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Kristen and I were packing, suitcases open on the bed, picking out what we'd need for a weekend away from home. With our schedules and the demands on our time, we're almost never free to travel at the same time, so we each had our own system: she packed her suitcase, and I packed mine. Married couples who don't learn to live and let live soon find themselves living separately. Kristen and I had been married for over twenty years.
Suddenly I stopped what I was doing. "Oh, shit!" I said, as two separate things connected in my head. I walked over to the Sky Publishing Corporation chart of the phases of the moon for 1995. Sure enough! With all our planning, I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of this before now!
"What is it?" Kristen said, coming up behind me as I stared at the poster.
"The Moon," I said numbly. "Saturday's the full moon!"
"Damn," she said softly. She put her arms around me, snuggled up against my back, and leaned her head on my right shoulder from behind. Her silky hair tickled my cheek as I put my own arms over hers and hugged them against me. I breathed in the dear scent of her as I closed my eyes.
"We'll just have to be careful," Kristen said. "If we have to, we'll leave early."
I loved her for that "we". "I'd better pack extra clothes, too," I said.
"Just in case," Kristen agreed.
If my mother hadn't been adopted, I might have always feared the full moon, instead of learning the hard way its significance to me. But her mother, a girl from Indiana, went on a trip to California, and came back with a baby. Everyone knew what that meant; when an unmarried girl "got in trouble", she "went on a trip" until the baby was born, then the baby was raised by the closest married female relative. Abortions were illegal, and single mothers had better be widows with the ring and the papers to prove it.
The odd little twist in my mother's story was that the Indiana girl really hadn't been pregnant when she went to California to visit relatives. It was in California, not Indiana, that she met a man who swept her off her feet and left her "in a family way", as they said in those days. I like to think that they were both in love, and that he would have "made an honest woman of her"; but he was an Indian. Marriages between "whites" and "non-whites" weren't illegal, at least not in California or Indiana; they were just impossible. Such a couple would be shunned by "white" and "non-white" society alike, and would starve because no one would hire either one of them, for any kind of job.
So the California Indian and the Indiana girl parted. She returned home, and her married sister adopted the baby. The baby grew up, and didn't know the curse she'd inherited. As inherited traits often do, it skipped a generation.
Mom was born in 1926, which made her 14 years old when the War began. The world had been at peace for a long time, so the Russians got to Germany and Italy before serious resistance began. China took Japan, Korea, and southeast Asia before India and Australia could do anything.
By Mom's 18th birthday, the tide of war was running the other way, though there was still lots of dying to be done. By lying about her age, she'd gotten into the Army Air Corps at 16. At first she was ferrying planes to the front lines, but the brass looked at her small size (barely five feet), high intelligence, and lightning-quick reflexes, and saw her for the treasure she was. When Mom met Dad, she'd been flying fighter missions in German jets for most of a year, and was an ace twice over.
Dad was four years older than Mom, a farm boy who joined the Army and learned to fix things. He'd done a lot of things in the course of the War. By 1944, he was a driver and mechanic for the Red Ball Express, trucking supplies from Allied harbors to the front lines in the east, dodging shells as he went, shooting back when he could.
As Mom used to tell the story, she landed one afternoon in western Poland, the last one back from her flight that day. A couple of the remaining Russian prop jobs, with more nerve than sense, had tried to take her. Even two to one, it wasn't much of a contest: two Russians peasants against Mom, two hand-built obsolete Russian crates against state-of-the-art precision German manufacturing.
So Mom climbed out of her jet, with her blood up from the fight and full of herself the way pilots are, and saw Dad standing by his truck, delivering parts to the flight line. "My oh my, gotta get me some of that," Mom said, and sauntered over.
Dad was lighting a cigarette and wondering what was taking the supply officer so long with his invoice, when he heard a voice say, "Got a light?"
"Sure, buddy," he said, turning around and holding out his lighter. Then he did a double-take and said, "You're a girl!"
Mom grabbed his hand to hold it steady while she lit her cigarette, took a deep drag to start it, looked up at Dad, smiled, and let out a long, long stream of smoke.
They couldn't have been more different. Dad was a Hollywood-handsome farm boy who took things easy and drank too much, while Mom was a city girl who was almost too smart to get along with anyone, and fiercely independent, even rebellious. He was tall, she was short; he was robust, she was skinny; he was conventional, she was anything but; he was almost pretty, she was plain; he was Protestant, and she was Catholic. But it was wartime, and they didn't see each other too often; and when they did, they weren't much inclined to talk. Getting pregnant would have meant Mom couldn't fly any more, so she didn't, Catholic girl or not, until the War was over. Afterwards, Mom decided she'd seen enough near-vacuum, and peacetime regulations drove her nuts. So she retired, married Dad, and they lived at whatever Army post needed a good mechanic.
A couple of years after the War ended, the Army Air Corps became a separate service, the Air Force. Dad transferred to the new service, and worked on planes instead of trucks. A couple of years after that, in 1950, my brother Owen was born at Castle Air Force Base, near Merced in the California central valley. Mom was 24, Dad was 28.
I was born in 1952, but Dad wasn't home for my birth. The Chinese invaded Korea again, so Dad was in Japan, keeping the B-52s running so they could bomb Peking, and the roads from China to Korea, until the Chinese leaders surrendered again.
Kristen hates to fly, but she was a little less worried than usual because I was with her this time. I love flying, but I was worried about the full moon coming up. Both of us were looking forward to, and at the same time dreading, our 25th high-school reunion, which was the reason for the trip in the first place. All in all, we had a fine case of jitters going as we sat in the jet at San Francisco International Airport. I'm not sure whether Kristen was holding my hand to draw comfort from me, or whether I was holding hers to draw comfort from her; but we were definitely holding hands.
Of course, we held hands more than almost any other couple I knew, anyway. We'd been close in high school, and we're closer now with all we've been through.
"Ladies and gentlemen, señoras y señores, dominae et dominì," the captain said over the intercom. "Welcome aboard Flight 169 to Los Angeles, San Diego, Mexico City, and Habaña. If you haven't done so already, please turn off your omnicom and place it in the pouch on the back of the seat in front of you. This is to avoid any possibility of interference with the communications between the plane and the satellites during takeoff. Thank you."
"As if there's anyone in the world who needs to be told that," I grumbled. Then, of course, we had to watch the flight attendants showing us how to fasten a seat belt, how to put on an oxygen mask, and how to recognize an exit sign. Then they went up and down the aisles and made sure there were no idiots who thought they didn't have to fasten their seat belts, or that it was OK to cruise the net during takeoff. For once, there weren't.
Finally the attendants sat down and strapped in, the plane taxied a little way and turned right, then suddenly began racing down the runway. After far too short a time (I always felt) we made that funny little leap into the air that always seems to drop your stomach through the floor, leaving you to hope it'll catch up before you get where you're going. I had a seat by a right-side window, with Kristen on my left and another couple between us and aisle #2. I watched San Francisco, and then the whole Bay Area, drop away in the afternoon sunlight.
Above the Pacific the plane turned left and headed south, all the while climbing and climbing at that incredible angle. I'm told it's less than ten degrees, but it always feels like straight up. Of course it isn't; we were in an air-breathing jet on a short hop, not a spaceplane heading halfway around the world or out to one of the Hilton Orbitals. But it felt like straight up.
Presently, when nothing could be seen but white clouds far below and blue sky above, the plane leveled off, and the captain announced omnicoms could now be used. Kristen and I kissed, then she got her omnicom out and went back to reading an article in the latest issue of one of her medical journals. I left mine where it was, because I had far too much on my mind to write.
My younger brother Matt was born in 1953, when we were at March Air Force Base, near Riverside, California. Two years later, while we were still at March, I think, I had my first seizure. We were definitely in Roswell, New Mexico, when I had my second one in 1956.
These seizures weren't petit mal either, where the victim goes rigid and falls down, or just blanks out for a few moments. These were grand mal, the big bad, with falling and thrashing and heaving and grab his tongue before he bites it off or chokes to death on it. Or so I'm told; I pass out before anything happens, then wake up later tired and sore and sometimes injured. My folks wouldn't let me watch when others had seizures, for fear it would set me off. We never had blinking lights on our Christmas trees, for the same reason.
Blame the Russians for the high incidence of seizures in my generation. There's no question that some of the war gases the Russians used were nerve agents. Allied soldiers who survived the gassing were often prone to attacks the rest of their lives, and their children had a higher infant-mortality rate, and more seizure disorders, than the generations before. My dad wasn't gassed during his active duty in Europe, and my brothers suffered no seizures; but there I was.
My affliction could have torn the family apart; instead, it united us. Dad buckled down to the job of being the best NCO he could be, skipped the bar after work, and came home to teach us chess, or baseball, or working on cars. Mom cooked, cleaned, taught us to sing, encouraged us to read and learn a musical instrument. They took turns reading us to sleep at night. Dad taught us to fish, Mom taught us to swim. Dad taught us pinochle and poker, Mom taught us to skate. Both of them taught us how to ride a bike.
All in all, my two brothers and I, and my sister when she came along, had a pretty good childhood. With family trips to the library, evenings of Monopoly or Parcheesi or cards, TV some evenings and movies some weekends, we had few dark spots other than my seizures. When my younger brother Matt got a second-grade teacher who had it in for him, Dad straightened the teacher out in a hurry. When the principal wanted to spank my older brother Owen for refusing to knuckle under to his petty tyranny, Mom walked into his office and told him where he'd better put that paddle before using it on one of her boys.
My actual memories begin with first and second grade at Pease Air Force Base near Portsmouth, New Hampshire —cold snowy winters I hated desperately, hot sweltering summers catching grasshoppers and praying mantids, the Presley twins and the Everly brothers on the radio. I had my third seizure in 1958, and limped for weeks afterwards because I wrenched my left knee badly. In 1959 I had my fourth, and I wasn't even eight years old yet.
At least I wasn't the only one in school with seizures. Others were suffering as I was; some much worse, in fact, with seizures every month. Some had seizures every week or every day, but going to public school was out of the question for them, especially if they were grand mal.
Despite the seizures my grades were good. I've always liked to read; languages and history and other cultures reinforced my science-fiction reading and vice versa. Math to me wasn't a grind, it was learning how to do things. In first grade I went down the hall to a second-grade room at reading time, and in second grade I spent reading and math time in a third-grade class.
Kristen's parents met us at Lindbergh Field, the San Diego airport. Tom shook my hand while Gail hugged Kristen, then it was my turn to be fussed over. Gail is one of the few people I know who makes me feel tall.
"Ready for dinner?" Tom asked, as we packed our three suitcases into the rental car's trunk. Tom's own car was this year's model; a car dealer advertises wherever he goes.
"Ready," I agreed. "Let's go by our hotel, first, and check in. Then we're at your disposal for the evening."
"David, love, Kristen is going to ride with me to the hotel. You and Tom go ahead, and we'll follow." Gail dragged Kristen away by the arm. Kristen has Tom's height, so it made a funny picture. Tom and I grinned, and got in the car. "Which hotel?" he asked.
"The Hotel del Coronado," I said.
"Pricey," he grunted.
"Sure it is. But we can afford it, and we haven't stayed there since the honeymoon you and Gail treated us to."
The bridge out to Coronado Island, to my mind, is the most beautiful bridge on the West Coast. The Golden Gate is bigger, but the Coronado Bridge has none of the blockiness of its northern cousin. The Golden Gate looks like a working bridge; the Coronado Bridge is sculpture on an architectural scale. It looks like it's there for aesthetic reasons, and any traffic is just an added kinetic element.
"I warn you," Tom said. "Gail's going to try at least once this evening to talk you two into staying at our place this weekend."
"And stay where?" I asked him reasonably. "In Kristen's old room? We'll have a lot more space at the Del. Besides, it's so much more romantic." And we never stay at anyone else's house, especially around the full moon.
"Romantic, huh. Yeah, that might do the trick. Play that angle for all it's worth, and I might get some peace," he grinned.
In 1961 Dad was in Guam, but family housing there was in short supply, so the rest of us were in California, at Travis Air Force Base just outside the Bay Area, waiting to join him. I had my fifth seizure in September, and managed to break my right ankle somehow. Then in December my sister Suzanne was born. Originally Mom and Dad were going to name her Sheila, but we were actually housed in a town named Suisun, so she ended up "Suisun City Sue."
We were in Guam for 1962 and 1963, at Andersen Air Force Base. Guam is a tiny island east of the Philippines, on the edge of the Mariana Trench, the deepest place in the world. The rest of the Mariana Islands belong to Japan, but the U.S. kept Guam after the war, as a forward base against future Chinese aggression. It turned out to be a very good idea in 1952 and 1980.
Though technically a U.S. possession, Guam was an exotic experience to a family that had never been stationed outside the continental U.S., with its red volcanic soil, tropical jungle overrunning the island, shrews and geckos and coconut crabs, plantain trees in the back yard, innumerable stars in a pitch black sky undiluted by city lights, and natives who spoke a different language and ate strange food. We spent weekends at Tarague Beach walking in the white sand, collecting tropical sea shells with the animals still in them, and bobbing in the warm water inside the shelter of the coral reef around the island.
When we weren't at school, we ran around in bare feet with nothing on but shorts, and got as brown as the Guamanian kids. Between the New Hampshire winter, and Mom and Dad chain-smoking, we'd been sick a lot the previous few years. All that got burned out of us by the tropical sun. I think it was five years after we got back from Guam before I even caught a cold.
We weren't in heaven, however. In 1962 I had my sixth seizure, an especially bad one, and was in bed for a week afterward. Then in 1963, Typhoon Karen hit the island.
Understand that "typhoon" is just the Pacific version of "hurricane." Just as the east coast of North America has a regular hurricane season, so the east coast of Asia has a typhoon season every year. The reasons are the same; warm tropical water makes big storms, then the west-to-east rotation of the earth shoves the east coast of the continent into the storm. Europe and California don't have hurricanes or typhoons because they're on the lee coasts; typhoons in the Pacific move away from California, and hurricanes in the Atlantic move away from Africa and Europe.
So Guam got several typhoons every year, and expected them. Base housing was concrete with steel louvers over the windows, and rarely was anyone hurt, much less killed. More people died every year from finding leftover Chinese and American shells from the War, and the War had been over for sixteen years.
But Typhoon Karen was a killer. It picked up boats on the east side of the island and dropped them all over before dumping the last ones miles to the west. It ripped a B-52 free of its tie-downs on the flight line, never to be seen again. It pulled up palm trees by the roots, and tore huge chunks of coral from under the ocean. It shattered the coral reef, and turned the steel quonset huts on the island, which had stood through one typhoon season after another ever since the War, into shrapnel.
I'm not sure how many people died. I heard two people in a car had a palm tree dropped on them, and a flying coral block acting as a wrecking ball killed three more. A native girl was said to be decapitated by a sheet of flying steel that had been part of a supply hut the week before. We cooked on our Coleman stoves until the electricity was restored, spread books and clothes out to dry because the rain had come through the steel louvers and flooded the houses a foot deep, and traded rumors with the other shocked inhabitants.
A few months after that, in October, I had my seventh seizure. I was still a bit fuzzy when we took the plane back to the States for Dad's new post at Fairchild Air Force Base, outside Spokane, Washington. The propeller-driven plane took forever to get across the Pacific, and stopped twice on the way to refuel. Nevertheless I enjoyed my second airplane trip ever.
Dinner was just the four of us, as Kristen's little sister was working with the Hubble Telescope on Farside, and her brother was permanent party on the L5 habitat. Even if Denise and Joe had been on Earth, Kristen was her parents' darling. It had always been so, and her career choice had only reinforced it. Being an astrophysicist or orbital construction engineer was all very well, but Kristen was a doctor. And not just any kind of doctor, but a brain surgeon.
Tom and Gail have old-fashioned ideas about what's fit to discuss during a meal, so they couldn't ask Kristen about her work, or even new developments in medicine. That left religion (Kristen's parents were Catholics, Kristen and I nominally so), politics (Gail and Tom were Social-Democrats, Kristen a Green, and me a Socialist), movies, sports, and books.
"Speaking of books," Tom said, "Isn't it about time your next one came out, David?"
"I've written it," I said. "In fact, I have the proofs on my omnicom right now. I'll finish them right after the reunion, then they'll want to make more changes, and back and forth a few times. Barring any sudden illness on my part or editorial irrationality on theirs, it should be available in a month or so."
Gail looked a little worried at the mention of sudden illness, thinking of seizures, but Tom just said, "In bookstores, or online?"
"Either," I assured him. "They always hold up online publication until the hardcover's in the stores." Kristen's parents were also old-fashioned about their reading; the house was full of magazines and books printed on paper, as if this were 1965 instead of 1995.
After a truly excellent dinner, for which we thanked them, and kisses all around —well, a handshake between Tom and me, I said they were old-fashioned —Kristen and I got in the rented car, told it where we wanted to go, and talked and cuddled while it whisked us off to Coronado.
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