(maybe a Saguaro image here??)

It was early in the twenty-first century. My mom was
widowed after 58 years of marriage. She flew up
to see our new home— a solar house on 10 acres
in Bonny Doon in the Santa Cruz mountains.

She was intensely comfortable after living 35 years in a
solar home she and my dad had built next to Saguaro
National Monument. Evening fell on us when I asked if
she would like to see a film about World War II.

I knew she had become engaged on the day Pearl Harbor
fell. I knew she and my dad married at 21 and 19 the very
next month. They married so young— not knowing
if they would have a future, somewhat like young ones
feel in the era of coronavirus and climate change.

I did not know very much about my mom’s experience
of the war— dad was the skilled storyteller in the family.
His ability to charm others with tales of the time he spent
in World War II— flight instructor, teacher of radar—

What one would expect from the grandson of a Gaelic
scholar. Dad had died the summer before 911 of a rare
disease that led to his lungs rejecting themselves. We
were all glad he had not been there for 911.

Mom had however— opening her up in many ways.
That night in our living room, she reluctantly agreed
to watch the film about the war. She hated war.
Although my dad was buried in Arlington Cemetery,

She had no truck with it. She was a peaceful soul.
My grandmother called her, “little peacemaker.”
We turned on the film— a pilot prepared for flight
— he would not return. Mom, uncharacteristically,

Asked us to turn off the movie. We did. I expected
she would return to bed, so taciturn was her aspect.
Surprisingly, she began to reveal the nightmarish time
like unravelling a worn, tattered sweater.

She described herself as a new bride following my dad
up and down the west coast to Olympia, Seattle in
Washington state, to Portland in Oregon, then Oakland,
Merced— so forth in California. She rode many trains

Alone, with very little cash. My dad always bunked
at Army Air Force bases. She disembarked from
trains, after long rides, such as Columbia, Missouri
to Olympia, Washington, walking miles knocking

On the doors of houses of the towns, asking if anyone
had a room to rent. She transformed— a brown-eyed
bride to an army wife. In the towns where the soldiers
were learning to fly, she found shelter fairly easily.

In the wartime, she found employment almost exclusively,
canning in factories outside the peach, pear, and apple
orchards. For three years, she toiled. Her hands were
never the same after such labor.

Mom’s hands were chapped cherry red for at least
twenty-five years after the war. She wore plastic gloves
every night as she washed dishes while I stood drying
and putting away. Back-breaking work

In canned fruit factories did pay room and board. She
found comfort with her fruit sisters in canning factories—
yet there were times that left her beyond words. She
learned the names of soldiers who learned

To fly from my father— a very young flight instructor.
She found out about them from their wives, who canned
along with her in fruit factories. She learned about the
young men from my dad.

She knew their faces, and she knew the dread of their first
flight on a mission. In early days of war, she and my dad
got together and thought of a way they could reach out.
Mom would ask the landlord or landlady of the house

Where she had a room if she and my dad could use the
living room. Mom knew how to get her way. They always
had the rooms they needed. Most evenings they gathered
with wives of men who had flown.

Many more did not return than came back. My parents sat
there for hours with the wives and their tears. This ritual
of theirs went on for years in living rooms all up and down
the west coast. I asked Mom if she remembered the name
of the places the men had fallen.

The worst, she said, was Anzio Beach. None of my dad’s
students returned. Not a single one. All through those
years, there was very little food.
Not very much bacon or coffee.

My dad would ask landlords or ladies with avocados
rotting away in their yards, if they could pick them up
and put them in a suitcase to share with the students
and the army wives.

Every night, the states were losing 500 young men.
I wonder if the young ones in the era of corona virus
would understand that we are losing far more than
500 lives everyday.

Yes, in the time of World War II, it was hard to imagine
a future. The young men died and died over four years.
My dad had terrible survival guilt, as did my mom. He
never spoke of it to me.

Why did my dad get to live? She said he was a good
teacher with flat feet— not the best thing for combat.
In this perilous world war against a virus, I am glad
my mom is ten years gone.

I did not want her to see the coronavirus age, or to sense
the uncertainty. The polio epidemic had been enough—
empty little desks in the classroom she taught some ten
years later were very hard on her and me.

.