While looking for a new home when we returned to Louisville, Kentucky, we lived for several months with my husband’s mother whom I had always been happy to look upon more as a dear friend rather than just a mother-in-law. My mother lived nearby so after military years in cramped quarters, it was comforting to be back in our hometown surrounded by a support group of actual relatives.
A Marine Corps wife becomes independent because, for the most part, she is left behind to care for the family. Unlike other services, with few exceptions, a Marine leaves his or her family behind upon deployment. The bonds between the families left behind become very strong as with the men who leave to perform their duties. Experienced wives who are accustomed to shouldering those deployment burdens help neighbors with young families new to the severe hardships of long months filled with loneliness, frustration, and fear. Marines and their wives become uncles and aunts to numerous neighborhood children.
Approaching Retirement meant realigning our lives to a civilian perspective and being absorbed back into our family folds on a daily basis.
One by one my mother-in-law, the four children, and I checked off the homes for sale lists put forth by well-meaning family members. I had my heart set on an older home that presented itself near a golf course. The children voted for that house because of a giant “Tarzan” tree growing in the side yard. But it was the head of the household who announced finding a perfect home for his eager family.
Illinois Avenue quickly became a comfortable home and the children discovered friends in the neighborhood and in their new schools.
We had barely moved beds and dressers into our house on the hill when my husband told his Commanding Officer at the U.S. Naval Station on Southside Drive that, yes his wife could copy a painting for him titled, “U.S. Marines At Belleau Wood”.
Sigh! After years of military life, all I wanted to do was set up housekeeping. But I painted that first commission in my makeshift studio basement instead of arranging the kitchen above me.
Little did the head of the household know what door he had opened with that offer.