INHERITANCES
Some stories become parables, repeated in a family to
avert bad luck, to hold disaster at bay. The first day
of October, 1969, it rained in North Carolina
C
far from unusual weather for autumn in the South. My mom
wondered if the rain and gloom would delay the afternoon=s
flight exercise. She had no special premonition; her
days had simply fallen into a pattern of speculation
about when the fighters would fly and when they would
return.
My mother, barely a woman at nineteen, married an Air
Force Academy Cadet and left her birthplace in the Rocky
Mountains to live near the Okefenokee swamp in the
foreign South. In the wedding pictures, crossed sabers
reflect the searing sky and scatter light on the Peter
Pan bride in ice-blue, holding the arm of her Officer
Knight as they descend the white chapel stairs. Though
the photographs are curiously blurred, as a little girl
I could always see the brilliance of the day; no
thunderclouds loom in the background.
Hatted and gloved, she attended the Officers=
Wives Clubs in Georgia, Alabama, Florida and finally,
North Carolina. She sipped too-sweet sherry and
discussed flight schedules over luncheon, sifting
international news with the other ladies for information
the husbands couldn=t
give. The men were always gone, mysteriously stationed
overseas for weeks and months, leaving the base manned
by homemakers and babies. Gossiping over back fences
while their children played, the ladies talked earnestly
of the weather.
AMeteorology
says the deployment may be delayed by the off-shore
front.@
AI
heard the TAC squadrons are grounded until the pressure
front shifts...@
ACan
they fly in this?@ |
