College or Kids?

For Thanksgiving this year, 2020, sixteen of our number assembled in our home. While this was great fun, it was only a part of our legacy, which now is spread across five states. We never would have guessed this future back when we were first married.

While in Hawaii, Eric and I made some life-changing decisions. The narrative continues ...

By the time we reached the West Coast again on our way to Hawaii, after having lived in Maryland for about a year and a half, my dad was no longer living at my mom’s house, so things were just not the same anymore, but we all tried to be congenial and pretend it was all good with Dad missing. By that time, I think my sister had also moved out, to live with her boyfriend, so it was just my mom, who worked during the day at an insurance agency, and Dan, who had a job at a pizza place.

We had some time, so we stayed there for several days. I wanted to impress my mom and Dan with my new cooking skills, so I tried making a “new dish” that was a recipe I found on a jar of spaghetti sauce – ravioli made out of pie crust. It was actually the worst experiment ever, since the pie crust was flaky and absorbed all the spaghetti sauce. Nobody was impressed, especially the teenage brother who was clearly the better cook.

We were passing through California during the Bicentennial Celebration – 200 years of American Independence, – in July of 1976. I don’t really remember much about what we experienced there, but I do remember my mom telling me about her experiences on the City of Hawaiian Gardens Bicentennial Committee. Because Mom wouldn’t go along with the corrupt politicians’ wishes, they’d been side-stepping her by adjourning meetings and then reconvening at the bar without telling her. She finally just had to quit.

Still, Mom knew where we could see a good fireworks display and our family celebrated the 200 years at Signal Hill, California, watching the fireworks as they exploded over the ocean.

While we were in the area, we made arrangements to see my dad, but we could only meet on a particular night. When we arrived at the rendezvous point, which was probably Angela’s house, Dad informed us that he had to go into downtown Los Angeles to bail Dan out of jail for something, so rather than just leaving again, we changed cars and went with him. We didn’t see Dan that night and we didn’t get to talk to my dad much except while he was busy weaving his way through the freeway system. 

I asked Dad about this a couple of weeks ago when I last visited with him, but he doesn’t remember the incident like Eric and I do. When we asked him what he would have been bailing him out for, he said, “Probably for possession.” 

By the time we made it back to our car again, it was time to leave. I had to catch a flight out of San Francisco to Hawaii, so the next day, we were on the road heading north.

Eric and I finally made it to Hawaii and we lived there till the Summer of 1978. Eric’s orders were lost, so even though he was supposed to be transferred to a Hawaii Air Force Reserve unit, they didn’t know who he was. So he didn’t cut his beard till they found the orders. His red beard grew long and he spent his days wearing aloha shirts and painting a scene from San Francisco based on a picture we took there. 

We wistfully watched a couple of mainland winters on TV, with snow halfway up the windows of homes in Indiana. All the while, we were wearing out our summer clothes, and always had our windows open to catch the breezes that came cascading down the mountain. We had a Wandering Jew plant hanging up in the kitchen that grew to be about five feet long. Eric had tried to get me a cat in Maryland because that was one of his campaign promises to me, but quickly found out that he was allergic to cats – he’d never known this! In Hawaii, we had a cat, but Fluffy was never allowed to come inside.

On the weekends, we went to Bellows Beach Park, acquired good tans, body surfed on gentle waves, and daydreamed about our future. This always involved scenes that looked rather like the Wizard of Oz before the storm rolled in, along with a checkered apron, a clothesline, and chickens – except it was not with kids, it was just the two of us, in grayscale bliss for the rest of our lives. But somehow, grayscale was not the life God had planned for us! It was more like technicolor!

I think I was a little scared to talk about kids because I’d had an experience babysitting where the kid would not shut up because he wanted his mom. It never dawned on me that if I had a kid, the baby would actually be glad to see me and would feel safe and comfortable in my arms. My own kids would be different.

In Hawaii, if we felt adventurous, we would take a road trip around the perimeter of Oahu. It took four hours, and then we were back to where we started. We could also get to the other side by going straight up over the mountain. And then we would come back. That was even less satisfying than going around in the circle.

Eric’s first job in Hawaii was working with a company that did setup for conventions, but that killed his back. Then he worked bussing tables at the cafeteria at Tripler Army Hospital. But the best job he had, after his orders were found and he was promoted, was working alongside the Army and Marines on war games on the other islands. As an NCO in the Air Force Reserve, he supervised the crews that loaded Howitzer cannons, helicopters, and jeeps on the cargo planes, and then spent the day in one of Hawaii’s luxury hotels, while the Marines were hitting the beaches and the Army was camping on the slopes of volcanoes.

Me? I never left Oahu and had to wait till he got back. It was traumatic because sometimes he would be gone for several days!! 

We also had a little business on the side, buying and selling paper collectibles at the Swap Meet. We saved our pennies until we had a nice little stash, but we didn’t have anything in particular we wanted to do with this money. In the end, we went to a fundraiser for our church where we had our pictures taken. But I didn’t like the zit on my chin and Eric didn’t like the sunburn on his forehead, so instead of buying a bunch of pictures and sending them to all our friends, we took our cash and bought a large painting of our photo, on canvas. The artist was admonished to take out my zit and Eric’s sunburn, and it turned out quite nice!

 

My job had me programming a room-sized computer with COBOL on punched cards, to generate listings on continuous, accordion-folded striped paper with holes along either side. These reports kept track of troop movements for our officer clients. My weapons in the military were a pencil and paper, and the rubber bands that came back from the computer room around our listing-wrapped punched cards. I learned from my superiors the best way to shoot a friend with a rubber band, during my days at Hickam Air Force Base. And I like to tell people I was one of the ones who programmed in the now infamous Y2K bug.

One day, Eric and I were talking about my birth control pill prescription. I didn’t know what would happen if I didn’t get the refill. It was something the Air Force had automatically provided me with, and I wasn’t sure if I actually had to take those pills. Was it on the level of an order? Would it be so terrible if I got pregnant? I mean, married couples have babies! Well, Eric and I decided it wouldn’t hurt to just not take them and see what happened.

Meanwhile, I heard about the Community College of the Air Force (CCAF). It was a way to give military personnel college credit for their training. From the actual training for your job, to leadership school, to college credits earned through testing out, you could have a way to keep track of what you’d accomplished, much of which could be transferred to several good colleges and universities. So I checked out the CCAF and tried out the free College Level Examination Program (CLEP) testing to see if I already knew enough about some subjects to get credits for them. Then both Eric and I took the ACT test and applied for admission to the University of Iowa, in their music program. 

We still thought we’d do well as professional singers. While in Hawaii, we started a music program with the children at the Assembly of God church, made up some songs for them to sing, and performed them. Then the new music pastor, Weldon Fortenberry, showed us some music books for a children’s musical called “No More Rain,” and said, “Hey what do you think of this?” We loved it, and immediately set out to perform that with the kids. For our big finale, just before we left the islands for good, we performed another musical – “What Do You Do On a Rainy Day In an Ark?” that involved about 40 pairs of stuffed animals on loan from a local toy store.

Well, one day, when we were singing in the church choir up in front of the congregation, I felt faint and abruptly sat down. It wasn’t a big deal because it was just during the worship portion of the service, but being short and always in the front row, everybody noticed, and they all had the same thought: “Margie must be pregnant!”

At the urging of the soprano section, I visited the OB/GYN at Hickam for a pregnancy test, while at home, smells of cooking bacon and even caramel apple cookies, made me queasy.

One day, the mail came, and I was blown away! I had been accepted to the School of Music at University of Iowa, and based on my ACT scores, I had been offered a $900 scholarship! Eric had also been accepted, though not with the scholarship. I don’t know how we had planned to pay for the tuition and living expenses, probably the GI Bill, but it sounded like a good idea at the time, and show business was definitely in our future!

But the next envelope jarred me a bit. I was pregnant, and I was to report to a particular room on a particular day for my Pregnancy Briefing. (Doesn’t that just sound like the military?) 

We decided to meet with Pastor Fortenberry to ask for his advice. How could we do college and also have a baby? What should we do? “Well, first of all,” he said, very decisively and kindly, “if you’re pregnant, you’re going to be a mom. Congratulations! The only thing you could do to change that would be to get an abortion, and you don’t want to do that! Concerning college, well, that can always wait.”

So, I turned down the scholarship. I got to wear civilian clothes to work because the Air Force didn’t have a maternity uniform at the time, having just begun to even allow pregnant airmen to remain in the service. I got sleepy at work and couldn’t drink coffee anymore (doctor’s orders), so I napped in a bathroom stall. I turned down the promotion the Air Force offered me, and an assignment as a COBOL instructor at Keesler AFB in Mississippi, and made my plans to separate from active duty at the end of my tour in Hawaii (three months early) so I could be a stay-at-home mom.

Lisa, or Elizabeth Joy Haley, was born November 13, 1978 at Chanute AFB, in Rantoul, Illinois, nine months after Eric’s birthday. She was eligible to be born in an Air Force hospital since I had “contracted” my condition while in the service.

Lisa was the first of eight siblings: herself plus Emily, Chris, Susie, Robyn, Valerie, David, and Vivian. Yes, I know all their birthdays. No, they are not the definition of a litter. (See my post from a couple of weeks ago about Memorabilia.) They were all born one at a time! Many and varied have been the reactions of others, concerning the size and scope of our family, but each of the members are very precious. Two others not in the list above, who were miscarried later in my life, will be reunited with us in Heaven someday. Then, there are 19 grandkids (and counting) and two great-grandkids!

Lisa was a contributing factor to our family size. She made it clear that we should have more kids so she could play Farmer in the Dell. At the time, we only had two, so I did some quick calculations to see how many we would have to have. At the time, a total of eight kids to play all the parts and at least two more to still go around them sounded a little unlikely and overwhelming, but we did go to work on it. Eventually, we even had a “Farmer in the Dell party,” employing all of our kids and several of hers, which actually enabled us to play the game properly.

After Valerie was born, I was exhausted from the particularly difficult process, but I still felt it my duty to call all my relatives to tell them the good news. When I called Dan, he was particularly annoyed with me. 

“Yeah, well, congrats. When are you going to have a baby for me?”

That was a bit shocking and unexpected, to say the least.

“No really! My wife can’t have any children, but you keep poppin’ ‘em out. Why don’t you have a baby for us? You could be a surrogate.”

I never got back with him on that project. Not that either of us could afford that whole process, regardless of the moral implications, nor that I could have dreamed of carrying a baby nine months so that my brother could raise him or her. It was just a typically tacky question to ask me right then. I must have struck a nerve somewhere.

I did transfer some of my CCAF credits to Purdue University as they would allow them, and used my GI Bill benefits to take classes there. Remembering my fourth grade teacher, Miss Gottman, I aspired to be a writer. But the degree process was put on hold because of something more important: I was needed at home. After a number of years, Purdue informed me that my credits had expired, so I never did achieve a college degree.  

Many of my other writing efforts have never gone anywhere, other than being able to help improve the writing of others or to edit the copy for a popular website.  But I hope I'm finally making good on that investment with this blog. And this blog is for my children, for their sake.

In 1976, on the way through California, my mother gave me the silk Dad had picked up when he was on the USAF Prime BEEF team on temporary duty (TDY) in Thailand. After the divorce, she did not want it anymore, so I gratefully took the beautiful cloth, and I fashioned it into a long dress for myself and a formal Hawaiian shirt for Eric. And these were those clothes we wore in the painting we commissioned in Hawaii.

Isn’t that just how the Lord works? He takes us in, when we are only society’s cast-offs and leftovers, and skillfully transforms us and redeems us into something useful and beautiful for His kingdom. He did that for me, and he can do it for you.

The painting still resides in our living room, hanging on the wall above the bookcase. It shows Eric and me overlooking our gallery of descendants, every one a blessing. Our family is God’s story of redemption. Just look and see what God hath wrought!