What Could Be Worse?

In the early days of the Boeing 707, I followed my lieutenant husband to the island of Okinawa. You may remember my listening lesson that occurred there. You do not know that while my mother and father, most of my uncles, my brother, my husband, his brother, and my father-in-law were all pilots. I was terrified of flying. Put a capital Ton terrified. 

In January 1960, my dog Taco and I started the serious job of moving halfway around the world—through the air. The dog jetted on the relatively new 707. I went on a four-engine prop job. I did not regularly keep a journal then but I did write this, probably thinking it would be the last thing I ever wrote:

Flight C827 to Okinawa on a chartered Flying Tigers DC7 from Travis AFB was delayed three and a half hours but finally raised its gear at 11:40pm, January 10th. My parents soothe my fears by phone, assuring me that non-scheduled airlines can be safe, that Flying Tigers is good.

Nine hours to Honolulu, two hours wait. Seven hours to Wake Island, one-hour stop-over. What a tiny, humid place! Gooney birds! Ten hours to Okinawa, arriving January 13that 11:45pm island time and date. Dave was waiting at the ramp for me.

Twenty-six hours, two dulled ears, and two fuel stops later, I arrived in Okinawa; tired but alive. It helped considerably that my mother outfitted me for the trip. Thanks to her travel wisdom I had comfortable slacks to change into once en route. I had writing materials, a familiar Bible, fellow travelers who taught me to play gin rummy, and a hardback copy of Michener’s book, HAWAII. Hawaii was a gift from my mother’s dearest friend, Agnes. Needless to say, time permitted my reading well into it. I loved it. And once I settled in Okinawa and finished it, I loaned it to fellow Air Force wives. The last woman I loaned it to managed never to return it. Months passed and my many requests for its return passed with them. My book, new, jacketed, and lovingly inscribed, seemed hopelessly gone. Months more passed, in fact, years. We were now parents of two little boys conceived and born in Okinawa. We were packing for our return to the States when I begged a final time for the return of my book (attached as I am to certain books). I urged the borrower to track it down. It was not a new book I wanted. I wanted mybook.

One afternoon I returned home from errands and at my front step was a bag holding my book. Joy of joys! It was tattered, and without its jacket, but there it was, Hawaii, by Michener. Yes! Then, I opened it. The inscription said,

To Wayne and Barbara

From Dorothy Hix

Christmas 1959

 To say the least, I was mystified. This was the right title but the wrong book. I called the borrower, hoping to clear up the mistake. It was remarkable that the inscription was to a Barbara, but there was no Wayne in my life and I still have no idea who Dorothy Hix is.

I was told huffily that it was the book she borrowed form me. She returned my book and that was that. That wasthat. I still have that jacketless, orphaned book on my shelf. I still resent the fact that my book, with the expression of love from Agnes, is somewhere else and this book is not mine. The problem? I loaned one thing and got back another.

What could be worse than to loan ourselves, not a book, only to learn that through neglect, power, audacity, cunning, charm, goodness, selfishness, nobility, or persuasion, a borrower has influenced us, affected us, even has changed us. What could be worse? Never changing, that is what. Never being influenced, never being affected, never being challenged, that is what could be worse.

When we loan ourselves, we run the risk of others affecting us. I know my behavior in the following story may prompt disapproval in some readers. I don not tell the story to be affirmed or corrected. I ask, as Charles Kuralt sometimes does on the “Sunday Morning” show, “If you write me, please do not write me about this.”

Coming up: Section Four THE STORY