"Veils......................................."

The Navy released me from active service May 8th, 1970, thirty-two days short of completing a ten year enlistment. The picture, here, is of my two oldest daughters sitting on the curb with a friend just outside our base housing in Rota, Spain, possibly just days before flying stateside for my discharge to be processed. Their mother rolled their hair up into something known as a “beehive”, the two of them looking like miniature movie stars and the moment being quite memorable to me because of the evening prior to our flight being spent in a local hotel. Beth, with her own head crowned in like fashion for the trip home, had run a few inches of water in the tub and was keeping an off-and-on eye on the girls as they splashed in the suds. Then, with the two dried off and dressed for bed, she went in for her own bath. As loud as the scream was that brought me immediately to my feet and sent me running to check on her, it was the sight of her standing there with only a towel wrapped around her, her hairdo now nothing more than a wet mop dripping from her face to the floor, that remains in my mind. The kids, it seems, had switched the spigot to the shower mode; and when she leaned over to turn on the water: surprise, surprise….. Brenda and Jamie are in their forties now, three adult boys having given them the other side of the coin. Melissa, who came to us nineteen months after the above event, has two other younger grandsons plus the only granddaughter in our six-pack. We spoil them all, for sure, McKenna bringing back memories and the trio a gift from God in more ways than one. We almost lost their mother when she was nine, a miracle over-riding a hay-wagon accident that left us with the uncertainty of what the future held for her. Things happen. Sometimes one can look back and laugh at calamity; sometimes all one can do is give thanks for what was beyond understanding; sometimes we are just left with questions. Through it all, His presence can be an anchor-line unto us, but the choice is always ours to make......