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when we arrived and the whirring of the cicadas something primordial to me. I wondered where we had come.
The first Friday that we were there my father phoned. He told me that he thought it a good time to phone each week to see how we were doing and what was happening and how we were adjusting to life in Virginia.
My father had a special fondness for Washington, D.C. as he was stationed there during World War II with the government’s lend leasing program.
Having achieved the rank of Commander in the U.S. Navy, he used to tell me that he always wanted to captain a submarine but that was never to be. ,
Then, before I was bom, he had an opportunity to take an engineering job in Norfolk, Virginia and turned that down when he was given a promotion in Portland.
So, perhaps ironically, while he never permanently settled in the east, his daughter was now living there.
Each Friday Dad would phone like clockwork - usually around 9 in the evening. I looked forward to these phone calls.
He would talk to me about my mother, her health was erratic and her hearing wasn’t good. He would rant about how much he was taxed and that politicians were no good.
He’d ask about his grandchildren and usually chastise me for spending too much on them.
I was particularly excited when they were planning a visit to see us or we were planning one to Portland.
There were many times that I ached to see them and he would get irritated with me saying, “What’s the matter with you, you’ve got to grow up sometime, your place is with your husband, that’s the normal thing, that’s how it is, get over it.”
The years passed and any thoughts of our returning to the West Coast diminished. The children were growing up, going to school and the summer heat and sound of the cicadas seemed more like the south’s symphony to me now rather than anything strange.
When I was expecting our third child, my parents came out to help.
They were in their 80s at the time and one of my closest friends said to me, “who’s helping whom?”
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