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Show The Color of The Sky Between 1979 and 1983, we lived in Maloelap, a small submariner's community of identical houses, built to make the constant relocation feel more like stability and less like loss. The interior walls were military white, the floors, concrete with soft gray linoleum tiles, and the shrubs grew low and close to the houses. Similar lawns, similar carports, the same blue signs in the yards identifying the name and rank of each sponsor. The houses were so similar that once, during a sleepover, I ended up in the bed of my friend's parents trying to burrow between their bodies, saying over and over again the spider has a thousand legs, confused, even in my sleep, as to why there was so little room in their queen-sized bed. Military Police patrolled the neighborhood and enforced the curfew, signs were posted to discourage trespassers, and lawns were broad and bushes trim leaving little place for criminals to lurk. As a child I never questioned the relationship between the guard gates that protected me from strangers and the destroyers heading out to sea. Safety secured by force was the only safety I knew. Long after dark, I would listen through my bedroom window as the older neighborhood kids sat on the curb talking or skate boarding up and down the cul-de-sac. I recognized each and every voice, the conversation punctuated by the hum of ball bearings and the flat thunk of skateboards landing on the ground. Every night I wished I could be outside with them and went to sleep wondering what they talked about, how they held their arms. One night that first year I woke from sleep. The neighborhood kids had left the curb for bed, leaving the night quiet but for the crickets and the sough of the wind. 125 |