A CLEARING HORIZON... with just a little fog (Part 67h)

Lance got back just before 7am and, hearing him, I got right up. I wanted to tell him the status of the move and indicated that, hopefully, we’d be out by noon. He had to be back on base at 6pm and wouldn’t be back until noon on Sunday. We were talking in the kitchen as Judy was still asleep. He told me that he was concerned about Judy because she wasn’t all that happy that she’d be all alone on her first night in the trailer. I told him that it was her third night but my attempt at humor didn’t “fly”.

The move went way better than anything else had gone with this whole exercise. The “boys” were there on time and all the things that needed to be done went without a hitch. Being a Saturday (and Winter time) both Jim and Andy were there to help out. Judy took care of the kids and Elle supervised where the things coming from the old trailer were to go. When it came time to move the TV I told Lance that it was his "Christmas present". With all the things that had to be put away in the new trailer I was sure Elle wouldn’t miss it. The last of our things left the old trailer before noon. Elise, Mac’s wife had made up sandwiches for lunch and Jim’s wife promised us a supper which took a lot of pressure off Elle.

For my part, I was truly amazed at just how much more storage space we now had. The trailer was only 19 feet longer but it seemed like we doubled the space. With Ann, the younger one at around 15 months, Elle felt that she was too young to be sleeping in a bed so we put the crib in the third bedroom. That meant that Jean, the older one would be sleeping alone for the first time. By the time that Jim knocked on the door with our supper, we’d managed to get almost everything put away. The only complaint we had was that everything in the trailer was cold since it had been without heat since it left the factory. The heat worked fine but when you touched anything that had been in the trailer it was cold.

We were putting the girls to bed when it came to me that Judy was alone. Lance had told me that she was not all that happy about it and, after thinking about it a bit, mentioned it to Elle. I’d been looking forward to being in our new home and that first night in it but I couldn’t get my image of Judy at the airport out of my mind. She was scared out of her mind. She’d “warmed up” being around us and the kids but now she was alone again... and it was the Christmas season. I hesitated for a while before asking Elle if we shouldn't go ask her to join us. If I were to describe the look on her face it would have been one of resignation. She knew it was the right thing to do even if she didn’t want to. Our phone wasn’t going to be changed and connected until after Christmas so I had to go down to the trailer to see if she wanted to come over. It took three separate times knocking on the door to get her to answer and then she only spoke through the closed door. When she finally recognized my voice she opened the door. She had every light on that she could and there was no doubt that the look on her face was one of fear. If I was one of those “huggy” types I would have gone up and wrapped my arms around her. But I didn’t. I invited her to come on over to our trailer. Nothing more than to just come over. I didn’t have to plead.

Elle showed Judy through the whole trailer with everything pretty much in place and when done we sat in our new living room. We all seemed so far apart what with the extra eight feet. By then she was fairly comfortable and suddenly blurted out that my mother had called and she’d forgotten to tell me when I was at the trailer. She dug the key to the trailer out of her pocket and handed it over to me. I couldn’t imagine why my mother would call but headed out to find what was up.

It wasn’t anything important. As I’ve written before, Sundays were the designated day I’d drive my grandfather to the hospital to see my grandmother. With Christmas on Monday he wanted to wait until then to go to see her so I didn’t have to go over to see him. While chatting with her I remembered that Lance would be on duty on Christmas day until 6pm, meaning that Judy would be alone all day. Impulsively, I asked if it would be OK to bring Judy for Christmas dinner. There was silence on the other end of the line and then, the soft side of my mother came out and she answered, “Sure. Why not?”

I was just about to leave when I saw Judy’s diary lying on the sofa. I knew it was wrong but I went over and started to read it. There were some very flattering things written about both Elle and I but it was when I flipped back to the day she arrived that I got excited. In detail was everything that had happened that day. I was skimming through it knowing that if I took too long Elle would wonder what was wrong but I ended up reading and then re-reading what she'd written that day.

To be continued...