We needed this steadying hand, this dedicated time solely for addressing the static between us. Ross explained his perspective on TOPGUN in a way that I could finally understand: “We do nothing but point out the flaws in everyone’s execution of everything—even personal flaws. We do it much so that that’s how you know you’re accepted. That’s the whole point—to get better.” Articulated like that, with a fondness in his voice that I’ll admit I found maddening, I could see it—to Ross, the time in Fallon was hard because it was important. He had been handed huge responsibilities and was expected to hew to an exacting standard. It was inevitable that some of that would come home.
I had something I needed to explain to Ross as well. What our time in Fallon meant to me, and what I realized only after battling my way through it, was that I no longer wanted to have divorce as my nuclear option. Admitting this to Ross—that I’d considered the idea, enough to have come up with the beginnings of a plan—was difficult for two reasons. First, he has always maintained that any talk of divorce has always been one-sided, that he has never and would never consider it an option. Talking openly of the possibility of leaving someone who claims that they would never leave you is difficult, even reviewing it in hindsight together. Second, and more pointedly, my taking divorce off the table directly affected the tone of the negotiation we needed to take up next.
Shore duty was coming to an end, and again, three possible duty stations lay before us—Lemoore, Virginia Beach, and Japan. We were assigned a billet back in Lemoore, and though I had initially been disappointed to miss out on Virginia Beach a second time, I was ecstatic about reuniting with Stella and Jake. The next two years would have us on the hook for possible deployments; but more important, we faced a final decision about whether or not we would take a substantial Department Head retention bonus and recommit to the Navy. By saying I wouldn’t divorce him, I was in one way weakening my hand, but ironically, declaring that intention was the wall I needed at my back to dig in and fight to keep us all together while fortifying and defending my own boundaries.
CHAPTER 22
Amonth before we moved back to Lemoore, Ross’s father died. My parents came out to take care of Sam and Wes, and Ross and I flew back to Texas for the funeral. In his crisp, perfect whites, Ross spoke beautifully and candidly to the gathering of friends and family about his father, stood tall and quiet with his brother and his mother in the pews, and bowed his head at the graveside after his father was laid to rest. If there was an unexpected breakdown happening, it was mine. I sniffled through our plane ride, wept openly through the entire funeral service, and was unable to say even one cogent thing to any of the assembled mourners. People who had known and loved Danny for decades before I met him were comforting me, and this only made me cry harder.
I would have been hard-pressed to explain it at the time, but partly I was mourning the father I had seen in Ross long before we’d ever had kids, back when we were dating. I’ve heard men joke that a good way to see how a potential wife will age is to look at her mother. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that women could learn a good deal about a potential husband by looking at his father. Danny had a warm, easygoing nature and he shared a deep connection with Ross, and he’d passed on a vast body of knowledge—a knack for all things mechanical, a passion for camping and hiking, an appreciation of slapstick and Peter Sellers movies, and a love of classic country music. In him, I saw someone who had poured his heart into being a father.
While these impressions were accurate, they were also things I learned about Danny at a time in his life when the acceleration of his disease meant he wasn’t working anymore, that he was home and emotionally present and willing to talk about his best memories in a way that’s probably only possible when you know you’ll soon be forgetting almost all of it. I never knew him in the years he was focused on earning a living as a soil scientist and working at various national laboratories and research firms. It’s quite possible that he was just as focused on his work as my own father, whom I’ve subjected to much closer, harsher scrutiny. I loved Danny because he was a wonderful man, but also because he was a prism who refracted for me the most beautiful image of fatherhood, all of the beauty I had known and none of the warts. At his funeral I cried for all the things that still stood in the way of Ross and me being our best selves as parents. I cried for the time we’d lost fighting, for the doubts I’d harbored, and for the good man I still loved hopelessly. And lastly, I cried for the way ahead, where I still couldn’t see how we would make room for our family on a military calendar.
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