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25
DECEMBER 1969 "Mommy, look! Just like Daddy flies!" I hold up the plane for Mommy to see. She smiles and ruffles my hair. I pull away, not wanting that kind of attention. I’m getting too old for that. "Very nice," she says, stepping back and snapping my picture with the camera in her hands. I look the model plane over, turning it in my hands, studying it from every angle. I look up at Mommy, my voice serious, "Do you think Daddy got the presents we sent?" "He should have," she replies. "We sent them in plenty of time to get to the Tico by Christmas. You want to listen to the tape Daddy sent?" "Yes!" I yell, bringing another smile to Mommy's face. Daddy's tapes are the greatest. It sounds like he's right here with us. If I close my eyes, I can pretend he's here. Mommy takes the tape that came in the package of presents from the Tico and puts it in the player, starting the tape. She sits on the floor next to me and pulls me into her lap as the tape begins.
"When's May, Mommy?" I ask as she reaches to turn the player off. "Well, let's look," she says, setting me on the floor and getting up. I follow her to the desk, where she picks up a calendar. "Here's December 25th then in one week, it will be January." She turns the page to another filled with blocks and numbers. "There's thirty-one days in January, then comes February with twenty-eight days, then March with thirty-one, the April with thirty, then it will be May." She turns the pages as she lists each month, so that I can see the passage of time. "Then Daddy will be home?" I ask hopefully. "Yes, Daddy will...." she stops when the doorbell rings. "I'll get it, Mommy," I say, running off for the door. I open the door and look up to two men, dressed in uniforms like I remember seeing Daddy in before. Dress blues, I think he called them. I recognize one of the men as the priest at church. We just saw him this morning at Mass. He said a special prayer for all the guys like Daddy who have gone away and aren't home for Christmas. "Hello, Father McNally." "Hello, Harm," Father McNally says, not smiling. That's odd. He's always smiling. "Where's your Mom?" "Mommy!" I call out. "It's Father McNally." Soon, Mommy is coming to the door and she's not smiling either when she sees the two men. "Harm, come here," she says, her voice shaking, holding out her arms to me. "Please come to Mommy." Mommy sounds....scared and I'm scared now, too. Slowly, I walk to her, taking hold of her hand. I look up at her, wondering what is wrong. Then Mommy's arms are around me and I'm going up into her arms. As she kisses my cheek, I feel something wet. Why is Mommy crying?
5 MAY 2009 "Daddy?" I turn at the sound of the voice behind me, seeing my oldest daughter standing behind the couch, looking over my shoulder. I start to close the photo album, but Sarah leans forward and puts her hand on the page, stopping me. "How old were you?" she asks, pointing to the picture that I was just looking at. "Six," I reply quietly, staring at the photo again. It was the last idyllic moment of my childhood; just minutes before my world came crashing down around me. "It was Christmas 1969." "What kind of plane is that you're holding?" Sarah asks, motioning towards the model in my hands. I smile. Of course that would be one of the questions she would ask. Of my children, Sarah is the one who has shown the greatest interest in planes and in being a pilot. When she was about five months old, we were going to Michele Mattoni's christening and I was in my dress whites. I had picked her up out of her crib and as I held her to my chest, tiny fingers immediately latched onto my gold wings. Sarah swears that I had the biggest smile on my face for the rest of the day as I proudly told everyone what my daughter had done, while she had just rolled her eyes. Someone – I don’t remember who now – tried to suggest that she was simply drawn by the bright, shiny pin, but I would not be dissuaded. My little girl was going to follow in my footsteps. I was convinced of it. When my daughter got older and got into that phase every child goes through when every sentence out of their mouths is a question, she had pointed at my wings and asked, "Wat dat?" When I took the twins to their first air show, Matt fell asleep – despite all the noise – but Sarah spent the entire show staring up at the sky, gazing with fascination at the planes flying overhead. After I took each of them for their first ride in my Stearman, Sarah was the one constantly begging me to take her up again. Not that Matt doesn't like to fly – he does like it in the same way that his mother likes flying in the Stearman - but Sarah loves it. She's the one who always listens enraptured when I tell tales of my flying days. I was right about her. Someday, she'll be the next Rabb to wear gold wings, following in the proud tradition of her great grandfather, grandfather, father and uncle. "It's an F-4 Phantom," I reply as she comes around the couch and sits down next to me, leaning against my side. I put an arm over her shoulder and pull her closer. "It was the Navy's fighter plane before the Tomcat. That's what your Grandpa Harmon flew in Vietnam. He gave me the model for Christmas that year." She studies the photo for a moment, and then I can see her glance at me out of the corner of her eye, her manner contemplative. Finally, she asks, "What happened to Grandpa Harmon?" I'm silent for a moment, pondering how to answer the question. This is the first time that any of the kids have asked what happened to my father. They know that he's dead – or that he's an angel, as we had told them about Gram when she died a few years ago. They've been to the Wall. They've just never asked for any of the details before. Grandpa Harmon being dead was just another fact of their lives up until this point, something that Mommy and Daddy told them and they took on faith. "Well," I begin hesitantly, still trying to figure out in my mind how much to tell her. Even after nearly forty years, that wound hasn't quite healed yet. It just doesn’t hurt as much as it used to. "He was flying Phantoms off the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga in the waters off Vietnam. On Christmas Eve, 1969, he was flying a mission when he was shot down. He became a prisoner and was taken to Russia with some other pilots. He escaped from a prison camp in 1980 and died two years later. A few months later, your Uncle Sergei was born." "This was taken on Christmas, 1969, you said," she states, looking at the picture again. "The day after Grandpa was shot down." I nod. "Just after the picture was taken," I tell her, "the base chaplain and another officer came and told us about Dad. I think Mom knew what they were going to say before they even opened their mouths. I knew something was wrong, too, but I was too young to understand what. Father McNally wasn't smiling, not like he had been at church that morning." "If Grandpa Harmon was your Dad, what about Grandpa Frank?" she continues. "When did he come around?" "Mom met him when I was eleven," I reply. "She married him two years later when I was thirteen." She looks pensive for a moment, and then counts on her fingers. "So it was just you and Grandma Trish for five years," she concludes. "Wasn't it hard, being without a Daddy? I can't imagine being without you." I'm not sure how to answer that. There are different ways I could answer that question. I mean, after Dad was gone, Mom and I were taken care of. Gram helped out a lot and Mom's parents were still alive at the time. We had Dad's military benefits, so money never was that big a concern, even before Frank came along. As far as material things go, things were no different than when Dad was still with us. We had a place to live and food on the table. Emotionally….now that's a different story. Sometimes I would….well, not forget....but it would seem like Dad was just off on another mission, just like always. But then I would remember that Mom had told me Dad wasn't coming home every time I asked. Not ever again. Not that I was willing to believe her, but that's what she told me, so eventually I learned not to ask. Looking back now, I figure that Dad was probably at home less than half of my life up until he was shot down. So from that standpoint, things weren't that much different. It was only when I was a little older, when I understood the difference between being gone on another cruise and Missing in Action and Killed in Action that I had started to realize just how different my reality was. "Daddy?" I shake my head. I've always tried to be honest with my children. It's just that this is still a difficult topic. I may be forty-five years old, nearly forty years removed from that bleak Christmas Day, but somewhere deep inside, that six-year-old boy still resides, not ready to accept that his father will never walk through the front door again. Maybe it would be different if there was a grave that I could visit – and not the empty one up at the farm - but the secret of where Dad is buried went with Sergei’s uncle to his grave. "I'm sorry, Sarah," I say, closing the album and dropping it back on the coffee table. I'm not even sure why I started looking through the thing, except that it was out, lying on the coffee table. I guess I need to have a talk with the twins again about putting things away after they're done with them. "In some ways, everything was the same as before. We had a home, we had food to eat, and we had money in the bank. In others….it was difficult trying to understand that my Dad would never come home again. I'm not sure how….Do you remember when Gram died?" Sarah shrugs her shoulders and gives me an uncertain look. They say that time heals all wounds. Maybe Matt and Sarah are too young to remember that far back, or they were too young back then to clearly remember it now. Sometimes, I think time didn't heal my wounds where Dad was concerned because I wouldn't let it. I held onto my belief that Dad was alive like a child holds onto a security blanket or a favorite toy. "Well, you and Matt didn't really understand that Gram wasn't going to be around anymore," I explain gently. "When we told you that she was going to Heaven, you even asked when she would be returning." "But people don't come back from Heaven," she says, sighing sadly. Again, that was a lesson that only time could teach. I think it took about six or eight months before the twins stopped asking when they were going to see Gram again. They finally figured out on their own – just as I had so many years before - that no matter how many times they asked, the answer would always be the same. "No, they don't," I agree. "But we didn't know that your grandpa was dead, and we now know that he wasn’t dead at that time, not for many years yet. All we knew was that he was missing, so I kept believing that he would someday come home. In that way, it was difficult and became more so every day that passed and he didn't come home. But I think that it was harder on Mom." "I don't understand," she says. "I mean, I know Grandma Trish was sad because Grandpa Harmon was missing, right? So were you. So why would it be harder?" "I guess because she had to deal with my grief as well as her own," I explain. I don’t think that this makes any sense to her. She looks a little confused. "You know, parents are supposed to take care of their children. She had to take care of me, try to help me deal with what I was feeling, while trying to deal with everything that she was going through. She didn't really have anyone to take care of her, not all the time. So it was like a double burden, I guess you could say." "But then Grandpa Frank came along," she points out matter-of-factly. "He could take care of Grandma. Things got better then, right?" "I don't know if you could say that," I say vaguely, realizing that we're sailing into rough seas here. As far as my children have always known, Frank is my Dad and their grandfather. He's been a part of my life now for nearly as long as my father was alive. They just don't know how much I used to resent his presence in our lives. They don't know that the first time that I called him Dad was a mere three weeks before the twins were born. The only thing that they've ever seen between the two of us is a warm and loving father-son relationship. I don't think I'm ready to get into that with my kids yet. "Hey, didn’t you say that you have a math test tomorrow? Shouldn't you be studying?" "I was," Sarah protests. "Well, you should get back to it," I insist. Then I pull out the trump card. Hey, it's dirty, but it's time to nip this conversation in the bud. "You know, if you want to be a pilot, math's very important." I knew that would get her. "Okay," she pouts, rolling her eyes. "I'm going. Later, Daddy." After Sarah takes off upstairs, my eyes go back to the photo album in front of me. I haven't really thought about a lot of this stuff in years. It's always been in the back of my mind, but after my first trip to Russia, I'd managed to find a kind of peace with Dad's memory, Mom's need to move on, Frank's presence, everything. But this conversation has opened a can of worms and another memory floats to the surface of my thoughts….
FEBRUARY
1975 "Mom, I'm home," I call out, tossing my book bag on the floor next to the door. I know Mom will probably tell me to pick it up as soon as she sees it, but I still leave it there. I do it every day. And every day she tells me to pick it up. It's almost become a routine with us, comforting in its familiarity. I wander into the kitchen, hoping to grab a snack out of the fridge without Mom knowing, but she's sitting at the dining room table, drinking coffee with a man I don't recognize. "Hello, darling," she greets me brightly. "How was school today? How did your math test go?" "Fine and fine," I reply, trying to ignore the presence of this man that Mom's with. He's not threatening or anything, but….I don't know. I can feel something different – about Mom, about everything - and this man has to have something to do with that. For some reason that I can't pinpoint, he bothers me. "Harm, this is Frank Burnett," she introduces us. Mr. Burnett smiles at me, but I don't return it. Suddenly, I've lost interest in the hoped for snack and I just want to go outside and shoot some hoops. "Frank, this is my son, Harm Rabb." "It's nice to meet you, Harm," Mr. Burnett says, holding out his hand. I hesitate, but take it on a stern look from Mom, making sure to keep the shake brief. If Mr. Burnett notices, he doesn’t let on, continuing to smile as I pull my hand away. "Your mother talks about you all the time." "Hello, Mr. Burnett," I say, keeping it short and simple. He won't be around long. I know that Mom has dated on and off the last few years. Mom has even brought one or two men around here before, but they've only come by once, never to be heard from again. I hope that it's because Mom knows that Dad's coming home someday, although one man did say that he didn't like me, that I wasn't at all like Mom described. Well, I didn't like him implying that Mom had lied about me and neither did she. "Please, call me Frank," he says pleasantly. "Fine," I mutter, ignoring the look from Mom this time. It doesn't matter what I call him. Dad will come home, Mr. Burnett will be gone and everything will be back to normal….someday. Louder, I tell Mom, "I'm going out to shoot some hoops before dinner." "Harm," she starts, but I've already left the room. On my way out, I stop in the kitchen for some water. Being just feet from the dining room, I can't help but hear Mom and Mr. Burnett's conversation. "I'm sorry about that, Frank," Mom says. "Harm could have been nicer." "Trish, it's okay," he says. I turn and glance through the doorway and see him put his hand on her arm. His attention's on Mom and her back is to me, so they can't see me watching them. "It's got to be hard on him. His father's missing and hasn't been declared dead. He probably still hopes his father's going to come walking through the door. He's bound to be suspicious of any man coming here that he doesn't know, worried that one of them is going to try and take his father's place." "I guess," Mom says. I can't see her face from here, but she sounds sad. "But I can't stop living my life just on the long shot that my husband might still be alive. He's been gone for over five years. Does that sound selfish? My child wants me to hold on to the same hope that he is, but I can't. I'm an adult. I know reality doesn't work that way." "It's not selfish," he says, this time taking her hand in his. "It's human. It's like a balancing act, trying to take care of your needs and Harm's. And you've done the best you can. I know that just from listening to you talk about your son. You're a strong woman, Patricia Rabb. Probably the strongest that I've ever met. You've held your life and your son's life together when other women might have fallen apart. That's one of the things that attracted me to you in the first place. I can feel that strength every time I'm in the same room as you." I hear Mom sigh as she leans her head on Mr. Burnett's shoulder, and he puts his arm around her. I want to tell him to get his hands off my mother, but I'm rooted to the spot. I don't want to upset Mom. Her next words are whispered, but I still manage to make them out. "I just wish that I could do more for Harm," she says. "I wish that there was some way that I could make all of this easier for him."
5 MAY 2009 Needing to get away from the photo album and all the memories that it holds, I get up and head for the room that we use as an office, hoping to get some work done. I've got to look over Bobbi's notes for the speech she's giving on the Senate floor on the defense budget, which is in danger of being slashed despite the two wars going on, and to look over the depositions that have just come in from San Diego JAG on that F-18 crash a few weeks ago. As usual, my plate is very full between JAG and my work as the Hill's military liaison. Balancing all that hasn't gotten any easier after eight and a half years, and there have been times it has been almost too difficult, but that particular sacrifice has been worth all that it has brought me. I walk into the office to find Elizabeth sprawled on the floor in front of the desk, quietly looking at a picture book. My wife's behind the desk, flipping through the pages of a case file, her brow furrowed in concentration. My daughter notices me first, her eyes focusing on my tennis shoes. She looks up and up, but I stoop down so that she doesn't have to look so far. "Daddy!" she exclaims with childish glee, forgetting her book and scrambling to her feet, holding her arms out to me. “Up!” I scoop her up into my arms and momentarily lift her above my head, ignoring the slight ache in my knee as I stand back up, a permanent reminder of that ejection into the Atlantic after my quals back in 2001. Its presence is just another sign that I’m getting older. Sarah drops the pen that she's fiddling onto the desk and gives me a tired smile as she rubs her forehead. "Rough case?" I ask. She gestures towards the file as she leans back in the chair. "Chief Petty Officer accused of raping three women at Norfolk," she explains. "The General just handed me the case this afternoon."
I'd heard
about it – it's been the big news in the
area the last few weeks, a serial rapist
being on the loose on the base. "I hadn't
heard that they'd caught anyone," I say.
I'd actually been kind of hoping for a crack
at prosecuting the SOB myself when they
caught him. Not that I begrudge Sarah the
chance to do it. "Prosecution, I assume?" I sit down in an armchair in front of a bookcase full of law volumes, trying to settle Elizabeth into my lap. She squirms out of my arms and I set her back down on the floor. She grabs her discarded book from the floor and then returns to me, looking up at me with big brown eyes. Grinning as I shake my head, I lift her back onto my lap. Settling back against my chest, she opens the book and becomes engrossed in the bright pictures again, ignoring us. "Any idea who is handling the defense yet?" I ask, hoping that talk of the case will distract me from….other things that I'd rather not think about just right now. "It is civilian counsel," she replies, studying me carefully. "I haven't heard a name yet. What's wrong?" That's my wife, blunt as usual. I try sidestepping the question, even as the little voice inside my mind points out the futility of that. Sarah is a lawyer, after all, one of the best. "Nothing's wrong," I protest, giving her my best flyboy grin, hoping it will distract her. "So do you have a second chair on the case yet?" Sighing, she closes the case file and stares at me, folding her arms across her chest as she leans back in her chair. "Harm, I know you," she reminds me, as the little voice in my head mocks me, pointing out 'I told you so.' "And I know that look. Something's bothering you." Shrugging, I give up and begin to explain, "There was a photo album out on the coffee table. You know, one of the ones that Mom and Dad gave me for my fortieth birthday with copies of all those pictures from my childhood. I guess one of the kids had it out and was looking at it. Anyway, some of the pictures were from Christmas 1969." "And they brought up some painful memories," Sarah says sympathetically. I can almost see the memories replaying in her mind, of our trip to Russia. She knows more than anyone, perhaps even more than my parents, just how much that whole situation still haunts me sometimes. There are just some things that you never get over. You just learn how to incorporate the memories into your everyday existence so that everyone else doesn't see how much still they hurt you. "Yeah," I reply softly. "I started remembering opening presents with Mom, listening to a letter tape from Dad, then Father McNally showing up to tell us Dad had been shot down. Sarah then showed up and asked about the picture." I pause for a moment, sighing before adding, "She asked me what happened to Grandpa Harmon." "That's the first time one of them has asked," she realizes after a moment. She stares down at her lap for and I wonder if she's thinking about her own father and trying to explain him to our children. That’s one discussion that I’m sure neither of us is ready for. Her next words confirm that. "I guess I should be glad neither of them has thought to ask what happened to my father yet. So what did you tell her?" "A very brief outline only," I reply. "He was shot down, taken to Russia, escaped in 1980, and then died a few months before Sergei was born. Of course, then she asked what it was like growing up without a daddy, and then she said that it must have been easier for us when Frank came along. Of course, that brought up even more memories – of the first time I met Frank. I was a snotty little kid back then." She laughs about that, and I can almost see her trying to picture me in her mind as a bratty eleven-year-old. "You were only eleven," she reminds me, "and still hoping that your Dad would come back." "Yeah," I agree reluctantly. Hindsight really is twenty-twenty. It's so easy to look back at forty-five and see what an ass that I was at eleven. "But I never gave Mom any credit for what she was going through. I told Sarah that it was doubly hard on Mom, having to deal with her own grief as well as mine, and then I remembered something Frank had told Mom that first day. After I'd left the room, Mom apologized to him for my less than welcoming behavior and she wondered out loud if she was being selfish, trying to move on with her life. He told her that it was like a balancing act, trying to take care of her own needs while taking into account mine and that she was probably the strongest woman he knew. I don't know what made me remember that, but he was right. It was just so hard to see it back then." "Why don't you do something special for your mother?" she suggests. "Mother's Day is this Sunday." "I know," I reply with a grin. "The kids have enlisted my help on your present." We'll probably make quite the mess in the process, but my children's mother is definitely worth it. So is mine, but I doubt that there's anything that I could possibly do to begin to make up for basically being an inconsiderate ass for over two decades. To distract her from any thoughts of asking for hints on her present, I quickly change the topic back to my mother. "But I don't know what to do for Mom. I couldn't even begin to make up for everything I'd done to her, how inconsiderate I was." "Harm, it's not about making anything up to her," Sarah insists, leaning forward, her elbows on the desk, her chin resting on top of her clasped hands. "You have to know that she doesn’t expect that. She knows you had what you thought were valid reasons for behaving the way you did. It's about telling her how much she means to you. It doesn't have to be anything elaborate. Maybe you can take her to lunch. Or give her some flowers and write her a letter. Remember the first Mother's Day after my mother came back? I just gave her a card and I don't think she stopped crying all day." "Because it wasn't just a card to her," I say, realization dawning. Maybe simpler is better. It's not like I could buy her anything that she doesn't already have. But maybe I can find something to give her something that comes from the heart. I don't have much time to think about it. Today's Tuesday and Mother's Day is just five days away. I absently stroke Elizabeth's soft blonde hair as I consider the situation. I've got a lot to think about.
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