Ten Months

© 2013 by J. Wayne Stillwell. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 05/24/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-5692-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-5690-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-5691-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013909421

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Author’s Preface

Disclaimer

Chapter 1 Destiny train

Chapter 2 Duty Station

Chapter 3 City within a City

Chapter 4 Tenets Learned

Chapter 5 The Kiss

Chapter 6 Moneyless Dates

Chapter 7 Words left unsaid?

Chapter 8 A Parallel Universe

Chapter 9 First Goodbye

Chapter 10 Testing

Chapter 11 Four No’s

Chapter 12 Alone again

Chapter 13 Deployment

Chapter 14 Choices and States of Grace

Chapter 15 The final visit

Epilogue

About The Author

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Bernadette, my wife and partner. Her contributions to our family are incalculable. My dedication is expressed in the following short essay. Only she and I can truly understand what it says.

Ode from a sailor

Or

What to do with a Prairie Chicken

Once upon a time a young naïve woman ran off with a sailor that she foolishly fell in love with. The sailor had serious career goals and needed a high quality woman with ethics, high morals and a sense of duty. The young woman fulfilled every expectation and enabled the sailor’s success.

After forty-six years, she questioned the true value of her life. In the process of enabling others, she lost herself and felt that it was too late to become who she wanted to be. She felt that her clock was ticking and the bucket list was long.

Her days became intense as she raced through her agenda. Exercise, losing weight, torturing the sailor, traveling to faraway places, torturing the sailor some more, socializing, a hot air balloon ride, gourmet cooking, a red sports car and torturing the sailor even more. She lost weight to the point where he started calling her a Prairie Chicken.

The truth of the matter is that her contributions to the family exceeded the sailors. She provided a secure, safe and loving environment for all. She raised two men of value who produced four grandchildren who will change the world. They will always remember their visits to Nana’s house and say at their college graduations, thanks Nana for everything you taught us.

The sailor could not give the woman everything she needed but he gave her everything he had and to no one else. She made admiral, he did not. He and her sailed many separate paths during life’s journey but always returned to shore together.

Anything you need baby, just ask and thanks for everything you did for me and still do. Stop feeling sorry for a life well lived. Mount up and ride into the future. I will always be there for you.

Love Sailor

I also want to thank my sons John and Matthew, Sandy, Phyllis, my daughter-in-law April and her grandmother for their insightful feedback during the writing and editing of the book.

Author’s Preface

Few things affect us more than rejection by someone we wanted to love us but they didn’t, or they did love us but couldn’t say it. A hard and distant father can be one of those people but so can your first encounter with romantic love when she or he passes through your life and then goes away.

Sean Rochester leaves the safety of a small town in 1964 at the age of seventeen to earn a chance at an education. He was not prepared for the real world and the harsh lessons it would teach him.

From the under belly of a large city and the insincerity of so called friends, to dealing with street smart men and affairs of the heart, his education began immediately. The ebb and flow of life produces more successes than failures and ends with a mysterious visit.

Disclaimer

This book is a fiction romance novel. Although inspired by the author’s life experiences, some of the events and characters have been contrived for the purpose of creating a complete story line and to avoid direct attribution to anyone living or dead. The experiences, passion, ambitions and hopes of the characters in the book are common to many people and you may see yourself in some of them.

In order to provide a sensible backdrop and context for the story described in the narrative, certain places and events used in the book are real. For example Boston is a real city and the U.S. Navy is a real organization.

Chapter One

Destiny train

Life’s experiences make us who we are

Memories about the significant emotional events in our life are like a song you can’t stop singing in your head; the birth of a child, assassination of a president, or the bully who tortured us in the sixth grade become irreversibly etched in our minds. These memories pop into our consciousness unpredictably at church, while shopping for groceries, sliding into third base, in our dreams at night and every time we see a stranger that looks like a person who hurt us or that we once loved.

Average experiences become more interesting each time we retell them. Only the worst get equal billing with the best and usually with prejudice toward the offending entity regardless of our own culpability, the rest fad into mental obscurity never to be thought of again.

Life is a journey you can take only once. The choices we make every day determine the road we travel. When we’re young, we don’t realize that words and feelings said or not said are really choices that have consequences. Once the sands of time have passed you cannot reset the clock. Each moment is followed by another and another.

Youth is a gift and a curse that makes us vulnerable to insincere compliments, opportunities that are too good to be true and the intoxicating infatuation that follows our first romantic kiss. Few things affect us more than rejection by someone we wanted to love us but for some reason they cannot act on their feelings. The memory of a lost love is constantly refreshed by the rhythmic flow of life, like déjà vu over and over again.

Sean Rochester, Seaman Apprentice, United States Navy, started making unconscious choices and generating memories the day he left home for Navy boot camp. It was the biggest decision of his young life. Following boot camp he was sent to Sonar School in Key West, Florida. After four months in Key West, he was assigned to his first permanent duty station, The USS Moale (DD 693), an aging WW II destroyer over going a major overhaul in the Boston Naval Shipyard, Charlestown, Massachusetts.

The train pulled into Boston’s South Station at 1:46 PM; it was a cold and dreary February day. The overnight trip from Greensburg, Pennsylvania had taken twenty-two hours. For an 18 year old country boy who had grown up with four brothers and sisters in a four room house outside of a defunct coal mining town, the journey had been a harsh introduction to the real world.

The trip started out pleasant enough. His father and sister had given him a ride to the train station the previous afternoon. The three of them stood on the concrete platform making small talk about nothing mixed with fatherly advice regarding how to stay out of trouble. Soon they could hear the train sounding its whistle in the distance.

It won’t be long now, Sean thought.

The sound of the approaching train distracted him to the point where his father had to tug on his sleeve to regain his attention.

Remember, it doesn’t hurt to call the Chief Petty Officers sir and don’t ever be with a girl that you would be ashamed for your mother to meet.

I know Dad, I’ll just be glad when the trip is over. His Dad had served in the Navy Seabees during World War II as a Chief Carpenters Mate so he paid attention when he talked about getting along with the brass.

Sean had grown up listening to his Dad talk about the war in the Pacific. Taking back the Pacific islands and the Philippines from the Japanese after Pearl Harbor required air strips, hospitals and support bases of all types. Construction battalions made up initially of older union men were put together to accomplish this mission. His Dad often said that every Marine that landed had a Seabee’s nose up his butt.

Sean was lucky to be standing on the station platform that morning. He might have never been born. His Dad was shot by a Japanese sniper on Manus Island in the Admiralty Islands. He survived because the bullet passed through soft tissue just missing his liver and spine.

Japanese snipers used steel jacket bullets which were more aerodynamically stable and did not mushroom when impacting a human body. The hole coming out was the same size as the hole going in. A lead bullet would have killed him for sure. He spent more time recovering from the broken arm he received when falling off the Quonset hut he was working on after he was shot than from the bullet wound.

The train approached the platform slowly and noisily. Sean had never been this close to a full size train engine and was in awe of its massive size. The big John Deere tractors he drove on the neighbor’s farm looked like toys in comparison. When the train was almost stopped, he picked up his bags and moved up to the yellow warning line that said ‘Stand behind the line’.

Wait for the train to come to a complete stop son, you don’t want them to think you’re a hick, and people will be getting off first, his Dad cautioned.

He backed off a bit but held on to his bags. The train came to a complete stop. He gave his sister a kiss on the cheek and looked at his father with a ‘well this is it Dad’ look on his face. He knew there would be no hug, so he dropped his small bag and offered his right hand.

Good luck son and firm up that grip, men like a firm hand shake; it says something about who you are, he said.

Ok, I will, he promised.

When Sean left for boot camp his Dad gave him a hug, when he returned twelve weeks later and tried to give his Dad a hug, he was greeted with a stiff arm.

You’re a man now, so you’ve had your last hug, men shake hands, his Dad said extending his right hand with a smile.

He was caught off guard and his feelings were hurt but Dad made the rules. That’s how he knew there would be no hug at the train station. His Dad’s stiff arm was the first of many he would get from other people he cared about.

Bye Dad, Sean said. He knew the second he stepped on the train; there was no turning back, his life was about to change profoundly.

Bye son, don’t forget to write your Mother, his Dad yelled as he stepped onto the first rung of the metal stairs at the end of the car closest to them.

I won’t Dad.

His Dad had no problem communicating directly when it came to right brain issues like take out the garbage, go change the oil in the car, or get me a screw driver. When it came to left brain issues, what he called the artsy fartsy side of us, he always addressed things indirectly. When he said write your Mother, he was really saying I want to hear from you on a regular basis, he just couldn’t say please write to me. Sean knew his Dad loved him, but he never once told him that he did.

He was glad to be on his way, anxious for his adventure to begin. He heaved his Navy sea bag into the over head stowage shelf above the first forward facing row. It was in the middle of the train car, half the seats faced forward and half faced aft.

He made himself comfortable in the window seat and without staring, entertained himself by watched the other passengers settle in for the long ride. He caught a glance of his father and sister as the train moved past the end of the platform. They were standing like statues, frozen in place, side by side watching the car he had boarded leave the station. He was sure they could not see him, his sister gave a final wave and then they were gone. He wondered what they were thinking.

The train picked up speed slowly as it left the depot but stopped accelerating at twenty miles per hour. The next station was only seven miles away and there were many rail road crossings along the way. Achieving full speed would have to wait. The engineer repeatedly sounded the train’s whistle as it approached and passed each road crossing.

He looked at the first vehicle in line at each crossing and tried to see who was driving. Sometimes it seemed like the person was looking right at him, he knew that wasn’t true, other drivers appeared irritated, maybe by the delay the train was causing them, others were fussing with a purse or a folder full of papers.

At one crossing he noticed an attractive woman in a red 1961 Chevy; he smiled at her just as she looked up hoping to make eye contact. It was to no avail, she was busy looking into her rear view mirror checking her makeup.

No matter, she wouldn’t give me the time of day anyhow, he thought. What he didn’t realize until he was much older was that many girls in high school and the church youth fellowship group he attended on Sunday nights liked him. He found this out from family members and high school friends over the years.

The fact is, Sean’s lack of a social life during high school was not because he worked on the neighbors farm all of the time and had little to no money each week after he gave most of it to his mother, or his father’s drinking; it was because his environment had made him stoic and serious about everything. He wasn’t very approachable and didn’t try to initiate relationships, a deadly combination when it comes to acquiring girl friends.

His codependency and low self esteem, due in part to his father’s drinking and the associated dysfunction it caused at home, and living on welfare for years made isolation from possible rejection the best choice. How could he ever bring a girl to his house? The answer for him was to avoid it—period.

At the next crossing a cement mixer slowly churning its load was first in line; its driver appeared to be dozing. He probably has a wife and a bunch of kids at home, hates his job and stops at the local bar each day to get a buzz on before going home. Sean knew a lot of men like him, living lives of quiet desperation, going nowhere, their wives just as miserable.

The variety of vehicles and people sitting in the pole position at each crossing was amazing. A gasoline truck with the word ESSO on its side and a farmer on a John Deere tractor pulling a wagon load of second cutting Alfalfa hay, an eclectic mix of people and vehicles, he could be passing through any small town in America.

Life in Greensburg will go on as it always has; the fact that I’m leaving this morning doesn’t mean a thing to any of these people. I’m not going to be one of them, sitting in line at a railroad crossing when I’m 50 years old, wishing I had chased a few dreams when I was young enough to do it. he thought.

Once the train cleared the suburbs, the whistles became less frequent but the scenery outside of his window was still interesting. He was familiar with the view as seen from the roads he’d traveled while growing up in western Pennsylvania. He was amazed at how different the country side appeared from the train tracks. It seemed like he was looking into everyone’s backyard.

He sat without moving for a long time, watching the scenery but also day dreaming about many things. He was on his own now and already feeling lonely. The dismal weather didn’t help. He lit a cigarette and took several puffs. The rhythmic click and clack of the train car