When you have a roommate, or in my case roommates, you get your first peek into what married life could be like. You learn a person's quirks and you adapt to each other. You learn how to be part of someone's life like you've been there all along. Grandma's roommate, Marvel, is moving out and moving onto Officer's training.
"Marvel left this morning for Northampton where she will enter Officer's Training. I can tell you we've been going in high gear."
She wished to enter into Officer's training with Marvel, but Marvel got her papers in before her and Grandma is still waiting. Grandma's true emotions finally come through her letter.
"I would like very much to make Officer's Training though and I am hoping and praying for it now. Please keep the right thought for me. I will better myself so much if I can make it. ... I will have some schooling and so I am hoping that I will make it. Don't say anything to anyone about this. I don't want to tell them why I didn't make it. ... Let's just hope real hard that I will be able to go."
Grandma covets the life of a Naval Officer. If she doesn't rise in rank, she feels she shouldn't have to explain it over and over again to people she loves. Who wants to remember that humiliation? Who prays for something they don't get and wants to talk about it? She yearns for the respect and prestige that comes with this life. She journeyed across the country to move beyond her possibilities in Montana, and she is striving for that everyday she is in the WAVES. Yet, she cannot move on with the person who helped fashion this new life from her old one. Marvel was Grandma's touchstone, and one of her few connections back to Montana. Marvel was also born and raised there. So, Marvel was the perfect amalgam of Grandma's old and new lives.
"This morning Marvel was so excited but she hated to leave me. We could hardly keep from crying. We have gotten to be great friends. It seems so awful not to have one Montana person with me. At least we could talk over familiar streets and acquaintances."
It's the uncertainty that finally undoes us all. The biding of time; and my Grandmother was never a patient woman. She despised waiting for information. It's evident in her letters when she scolds her parents for not writing often enough. She craved information and loved being a source of knowledge. She was our family's google. You asked her about a specific person or event and she would roll through her files. She required immediate data and she never bided her time. It must have broken her heart to witness one of her good friends move on into a life of certainty and for her to be left in the dark.
Grandma and Marvel in The Missoulian when they enlisted
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