Hilda, where are you?

When I was just six I went to school in Okinawa. It was an American school, and although we were living on an island in the China Sea, it was just an American school a long way from "home." To this day I am not connected to any of the adults who were children in the school that I attended so long ago.

I remember one name only - a seven-year-old girl named Hilda Nunamaker. A girl from South Carolina. Her father was stationed at the same military base.

The military quonset huts that our families occupied were directly across the dirt road from each other. Hilda and I were best friends while we lived there. Once our fathers' tours of duty were over, and both our families returned to the States, I never saw her again.

But my life was touched forever by the time I spent with her. To this day my speech is laced with a slight southern twang because of the time I spent with Hilda.

I often wonder if she remembers me and how her life turned out. I will never forget her name. Hilda Nunamaker, where are you? Patti Nuckolls is asking.

Okinawa - Normal School?

I remember getting on the school bus when I was in the second grade. I wasn't quite six years old. It was the first time I'd ridden a school bus with other children. It seemed so strange, and yet, for the time and circumstances, it really was quite normal.

In the first grade I had ridden with my Mother to a small country schoolhouse twenty miles east of where we lived. She was a teacher in that school. The only teacher. It was a small one-room school with 12 grades and about the same number of students. She taught them all. They were the children of farmers and cattle ranchers. Children who lived far apart and only came together for a few hours each day to attend school.

I started school at 5 so I could go with my Mother while my Grandmother took care of my younger brother. You see, my Father was stationed overseas for a year - in Japan - and we were staying with my grandparents for that year.

Now here I was, almost six years old and starting 2nd grade, riding a school bus for the first time on a military base in Okinawa to an American Military School. On the front of the bus was a military policeman (MP) and on the back of the bus was a second one - both with rifles (loaded I assume!)

You see, my Father was stationed in Okinawa soon after the end of WWII. There were still frightened young Japanese soldiers (who didn't know the war was over) hiding in caves in the hills. MP's were always around. Always armed. It was just a natural daily occurrence to see them everywhere that families went.

My 2nd grade school year were spent in a school with guns. Guns to protect us. Protect us from young men who were probably as frightened as our parents were. Young men who didn't know that peace had been declared. Young men who were still willing to fight to defend their country.

I now look back and wonder which of my first two years in elementary school was normal. The one room schoolhouse on the flat eastern plains of Colorado with one teacher and twelve students in twelve grades? Or the military school on the Ryukyu Islands in the East China Sea?

Both of them helped shape my future.

A Hole in My Heart's Puzzle

Today I saw a grandson that I never see. . . . across the street. My heart breaks into a thousand pieces when his image floats through my mind. He is a red head. I think of him often. When I try to put my heart back together, there is always a piece missing. I would so much like to be part of his life . . . even a small part.

Time is passing so quickly and we will never get it back. He is now part of another family's reality. Unless that reality hits his father, I will always have a hole in my heart's puzzle.

Someday I hope he knows how much I have always loved him and how much his Nana has truly missed being part of his life. I hope when he does, it isn't too late.

I love you Landon.

Way Off Course

Have you ever ended up somewhere that you weren't going?

I have, even though I have a fairly good sense of direction.

Sometimes I get off course because I lose sight of my destination. Does that ever happen to you? Or sometimes someone beside the road asks me "why you are headed down that way? why not go this way?" . . . and I begin to wonder . . . why am I?

It then takes some back-peddling to get back on the upper road that I was traveling.

And then sometimes I realize that I totally missed a turn that I thought was a shortcut to my goal. So I step backwards and turn right and BANG! I'm way off course! It wasn't a shortcut after all! It was a road to somewhere else.

I've always had a destination in my dreams, but somehow I missed the sign that told me the bridge was out. I missed the signs that I need to stop and rebuild the bridge, so I can cross and continue my journey.

That's what I feel like today. Way off course. So tomorrow is a building day!