This past week, while on Oahu for a class, I happened upon a strip mall that backs up to Hickam Air Force Base. I was looking for lunch when I realized I was actually looking at men and women in uniform. Everywhere. I was awestruck and feeling as though I’d stepped onto a movie set; any minute now Richard Gere would pass me, heroically carrying Debra Winger in his arms. A woman in my class is married to an officer. Her husband is currently on a submarine. She won’t see him again for a year. She tells me that in the fourteen years they’ve been married, she has probably spent a total of three to four years with him. I try to wrap my mind around this. Maybe I’m fascinated by their lives because they
seem so different from my own.
And yet, I remind myself, it’s not completely unknown to me. My grandfather was a general in the Army. Growing up, our summer trips always took us to Falls Church, Virginia, to visit our grandparents. By then, my grandfather was retired. I don’t remember ever seeing him in uniform. Still, every Sunday, we went for supper at the Army Navy Country Club. But the name of the club had little meaning to me. While the grown ups lingered in the bar, ice clinking in their bourbons, I focused on my Shirley Temple and eating as many ruffled potato chips and creamy onion dip as my mother would allow before we were shooed away to play before dinner. H and I would explore the outdoor lawns and indoor corridors, always ending up in the ladies' restroom. The front room was a lounge with couches and floral pattern covered chairs where ladies sat before mirrors reapplying make-up; the room smelled of grandmotherly powders.
For dinner, there was a long buffet and I remember little of what we ate; I do, however, remember the dessert buffet. A creature of habit, I always had vanilla ice cream with butterscotch sauce. But my favorite part was after dinner when the buffet tables would be cleared, and a big band would strike up Chattanooga Choo Choo. I would dance with my grandfather, my feet on his shoes as he sashayed me around, the scent of his sweet, smoky cigar dancing with us. This is what my memory digs up for me when I hear the words Army and Navy.
And then this. My father attended Staunton Military Academy and had a stint in the Korean War. But when I think of my father, this never comes to mind. He rarely, if at all, spoke of his early days in the military.
This June, H and I spent twenty-four hours in Washington D.C. and visited our parents in their little corner of Arlington National Cemetery. Per usual, we had trouble finding our way along D.C. roads. H. had inadvertently chosen “walking directions” on her GPS even though we were in a CAR. We knew we were thoroughly lost when we turned down a deserted road toward the Pentagon past signs that read - something along the lines of - You Are Not Supposed To Be Anywhere Near Here – Stay Away! When I saw stern looking officers put their hands up in the universal Halt sign, I stopped instantly and refused to budge. I’m not good with authority figures. This meant H. had to get out of the car and walk to them for directions. One U-turn and just a few minutes later, we passed through the cemetery’s main gate.
The down side of having parents die is, well, the dead parents. The upside is that if they’re lucky enough to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery, you get a special pass to drive right on in. I know it pleases my mother to know her daughters are gestured in with a guard’s respectful nod of the head.
Every time I visit the Columbarium, where those who were cremated are kept, I have trouble finding them. I know they’re in a corner somewhere in the middle of the wall, but there are many walls with many corners and many middles, and I can never quite remember if it’s a corner with a tree or not. The irony is not lost on me that I can never easily find my parents, who - even when I do find them - aren’t really there. Just like a dream; it all makes sense, and yet you know that none of it does.
H and I eventually do find them, and we sit and lie on the cool ground staring up at their marble tile. It is peaceful in the open-air corridor. Silent. I read and reread the engraving. Morris Robert Nelson, Jr., 1930-1992 and Margreth Nelson, 1943 - 2002. Below my father’s name, or maybe beside it, is his ranking of 2nd Lieutenant. I can never remember if he was in the Army or the Air Force, and I feel like a lousy daughter for not knowing. His ranking explains to anyone perusing these walls how he came to be buried in the nation’s cemetery. But it is not the whole truth. It is not even his true ranking. It is, if you will, the cover story. I wonder how many people have a cover story on their tombstones.
A writer, a mentor of mine, once said to me of her parents, “I am the daughter of a writer and a lawyer. It has helped form who I am.” And then she posed this question to me, “If you don’t know who your parents were, who your father was, then how do you know who you are?”
That is a question I ponder.
