The Free Spirit

The End of Housewifery, 1962 (Part Two)

"It doesn't matter what they say, I know I'm gonna love you any old way..."

I was awake for close to forty-eight hours from the sixth of March to the eighth, a Thursday. I was too excited to sleep on the boat the night before we were scheduled to dock and when we arrived in Poplar, I was dropped off at my Poplar home. I left my summer stuff behind and replaced it with my winter clothes, and I went straight to the airport to fly home with only a carry on bag (I would be back in London on Tuesday with my children). I flew first to New York City and caught a connecting flight to Nashville, which landed at three-thirty in the morning on Friday the ninth. Margaret and Ike met me at the airport with my children, whom I had a very cheerful reunion with after not having seen them in two months. "You've gotten quite a tan, Catherine," Margaret said to me in regards to my somewhat darker skin tone.

"It was constant sun in South Africa, barely any cloudy days," I replied. As we waited for the five o'clock flight to Los Angeles, Ike was coughing rather roughly. "I don't like the sound of that cough," I told him, holding a sleeping Elton on my lap.

"I worked in the mines since I was a teenager, Catherine. It comes with the job," Ike told me.

"Please let me listen to your breathing at some point this weekend," I asked him. He didn't want to trouble me or any doctors, so he kept relatively quiet about it, but I was persistent about checking him. Our flight landed in Los Angeles around ten in the morning - it was a six hour flight, minus the two hour time difference between Los Angeles and Nashville. Don was scheduled to arrive home around noon. I put the kids down for a nap as Ike and Margaret made us breakfast in the kitchen, and all I did was lie down on my bed just for a couple of minutes. I wasn't expecting to fall asleep.

Don and Phil came home around noon on Friday the ninth of March and were greeted by their parents. Don found himself drowning in his two children, who tackled him when he sat down on the ground with them. All the while, I was asleep upstairs, and the following scene was dictated to me later.

"There's my two beautiful babies! Daddy missed you both so much!" Don exclaimed as he laid on the floor with his two children crawling all over him. Once he regained control, he sat up and hugged both of them tightly, kissing both of their beautiful brown curls. "Have you both been good for Grandma and Grandpa while Mama's been away?"

"Grampa took me to fishing," said Elton innocently.

"Fishing? Wow, I wish I had gone fishing, too! Stacey, honey, did you go fishing with Grandpa and Elton?" Don asked his daughter.

"Fish stinky!" she cried, and Don let out a laugh.

"I had taken her, too, but Elton caught a fish and it scared her so I brought her back home to Mom," Ike told him.

"My poor baby girl!" Don said, kissing her head. "Now where's your Mama? Daddy's been lookin' forward to seein' her so badly!"

"Poor Catherine hasn't slept in two days, Don. She's upstairs fast asleep in bed," Margaret told him. Don had decided to go upstairs and lie down with me, as he, too, was quite exhausted. He took off his Marine Blues and curled up next to me, dozing off quickly. I had slept very deeply, but still woke up sometime in the early evening. I was on my right side facing the window, and Don's arm was draped over me, much as it had been the day we woke up married to one another. At first, I didn't notice it as I groggily lay there waking up, and as I rolled onto my back to stretch, I bumped into something behind me. Sleepily turning my head, I realised that the sleeping lump beside me was my very handsome and deeply slumbering husband, still looking so incredibly handsome as he lay asleep beside me. His hair was very short, but had grown since the picture that he had sent me, and he looked very peaceful as he slept properly for the first time in months. I didn't want to wake him, but I couldn't resist tightly hugging him and kissing his face, waking him up. I heard him chuckle gently underneath me as he, too, rubbed the sleep from his eyes.