Guam

In 1946 we went to Guam (if you look on a globe you can see that Guam, one of the Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean, is closer to Southeast Asia and the Philippines than it is to the United States, in other words it's really, really far away from this country). My father had flown there already on a military plane, and Nani, my older sisters May and Mia, and I took a train across the country, from Virginia to Long Beach, California, and then we sailed on a Navy ship across the Pacific Ocean to Guam, which my father called "the paradise of the Pacific." All I know about New Canaan and Quantico is what I have been told, but I can remember living on Guam, and I can feel its breezes to this day when I go to any place tropical.

When we arrived there, the war against the Japanese had only been over for about a year and a half, and there were still some Japanese soldiers who didn't know it was over hiding up in the hills. Once one of them came down from his cave, went into the admiral's garden next door to us to find something to eat, and the Marines came and took him away. I wasn't afraid, because the soldier was really thin and didn't look very dangerous, but my sisters and parents made a pretty big deal about it. (Plus, I haven't been afraid of anything much in my life, really. I have always felt safe, and strong enough to handle most situations. When I was little, there was the problem of my sisters: I wasn't afraid of them, but I learned to avoid them whenever possible -- they didn't seem to like me and made things tough for me whenever we had to spend time together. On the other hand, I knew that my mother and father loved me, so it all worked out in the end.)

While on Guam, I remember a very big typhoon (the Japanese word for hurricane), during which I was escorted -- pushed, really -- very quickly by the wind at my back, across our yard and into the safety of our house, while next door Admiral Pownall's roof was blown off. There were dozens of jungle rats all over the house when the typhoon was over; they had come up from the flooded jungle just below the cliff our house sat on, and they were everywhere -- in our closets, under the duck-board in my shower, even in our clothes drawers. My father and mother took care of them somehow -- I've never wanted to know more than that -- and not surprisingly I've had an issue with mice and rats all of my life. Don't like snakes either, by the way, but there's weren't any snakes on Guam.

In spite of all this, I loved being there -- I loved the constant fragrance of flowers everywhere we went. I liked being able to swim in a lagoon or in the ocean whenever I wanted. (I was never taught to swim, I just did it naturally and I loved it.) I had a lot of my father's attention -- I didn't know him very well because he'd been away at the war almost all of my life, but he tried very hard to make me his friend, and I was pleased by that. I remember his driving me in his Jeep down to the beach one day; he put me on his lap and let me steer the Jeep for as long as I wanted. We went really fast and I drove us in big loops, up and down the sand, into the water, then back up the beach. When we left to go home, Daddy said not to tell my mother about it, or we'd both be in trouble.

I didn't have very many toys, but I had my first best friend, Ada Shepard, right next door, and I had a swing set. My family was pretty happy there; I have seen some old family movies of that time, and we all looked happy. My parents and sisters were CERTAINLY happy that the war was over, and that Daddy had lived through it to come home to us. We were only there for a year and a half, but it was a good experience for us all for recovering from a terrible war.

Snow and War

When I was born (February 15, 1943) my father was nine thousand miles away. He was an officer in the Marine Corps and the world was in the middle of a terrible war; his job took him to the Island of Guadalcanal, somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean, where he was fighting for his life, and for all our lives as well.

While my father was away, my mother and my two sisters May and Mia moved to a house on Silvermine Road in New Canaan, Connecticut (not very far from where you live now), together with my mother's sister Rowan, whose husband was in the Navy and also away at the war in the Pacific. Aunt Rowan had her first baby, my cousin Jared Howard, two weeks before I was born. I have always thought of Jared as my twin because of how we started our lives together in the snow in New England.

There were two snowstorms, one after the other, at the time I was born; in the first one, Nani (the name she was later called by your dad and her other grandchildren) was shoveling snow, fell and chipped her front tooth on a rock hidden in a snowdrift. Because of the second blizzard on my birthday she didn't have time to get her tooth capped and she was embarrassed to be seen with a big beautiful new baby, herself looking like a jack o' lantern. I think she was probably beautiful at the time -- all mothers of new babies are beautiful. (Your mother was simply lovely when each of you was born; your dad was mostly grinning.)

Our next door neighbor Bill Prescott was a true friend to Nani there in New Canaan; he had an important job in New York City as principal book reviewer of the New York Times, and he commuted there every day by train. He kept his car ready, though, and full of gas (which was hard to get in wartime), and he promised to get Nani to the hospital whenever she needed him to do so. It was a tough promise to keep, since she called him at one in the morning, in the second of those two terrific blizzards, but he came through like a champ and drove her (us!), in miserable conditions, to the next town of Norwalk, where the hospital was. He became my godfather, and my middle name (Prescott) was given to me in honor of his great gallantry.

Anyway, there we all were in New Canaan, Connecticut -- aunts, mothers, sisters, cousins -- with summer vacations on Martha's Vineyard.

When World War II was over, my father continued his career in the Marine Corps and our family routine picked up where it left off, moving all over the country and beyond, just about every year or two. I never knew anything different, could never imagine living in one place for very long. It takes me longer to move now -- 3 to 5 years! -- but I still have the habit of going out to see some part of the world I don't know anything about.