Cold and Windy

It was like a windy, cold night at sea. Never had that in TRIPOLI because we were always in and out of San Diego, Subic Bay, Okinawa, Yankee Station and Saigon. Maybe the month in the shipyard at San Francisco had cold nights, and windy.

But homeported in Norfolk, Virginia, USS CORRY had cold, windy nights. Enroute to Guantanamo Bay, January 1959, in a snowstorm at sea. It wasn’t that cold here at 2308 last night, walking by St. Andrews Bay, but it was cold. And windy. Unpleasant. The light sweater and L.L.Bean “hurricane shirt” weren’t enough. Next time, a scarf and knit cap.

And reminisce about being at sea. Not on a cruise ship, that’s not at sea. 

In Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town, right after Emily Webb Gibbs dies she is granted the privilege of returning to see one day of life. Those around her recommend against it, but she insists. They say she should pick an ordinary day, nothing special. So Emily picks, as I recall, her twelfth birthday. It turned out to be searingly painful, emotional, and she cut it off early to return to her chair in the graveyard with Mother Gibbs and the others. 

If I were picking a day, I don’t think it could be a day with my family. The day I arrived home and Malinda rushed out the back door, jumped into my arms, clung to my neck and wouldn’t let go. Or the day Joe nearly knocked me down doing the same thing when TRIPOLI returned from WestPac. Or the day Tass graduated from high school. Certainly not the day we left her at her college in Virginia, though that is seared in memory. Not the night Kristen was born, and not the day we returned from England and I picked her up at day care. Not my wedding day. 

My day to return might be a cold morning coming alongside an AO for refueling at sea. Atlantic fairly calm except alongside the deepdraft. A chill wind. Joking with my stateroom mate Don Senese, a Russian major from Harvard who could hardly wait to finish his Navy time and get back to university; while I had just discovered my niche in life and was waiting for my augmentation to Regular Navy to be approved. It would be a day, not a great day, and not at all memorable. Just life. I might not even do it in color.

Then back to my chair between Mom and Alfred.

T still in +Time