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.