The Waiting by Cathy LaGrow

Author:Cathy LaGrow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION / Christian Life / Inspirational, RELIGION / Christian Life / Family
ISBN: 9781414395920
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2014-05-05T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

1955–1961

MINKA HUGGED her mother and sister good-bye at the airport. Jennie grasped Minka’s arms, giving her a long, searching look that shared the words they didn’t speak: You can do this. You’ve faced adversity before. You are strong and are making the right decision.

Jennie and Jane stood side by side, watching Minka and the two children cross the tarmac and walk up the steep stairs into the airplane.

“Good-bye!” Donnie called to them.

Minka held her children’s hands, helping them board. She kept her sadness inside, as did Jane and Jennie. Tears were reserved for privacy.

The excitement of Donnie and Dianna’s first flight was tempered by all they were leaving behind.

“Is Daddy coming too?” Donnie asked timidly. Minka couldn’t offer a good explanation. Though she wanted her children to understand, how could she explain without speaking badly of their father? Her answers were vague and nondescript. “He has to stay and work.” “He loves you but he can’t come right now . . . he’ll come later.”

Dianna didn’t ask. She’d witnessed more of the fighting, heard her mother crying behind closed doors, and felt her heart race at Roy’s increasingly violent threats and manic behavior.

Inside the plane, the children stared out the small windows in amazement. For a moment, Minka wished Roy were there to tell his eight-year-old daughter and six-year-old son just how safe air travel had become—nothing like war, nothing like his nightmares. This flight was quite different from Roy’s European sorties. Here, pretty ladies in starched caps and tailored uniforms passed out coffee and lunch. The children tried to ignore the sharp pain jabbing their ears, as thick cigarette smoke floated around the closed cabin.

California offered hope. That same summer of 1955, Walt Disney opened a theme park like no other in Anaheim, California, with the inviting words: To all who come to this happy place: Welcome.

Four hundred miles north in the same golden state, Minka hoped she’d brought her children to a happier place, that in this unfamiliar Bay Area they’d find safe, brand-new lives. She tried to bury the residual fears about leaving behind her husband and being away from her mother and sister, and the sense that the final tie to Betty Jane was being irrevocably broken by moving so far away.

After landing, Minka, Dianna, and Donnie were greeted at the gate by John and Dorothy. As they headed to John’s car, Minka realized that she and her children had stepped into a California landscape that did not resemble her vision of tropical heat and warm beaches. This was a region of light and shadows. A cool summer breeze teased the sunshine outside the city of Oakland, while across the bay, San Francisco was hidden in fog so thick that every skyscraper had disappeared.

Jutting out from the gray mist were the massive towers and concrete pilings of the Bay Bridge, connecting Oakland to San Francisco. Boats skimmed across the choppy waters of the bay, steering clear of massive cargo ships coming from all over the world to deliver and pick up supplies at the Port of Oakland.

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