Irene’s fancy two-story Victorian just two doors up from the flat where he first lived on Belvedere. Her place had soaring ceilings and velvet ottomans, a step up from the Formica … [Read more...]