Eventually, a few months later, Ken got transferred.  He was through with his job at Camp Pendleton with ground troops, and was finally going to join a squadron.  He was ecstatic.  (I had no idea why.  Looking back from now, I understand.  Then I didn't get it at all.)  Which was: he had spent three years in Pensacola teaching cadets to fly and land on a carrier, and then, a year at Pendleton with the ground troops.  He hadn't been in a squadron since he was in Korea, and that was flying Corsairs and F-9's.  He was so very anxious to get back to flying.  Flying the kinds of airplanes that had "come down the pike" since he left the war.  He was ready to get back in a real airplane, and not a cadet trainer like the SN-J or the T-28.  He wanted to see what the air wing had come up with in the last five years.  And fly it.  He just wanted to fly.  Fly real supersonic airplanes.

None of that was in my mind at all.  I wasn't mature enough to have thoughts about his life and what he wanted or what he was doing.  I really wasn't interested in what he was doing at all.  I was immersed in learning about being a mother and a wife.  Trying to cope.  Learning to cook--I couldn't boil water when we got married.  That's the truth.  I didn't know how to wash clothes.  I had been sending them to the dry cleaners.  Underwear and all.  (Like I said yesterday, I learned to stomp on things in a soapy water bathtub.  Hanging them on a line to dry.)  But Ken had put me in charge of all of our finances and I was forced to find cheaper ways to do things--like the washing our clothes--because there wasn't enough money to really make it month to month.

I had the car once every two weeks.  (Ken had nobody to pool with since he was in a specialty air position, on a station that was designed for the ground troops.)  Everything I needed to do, I had to plan to do on those days.  I would go to the commissary and then freeze milk, and anything else I had room for.  Enough food, (that I didn't yet know how to prepare) to last for two weeks.  I had to drive Ken way into the desert to get to have the car, and then go back and get him that evening.  Lib watched the baby.  She trusted me with her son on occasions when she had to go to the commissary.  She trusted me with her child!  It was the first time I had been trusted to do anything for anyone.

The month Ken was transferred,  Lib's husband was transferred to somewhere else as well.  I was devastated.  I depended on her for everything.  She answered all my questions.  She taught me how to do things.  I had no friends once again.  And once again, I was moving to another strange place.