Saving Graces - Elizabeth Edwards [12]
My mother never knew a hometown any more than I did. There was land in Hazelhurst, Mississippi, that her mother’s family owned, land she and her siblings still own today, but it was no more home to her than my grandparents’ houses in Pittsburgh or Pensacola were to me. She too had grown up on naval bases around the country, moving every few years, with her elementary school days in Norfolk, her junior prom at California’s famous Hotel Del Coronado, and graduation from high school at Punaho in Hawaii, as if in a prequel to my own life.
After Pearl Harbor, Liz, as my mother was known, left college to work at the air station in Kingsville, Texas, where her father was stationed, and there, through a friend, she met a young pilot from Illinois, Carl Hallen. When he was transferred to Hanford, Washington, she traveled by train—with a wedding dress and veil—to marry him under crossed swords, surrounded by near-strangers, since neither her family nor her friends could afford to travel in wartime. She moved to San Diego when his squadron moved and went home to her family—then in Pensacola, Florida—when the squadron was deployed to the Pacific theater.
It was there that she was living when she got a telegram that Carl’s plane had lost its positioning and flown nose-down into the Pacific. No body was recovered; there was no funeral to attend. Mother accepted the news with the same silent strength she had seen women draw on to accept similar news her whole life; her grief would be private. Mother simply went back to college, this time to Florida State College for Women in Tallahassee. This time as Mary Elizabeth Hallen, widow.
I suppose every little girl grows up thinking her mother is beautiful. When I was eight I drew a picture of a woman’s face with X’s at the corners of the mouth—my mother had just had surgery to remove cysts on her chin—and I labeled it “Beautiful Woman,” so I was no exception to the rule. But as I look back at photographs of my mother, I can see now that she really was a great beauty, long-legged and lean—she had been named “Best-Placed Protoplasm” in high school, a title my brother and sister and I found hilarious. She had soft brown curls and clear blue eyes above Rita Hayworth cheekbones. She said Carl Hallen fell for her when he saw her in jodhpurs and boots, with beads of sweat running down her cotton blouse, after she’d been out horseback riding in Kingsville. My father fell for her when he saw her dressed in layers of organdy. I’ve seen pictures of her in Esther Williams-style bathing suits, in short shorts, in gowns, and in suits; I’ve seen pictures of her with her hair in pigtails and in long curls and in bobs. It never mattered: she was always the most splendid girl in the crowd. Of course my father fell for her, as had a long line of young men before him.
They met at a wedding rehearsal dinner. My grandfather, a great sports fan, had spotted my father, whom he recognized as that terrific end on the flight school football team, and he cornered him to talk football. On the ride home, my grandfather asked Mother if she’d met Vince Anania. No, she said, who was he? The tall, dark-haired young man at dinner. No, she didn’t remember him. Granddaddy went on so excitedly that at the wedding Mother did seek him out. Well, he was tall, dark, and pretty good-looking, she thought. When she turned him down for a date a few weeks later because of a planned family trip to Mobile, my grandfather was beside himself. From that point on, her family could not have been more helpful to the courtship.
It was not as easy on the other side of the family. The fact that my mother had been married before was a source of tension for my father’s mother. In addition, Nana took her Catholicism very seriously, and my mother was a Methodist.