I have a very small family. I’m an only child. In Jack’s family, his parents had his brother and him, and neither Jack nor his brother aspired to having children. So if I want to ask about memories, I have few choices.
Of those few people, there are some interesting experiences. My grandfather came from Lithuania when he was a baby, and through Ellis Island. My grandmother spoke nothing but German until she went to school and grew up in the farming communities of South Dakota. On my dad’s side, his parents grew up and married deep in the mountains around Asheville, North Carolina, when horses and wagons were the mode of transportation for getting farm products to town. But I think the person I’d like to talk to again, given the chance, is my dad.
He got his sister to sign enlistment papers so he could join the Navy before he was 18, and he stayed in for more than 20 years. That’s what I’d like to ask him about. Growing up, I rarely heard him talk about anything Navy related. He really much for talking at all, really. But I would like to know what standing watch was like, how did it feel in the middle of the ocean, knowing there was nothing but water for hundreds of miles, in any direction. How did it feel in a storm? What did he feel when he rose in the morning to a sunrise over the sea, or think about the adage “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning”? Is that true?
Dad worked as a boiler tender, deep in the bowels of the both destroyers 
and aircraft carriers and far below the water line. Did he ever have any harrowing experiences? What was it like working in those conditions? How did he sleep in an area filled with other guys, and did he get homesick?
Dad was on ships that cruised both the Atlantic and the Pacific. I wonder what was different about them, and how it felt visiting ports of call all over the world. There’s so much I’d like to know now. Why didn’t I ever ask him about his life and memories? I guess because as a child I wasn’t interested, and as an adult I figured there would always be time.
So, whose memories would you like to probe (or wish you had probed)? If you still have the chance to ask questions, don’t let the opportunity pass!
Read the next blog in the blog hop by going here.
Dee
Burning Bridges by Anne Krist: old letters put the lie to Sara’s life. Now, mending her past mistakes while crossing burning bridges will be the hardest thing she’s ever done.