Perhaps it would have been different if I’d married, moved to a new home and stayed there. Instead, we wed in southern California and then drove across the country to Orlando, Florida. Six months later, a burly crew packed up our household goods and shipped them to Ballston Spa, New York where we were introduced to seasons for the first time.
Before the dust could even settle, 90% of our possessions went into storage and we camped in a chilly summer cottage on the bank of the Niantic River. I saw it snow for the first time in Connecticut. Four months later we encountered snow drifts piled six feet high when we drove through Chicago on our way west.
My husband gave me an ultimatum at Mare Island: a baby or a cat. I took the feline and fifteen months later had to figure out how to move her and a pregnant me across country in a non-air conditioned car in July.
This time we stayed six years in Groton, Connecticut, where we also picked up a couple boys.
Pregnant again, I stuffed the same cat into her cage, surrounded the children with books and small toys, and drove back across the country. This time my husband joined us, skidding in from South American three days before departure.
In Monterey, California we welcomed a third son and for thirty months, savored both a father in the house full-time and grandparents in the same time zone. From there we went to Silverdale, Washington where God, in his wisdom, suggested a little girl to shake up the household.
She was a year old when we got our final set of orders: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. We foolishly adopted a feral cat there and four years later retired to Ukiah, California which is about as far removed as you can get from Honolulu cultural.
We inherited a dog in Ukiah.
Four years after that, we picked up yet again and moved to our present location, also in northern California but not quite so rural. The thirteenth move, apparently, was the lucky one. We’ve been here eleven years.
And therein lies the problem.
Up until this house, I could mentally keep track of time by where we lived. The children’s growth is measured not on a permanent door post, but in memories of a specific culture and the activities. Apple picking met Connecticut in the fall, rainy days were Seattle, paintball and poison oak hallmarked Ukiah. The Alaska vacation came during the rugged Pacific Northwest years; European hunts for dad were flips across the Atlantic out of New England. I-5 meant Monterey up until the California permance–and now all those trips stun into one.
Volcanos and beaches and the scent of frangipani mark the boys growing four inches in one year and me not noticing because the shorts didn’t need hemming. Fresh corn, thirty minutes off the stalk, was Ballston Spa and Florida, well, we didn’t go outside much the first six months we were married.
When I look through the photo albums, I recognize the baby by the background: the furniture, the scenery, the house. Memories fit neatly into chapters of time, divided into scenes with dialogue touched by the local vocabulary, eh? The titles are the cities where we lived and while each could be an entire volume of its own, they fall under the umbrella, the story, of our life.
2001 to the present, however, is a lovely blur of consistency and now I need an index.
My dad died in 2002, but what year did my third son graduate from high school? We bought our car three days after the second son got married, but what year was that? When did we return to Alaska? What made us travel to Virginia whatever year we went? Can anyone remember when the first dog died and we got the second? By the way, how old is Suzie?
Recognizing our rhythm and laughing that since God was used to us moving every four years, we tried to fool him into thinking we had moved by remodeling parts of the house. I’m pretty sure we altered the kitchen in 2005, but what year did we refresh the bathroom?
It doesn’t matter, God got the joke and we’re still here, confounded on how to move again if the Navy isn’t behind it.
Life isn’t divided so neatly anymore and since I can’t peg routine life events on location, my brain spins trying to make a connection.
Help me.
It comes down to this genuine question: how do normal people keep track of time, or at least their family’s history, when the scenery doesn’t change much?
Thoughts? Reactions? Lurker?