February 18, 2005 – You Can’t Go Home Again

February 18, 2005 – You Can’t Go Home Again

I did not spend the entire month of January 1966 in Portland. I spent nearly a week visiting my folks in El Paso. Afterward, I flew to San Francisco and spent a couple of days with my friend R and his family—sister and brother in law—in Hayward in the East Bay about 30 miles south of San Francisco. At one time when I was younger I had a crush on R’s sister, now the mother of two rambunctious boys. I had sent her a Christmas present—for the life of me I can’t remember what. I had taken the bus into San Francisco from SFO and changed to an AC Transit Bus at the Transbay Terminal near the entrance to the Oakland Bay Bridge. R’s sister met me at the bus stop in Hayward and had immediately given me the most delightful hug and kiss. I can still remember how wonderful it felt.

We drove the few miles from the bus station to her place. After she thanked me for the gift, she questioned me about Japan and life in the Navy. I described Tokyo and the places I had been there. I described the ship and life at sea. As I had exhausted my adventures I asked her how her boys were and how married life was treating her. Before she had her first son, she had spent all of her life after high school working. R’s sister was a beautiful woman, who took after her mother. Both had striking facial features, penetrating gray-green eyes, well-shaped lips and nose, well proportioned to their narrow face, shoulder-length brown hair, almost red. Both mother and daughter dressed well and made themselves up in a deliberate morning ritual. There was some obvious strain as she spoke of being a stay-at-home mom raising two preschool boys. She took pleasure in having her younger brother at home, living vicariously through him the life she once knew as a young single woman, free of the responsibility of home, husband, and children. I envied her settled life with roots planted firmly in ground that I had always wanted my roots planted in. I could not comprehend what could make her unhappy, but I had no idea of what her life was like day to day. I could sense her unhappiness though and it made me sad.

I was relieved when R finally arrived home and I was able to slip into his happy-go-lucky life—the eternal optimist who only saw silver linings. He always raised my spirits and made me question my brooding moods. I’m sure he had the same affect on his sister. He clowned continually extracting laughs as he poked fun at his sister’s foibles and at mine. I can’t recall ever being angry with R, though I’m sure there must have been times when the two of us quarreled over something. R had graduated high school and was now working a full 40-hour week. He had no ambition for college. For me it was the rite of passage that permitted you entry into the world of the enfranchised. It didn’t matter what you learned, it only mattered that you made the passage. With the realization, I was intent on enjoying the passage choosing my path rather than having it dictated to me.

I had arrived Friday in the afternoon and planned to spend the weekend before catching a plane on Monday for the trip back to Portland. I had known R and his family since my freshman year of high school. They lived a half block up from us on in El Paso. Beside his sister R also had an older brother, a big hulking guy who took after R’s father. Both R and his sister had the slender build and facial features of their mother. R’s brother was out of high school when I first got to know R. The brother was a grown man but easily reverted to childhood at times. He was an avid comic book collector. He was a fast draw expert and took pleasure in demonstrating his technique with his self-fashioned pistol and holster. He was also a martial arts fancier and enjoyed tossing R and I about in the yard. He also pictured himself an intellectual pointing to the collection of authors he had read, one of whom was Ann Rand. He introduced me to The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, and Anthem, all of which I read in that order before finishing high school, though Rand's message was lost on me, the stories kept my interest.

R’s sister had met her husband when he was station at Ft Bliss. The two had gotten married a year later, when I was a sophomore at Austin High School. R was then a freshman. The newlyweds had moved to Hayward where the husband had a job working for Pacific Bell—now known as SBC. Thereafter, R spent the next couple of summer in Hayward, returning in the fall with tales of his adventures in California—the girls he met, the music and movies he heard and saw that we in El Paso had yet to know of. The summer after my junior year of high school, my family moved to Tacoma, Washington. R went to live with his sister and her husband in Hayward, where he would finish his junior and senior year of high school. R’s mother and father followed two years later, selling the house in El Paso. R’s brother stayed behind.

R had a girlfriend, J, the weekend I visited in January 1966. They had gone to high school together. She was then attending California State University at Hayward and doing rather well academically. She was the daughter of a Navy Chief Petty Officer, thus we shared a common life experience. Her dad liked me, being a sailor himself. Now settled and retired from the service working at a civilian job, her father longed for the routine of the Navy. She on the other hand had had her fill. The oldest of the family, she had been the surrogate mom to her younger siblings as her mom had been weighed down by the duty of a Navy wife and a demanding authoritarian husband. J was desperately in love with R and had wanted the two of them to get married, but R was having none of it. He was restless and wanting to enjoy the life of an irresponsible bachelor. Though the two dated, J knew R would break off their relationship in time—something she confided in me, when J had dropped me off on her while he worked on Saturday.

I spent the early part of the day at J’s house chatting with her and her dad when J bounded off to the shopping mall. She wanted to marry R and for the two of them to go away somewhere together. I suspect the going away part was more important than the marrying part. I completely sympathized with her feeling. It was why I joined the Navy. Later in the day she asked me to drive her to Cal State Hayward to an event that was happening on campus. I thoroughly enjoyed being in the company of a young woman my age, with so much in common with me. I was reminded of those kids I met during the trip by sea to Puerto Rico in the mid-1950s. We were migrants coming from some place going to another and would be going somewhere thereafter. We talked about all those duty stations we had been on and other kids we met that had made impressions on us. She eventually met up with friends who had promised to drive her home. I had to take my leave to pick up R in his VW Beatle.

I picked R up after work and the two of us went out for dinner and from there we were going to a party, R had been invited to. R knew the host but no one else at the gathering where beer and grass were the inebriants of choice. After that weekend in 1966, I never saw R’s girlfriend J nor his sister again, though I learned that she did separate and eventually divorced her husband. It was sad. I liked them both. I would see R one more time, in November when I was discharged from the Navy. He had moved out of his sister’s house and was sharing an apartment in San Jose with a couple of college students attending San Jose State. By that time we had both chosen our paths in life and they were fast diverging.

He called my folks a year ago and they gave him my phone number. We spoke by phone. He had settled in eastern Washington State. We didn’t have much in common except those years in the early 60s together. It was ironic that here we were so many years later separate by time and distance.