Circling Idlewild

She was flying above the Atlantic, pregnant, traveling alone to a place she had never seen to meet strangers, as the propeller droned. He would soon be on a beach in France, but she didn’t know that, then. She saw clear blue sky and seemingly unending water. There were men in uniform. She saw most had bandages or slings. Some were on crutches. There were also the dead men in the cargo hold she could not see. She got used to the drone of the propeller.

It had been a struggle to get her on the plane. Her husband said it would be impossible to get out of England just then. She continued to insist. He was a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, certainly you could find a way. She wanted time for her baby. It took a lot of negotiation and cash. And it took a promise that she carried with her to America in her purse.

She was afraid. Her fear was constant like the drone of the propellers. As the flight went on, her fear subsided and merged into the background. She got used to the fear. The fear never left her; it continued long after she left the plane, long after the boy was born. It stayed through the decades until she was very old.

She told the boy years later about war and time. War’s greatest disgrace is not murder, she said, it is theft. War first steals youth, its vitality and vigor. It steals the time one would normally spend on family and friends. War also steals the time one uses finding out what one aught to know and replaces it with learning things that never should have been revealed.

There was one more thing she told the boy about war: its larceny of time never ends. War slices so expertly a layer of time from your life that a piece from every part of your life is lost. You feel misplaced throughout your life, from the time war performs its crafty surgery until you can no longer feel anything at all. That wretchedness drones on and may recede into the background, but it is unceasingly present until you die.

Halfway across the ocean, she realized there was no more time. She knew that before the plane landed she would no longer be pregnant. That is what happened. The boy began life wrapped in parachute cloth. His experience of time started while circling through the light clouds above Idlewild Airport.

She had married him in England, she a graduate student, and he a U.S. Army Lieutenant. They met, courted and married in four weeks. It was August 1943 and they knew that war could intercede to take away their time. The boy heard their story in short pieces from American relatives; her parents and sisters died in The Blitz.

When they knew they would be married, he said she should go to live with his parents in New York. She could have the baby there. They would be safe in America, she and the baby, and he would join them as soon as he could. Though her parents and sisters were dead, she had two uncles and an aunt. She lived with the aunt. They were family and she was, at first, reluctant to leave them. Quickly, as her baby developed, she became more concerned about its safety. The baby needed to get out of the war. She wanted to be out of the war, too.

They delayed. It became spring and they were losing time. He became more reluctant and she more determined. An Air Force pilot he knew from university arrived and said he could arrange it all. It took another month, but she would leave in early May. The pilot had to pay for the paperwork and he asked a favor. She carried the letter for the pilot. It was addressed to her husband’s parents.

She boarded the military plane under a stunningly blue sky. It was warm and sweat dripped down the sides of his face from under his cap. I will be seeing you soon he said. She cried. He would probably die and she was big and fat and going to a strange country to live with strangers and there was somebody she did not know growing inside of her. They kissed, and she climbed a couple of steps and turned. He held her not too hard; her round belly pushed gently against the side of his face. Then she climbed into the plane and soon she was gone.

There was a window seat open and a big, burley sergeant with curly hair and a broad smile, stood up to let her in. His talking calmed her. I’ve taken care of plenty of babies, he said. His five sisters had at least one a piece. He himself had even delivered one of his nephews in the back of a bread truck. The boy would be the second baby he helped into the world.