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Show A few years ago, I came across one of the diaries I kept during these years. On the last page, the friends I played with during that particular tour of duty came together along with others to form a list of names and addresses. It was my attempt to keep track of those the military had asked that I leave behind. Two names appear without addresses: Suzette and Kate. It was not that I did not know where they lived. Rather, it was that at the time of this diary I had not left them yet. In recording their names, I prepared for the fact that in a year or so they, too, would be left behind. They entered both my diary and my life as an absence. Cut your losses, shed names like furniture and other heavy items to make weight, host a yard sale, get rid of your dry goods, remain light and mobile because you never know when you will have to leave again. Moving, moving, nothing remaining, the possibility of misplacing a box, your friend, a daughter seemed so great. Every summer the moving trucks would bring new families into the neighborhood and take others away, men walking up and down silver ramps carrying arm chairs like they were baskets of fruit. I sat on the curb half expecting the parents and children to spill from the truck along with their household goods. For the longest time I thought the military function called the "Hail and Farewell" was one word, a useful word that meant both coming and going, a way to abbreviate what happened so regularly. Some days we would spend the entire afternoon at the airport, seeing one family off and another in, carrying plastic bags filled with plumeria leis we had strung hours before, coaxing the petals with droplets of water to remain fresh a little longer. Being in the military meant that the cupboards in our kitchen were always full of 128 |
