Beaufort, was probably the best three years of my life.  Maybe the best three years ever.  Ken's promotions now gave us enough to live on.  We were able to buy me a piano.  And some much needed furniture that didn't fall apart every time we moved.  We had a real church.  I finally made friends.  Real friends.  We felt settled.  But it wasn't always a bed of roses.

Although I didn't have to formally work, as the CO's wife there were responsibilities that I had never had before.  Hosting parties.  Greeting dignitaries.  ETC.  One of the worst things was accompanying the Chaplain to inform the widow when someone was killed. But thank God I never had to do that.  It came close once.  They were all at Roosevelt Roads, deployed--with all the aircraft--when I got a call.  "There is a crash on the runway.  The plane is destroyed, burned up.  Stand by."

I asked if he could see the number on the plane.  He said, "It's number one...OH, NO!!   He realized what he had told me.  Ken's plane.  It was a terrible hour before I heard what happened.  Ken's nose strut had collapsed as he was ready to lift off, and the front of the plane sank.  The fuel tanks hit the ground, sheared off, and  caught fire.  The whole plane was engulfed  in flames.  But he was going fast enough that the cockpit was ahead of the flames--which burned out before he came to a stop, and he got out.  There is a God who watches over us.  Ken should had been dead.  The plane was toast.

At home, there was constant chaos as well.  Scott broke his collar bone and took his first ambulance ride--one of many that occurred in his chaos-filled life.  And he got lost repeatedly.  I couldn't let him out of my sight.  Once he got on the school bus (he was two),  went to school and sat down at a desk.  He was so tall that no one noticed him.  Military kids come and go, so it wasn't unusual for a teacher not to know who was who.  Becky found him when she went to the cafeteria.   He was probably blowing bubbles in his milk.  I was frantic.  Raising Scott was different than raising the two girls.  He was a wild-child.  I never knew what he was going to do.  Always in action.  Always looking for the next adventure.  He was a handful.  And eternally cheerful.

To be fair, Becky added to the chaos.  She was four years older, and thought things up for Scott to do and helped him do them.  They were inseparable.  Pat and I were the only normal people in the family.  Everyone else was always on the edge of disaster.  Pat and I were readers.  Calm.  Sensible.

While Ken was agonizing over JP fuel, I was living the life I had never had before and it was wonderful.  I was twenty-five years old, the same age as most of the Lieutenant's wives.  Finally I had people my own age to be around.  Problem was, I was the Commanding Officer's wife and they treated me with reserved respect.  It was weird.  I hadn't bought into the whole "Senior Officer" thing, but they had.  It took a while for them to learn that I was just an Oklahoma girl, and that I wasn't a Lt. Colonel just because my husband was.  I was just me trying to be me.  The system made it difficult.

I remember once I fried chicken for the entire squadron and their children.  Gravy, home made bread and all the fixins'.  One of the women who was there whispered to another one, "Look at her!  She tore her bread up and put gravy on it.  She must be okay."  I wasn't putting on any airs for anyone.  I didn't have any airs to put on.  I always tore my bread up and put gravy on it.  Didn't everyone???

It was easier at church.  Officers and enlisted were all mixed up together.  Up until the time we moved to Beaufort, I hadn't realized there was a difference.  I hadn't realized that the enlisted personal were not supposed to fraternize with the officers--and that got extended to their wives.  Which was stupid.  It didn't take me very long to fraternize with everyone, and them with me. I  finally fit in.

I made some wonderful friends there that are still a part of my life.  I had not had friends like that in seven years.  It was wonderful.  Deloris Woody was one.  She was Scott's babysitter when I had some social event I was "required" to attend.  I spoke to her a week or so ago.  Her husband was a Staff Sargent who had been a DI.  Tough, but not when he came home--or to church.   Rozaland Wilkey was another.  I flew out to see her a number of times after Ken retired and we moved back to Pryor.

But all good things have to end.  After three years in Beaufort, Ken got orders to Viet Nam.  Pat was 8, Becky was 7 and Scott was 3.  I was going to be a single parent again for thirteen months.  Ten years of my life had been with the Marines.  I had learned what they did.  What Ken did.  And I was just starting to understand it all when it seemed to be over.  I couldn't help but wonder if Ken would come home again.  This was his second thirteen month deployment in ten years.  Not counting the three month, two month, etc. deployments he had been on.  It seemed normal.  But it wasn't.  Not at all.  This time they were shooting at my husband.  How could anyone survive that for 395 days??

Six weeks later, we moved.  Again.  Nine moves in seven years.  From Quantico, Virginia, to Beaufort, South Carolina.  Once again, Ken was happy.  Ecstatic.  He was going back to a Squadron.  And this time as the Commanding Officer.  He had been in the Marine Corps for seventeen years, and finally he was going to get to put into practice all that he had learned--from both types of Commanding officers he had had in the past.  Excellent, and mediocre.

It turned out to be the best years of our lives.  We got to stay in Beaufort for three years.  Three.  We had a church that we didn't have to leave just when we were getting to know people.  I made friends.  Ken had friends from all the years he had been in the Corps--the air wing of the USMC is small.  Pilots knew each other, and knew "of" each other even though they may not have served together.  In all the years we had been married, I had never seen Ken so happy.

It was the middle of the Viet Nam war.  1963.  Every pilot Ken trained to fly maneuvers was going to end up in Viet Nam.  They were so young.  So inexperienced.  But very eager to prove themselves.  And they adored my husband.  They called him "The Old Man."  (He was 35.) They respected his knowledge of war--Korea, over 100 direct fire missions and 7 direct hits on the planes he flew.  And his two distinguished flying crosses that he earned in that war.  And air medals up the kazoo.  Those are awarded (as I recall) for so many direct combat missions.  (He quit turning his missions in when he was in Vietnam--he said, "I didn't turn my Cheerio box-tops in--twenty one years in the Corps, and too many lost lives.  What's the point of more medals?")

After he had been in his squadron for a couple of years, he became discouraged with the lack of support from "The higher ups."  Not enough JP fuel to train the young Lieutenants properly.  Ken would come home and say, "If I just had enough fuel to give them 10 more hops maybe they could make it.  I need to teach them more things that they need to know.  I don't have the fuel to do it."  Those young Marines were like his sons, and he knew that many of them were going to die.

I don't think 10  more hops would have helped much.  In Viet Nam, death from "ground to air fire" was random and even if you survived a direct hit and ejected, you had a good chance of landing up in the Hanoi Hilton as a POW.   From 1963 to1966--when Ken left for Viet Nam--the war raged.

Life is a journey.  There are stops along the way--where you don't know which way to go.  Sometimes you don't even know where you are going or why.  I reached the end of a road when my third child died.  I had been alone without friends and family for so long I felt like I was in a desert.  But my nature is to keep plugging away even though I don't know how to do what I'm doing.  I just keep doing it, or try something else.  I never quit.  I don't know why I am that way.  I just am.

Ken and I never spoke to each other about what we were going through.  I didn't understand his world, he didn't understand mine.  But we respected and loved each other--and it was the glue that held us together.  We each suffered in our own way.

After a year, I told Ken that I felt that we should have another child.  One that we "planned" to have.  He said, "No."  Emphatically.  He had been crushed when Amy died.  He kept saying, "It should have been me.  I  always thought I would be killed doing what I do.  It should have been me."  He didn't understand what had happened either.  We were both muddling along.  I reminded him that when we got married, we wanted to have three children--just not so quickly.  And eventually, he agreed.

Nine months later, he dropped me off at the hospital (in labor) and took the girls to the sitter--promising to be back in thirty minutes.  He didn't make it.  Twenty six minutes after I walked in I delivered.  The attending nurse called Ken and said, "Sir, your wife wants to speak to you," and handed me the phone.

He kept asking if the baby was all right.  If I was all right.  Over and over.  He didn't ask if it was a boy or a girl.  He didn't care.  I finally told him, "It's a boy."  After a moment or two he said, "Are you sure?"  (After three girls, he probably thought we would always have girls.) I told the doctor what Ken had said. The doctor held the baby upside down by the feet and jiggled him up and down and said, "Tell him I'm sure it's a boy, he is fully equipped."  It's funny now, but at that moment, I was just thankful that we had a healthy baby--whatever it was.  And so was Ken.  We knew the value of a new life.  We would never question God's plans for us, or our children again.

So, there I was--in the hospital with pneumonia.  Ken was trying to manage two little girls that didn't have a clue who he was--he'd been gone 13 months.  And then the nurse told me I was pregnant.

I got well physically from the pneumonia, but not emotionally--I was emotionally shot.

I had spent the previous year with my parents, and on top of everything else, my mom had given birth to my sister--unexpected, to say the least. My sister and Becky were born 7 days apart.  Which meant that I was 21 years older than the only sister I ever had.   It was a year to be remembered.  At least we had a washing machine.  Three babies in diapers.  Still no Pampers.  Not invented yet.  The washing machine never stopped and there were always diapers drying on the line. And stacks of dry ones ready to be folded.  (There is an art to folding a diaper.)

I was pregnant again.  Emotionally drained.  Nothing left.  And once again in a town where I didn't know a soul.  It didn't matter.  I didn't have time for friends anyway.

Eight months later, we moved again.  From Woodbridge to Triangle, Va.  Closer to base which was good.  It was easier to take Ken to work the closer we were to base.  Two weeks later, I had Amy.

When God creates a human boy, or girl, he sends that child to parents whom he plans to raise them.  God entrusts you with His children!  During the nine months I was pregnant, I should have been thankful that He was giving me a third child. (In four years.)  Once she arrived, I didn't know what my problem had been.  She was perfect in every way.  I loved her.  I knew that I would make it with three babies.  I was strong--and God doesn't give us things we can't handle.

 But when she died, it was devastating.  It was like God was saying, "You didn't want who I was sending you, so I am taking her back."  I know that isn't true.  But my attitude had been so terrible when I first got pregnant, that I felt it was my fault.  Even though I had adjusted to the fact that I was going to have another child, I beat myself up.  Truth was, Amy lived a full life in 9 days.  She changed Ken and me completely and forever.  We became better people.  We became better parents to the two daughters we had.   We were never again the same people.

I accidentally posted Wednesday's and Thursday's posts yesterday.  Out of order.   So today is my day off.  I got bit by a tick and am going to the doc to see if I need to do anything special or just wait it out to see if I get Lyme disease.

That's what I need.  One more physical disaster.

Bless you today.

I'll finish the story tomorrow.  Obviously I didn't blow my brains out.

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.