As Time Went By

Soon after my husband came back from overseas, he received notification from his command that we would be transferred to a new port, in another state, in a couple of weeks. 

I was aware of the vicissitudes of navy life, but I wasn’t prepared. physically or mentally. I didn’t know the blow could be so soon—reality is harsh, severe, like a cold whip that hurt more than expected.


The days became hurried, the hours turned heavy, the sun lost its luster.  We packed light, as we had few material things.  My memories, intrinsic, were well-tucked in a recondite of my heart.

Life changed.

One morning, hurried packers arrived exactly at nine, and in a couple of hours, my home was dismantled, its holdings firmly hushed in cold, faceless boxes. It seemed, for a while, like I lived in a dreamland. I held my child tight in my arms; she was my reassurance.

In the next fifteen years, we were stationed in different ports.  Trying to adapt, I noticed their salty breezes tickling my nose, and white-uniformed sailors smiling at us.

Still, the seasons became blurry. The years dissolved into awkward packing and unpacking, moving in and out of cookie-cut navy housing. Its regulations sometimes choked me, and I longed for a wall to hang a portrait or a backyard where I could grow peas. 

Nostalgia surfaced as I remembered the California life.  I sang with an uplifted tone in the midst of our intruding moving boxes.

In my despairing childhood,  I wished my life to be a steady line—orderly rows; now, life was teaching me to grow in the zig-zag lines of a nomad marathon.  However, in those years, blessings came my way as well…

In the next fifteen years, I was blessed with three more children, Ed, Dan, and Jen—all born in a different state, in their own season, under their distinct star, and, definitively, at their very own rhythm.  Each one, in their own way, became a source of steadiness in the midst of my unsteady years.

Morning melodies gradually gave way to nighttime lullabies.  And as my voice grew low, love songs turned into nursery rhymes.    

The kids as well, healthy and impatient, grew quickly out of diapers, paper cuts, and lollipops.       

Sunny songs still play in my heart, now, but they take a nostalgic tempo, reminiscent of when I made up silly songs for the kids, in those crying, teething times.

I danced, but now at a slower tempo. I followed new voices, and styles; music has always been in the background of my life, as the air I breathe. 

I laughed as my kids tried to imitate that unforgettable moon walk…

Along the way, with my husband’s placid mood and my children’s excitability, I learned to pause—I didn’t put my visions aside, I rebuilt on them. 

At the end of our transitory days, our meals consisted of easy TV dinners around a card table dressed up in a plastic tablecloth.  Down-to-earth setting.  The bright spot was six folding chairs, each one with its unique voice joining the chorus of our laughter, around a pile of meddling cardboard boxes .   

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