There wasn't going to be much of a Christmas for us because we were getting our present early.
I just didn't have the energy to put up a tree as most of my time up till then was in the hospital. There was not much point anyway. I had the little ceramic one but it was too much effort. I gave it to the Welcome Baby people when we left. I didn't want to take any electrical things with us. Cockroaches nested in the warm places in them, especially a TV. We had a tiny little one. I wasn't going to chance bringing home livestock.
It was December sixteenth when we came home from the hospital. I had Tom take a photo of him on the porch. I said. "Don't get me in the shot," cause I was only wearing a nursing bra on the top. Like everyone else who'd taken pictures of me though the years, he ignored me and got us both.
Tommy was so tiny.
Something I forgot to mention before. Across the road from where this shot is taken and about one house down to the left was a huge tree on which grew lychees. Those red fruits looked like they were wearing armor.
I ate some at one of the parties I went to when I was working but someone had to explain to me what they were. the red armor like peel was removed and they looked like bumpy eggs but they were fruit.
Later I found out that in Chinatown in New York City they took the seeds from the centers and roasted them like nuts to sell on street corners.
On New Years Eve people went nuts. There were rumors that fireworks were going to become illegal soon. Everybody was rushing around like mad buying up all they could. Tom bought a huge package of them for fifty dollars. It was like world war three there with all of them going off on that night. There was noise all night long. Smoke filled all the houses and apartments. Its true some of them were rare beauties but I'll bet a lot of those poor families could have used food more.
There is now and was then a big problem with homeless people in Hawaii. A lot of them "live" in public parks. They sleep on beaches and get awakened and told they have to move. People, even tourist think they can set up a tent and stay on the beach but its illegal.
There was no sleep for anyone that night. Tommy may have crashed out at one point. I don't know if the noise bothered him. I don't know how it could have possibly NOT bothered him. He had sore eyes from all the smoke in the morning and I had to put eye drops in them.
In the morning all the streets were awash with red paper. That was the material they packed inside the fireworks. I'm not sure why but it littered the streets and lawns all over.
This was Tom taken in the dark lighting one up. Oh, yeah, it was my "job" to watch the boy at play.
He did have a great time doing it and like I said before some of them were really beautiful.
One guy had risked his life climbing a telephone pole to nail pinwheels to the post. He strung a fire cord all the way down so he could safely light it up from the ground. It didn't impress me.
It seemed like in the morning we started packing up stuff. We wouldn't leave for four months but he wanted to ship by the US post office a lot of the small stuff. He didn't trust the Army and rightly so as you will see later.
The boxes were addressed to him with his fathers address. He assumed they would remain unopened till he got there. Well you know what they say about the word assume? His father sure made an ass out of him.
When we got there four months later the boxes were tossed in a corner of the garage, all opened, all with the contents spewing out. His father said the kids must have gotten in them. The kids were adults for the most part and knew better. A lot of our things were missing or broken. Yeah, I'm getting ahead of my story.
That's him making a mess of the living room for me to clean up while he happily contemplated being out of the army and going home. Me? Not so much.
I really didn't want to leave Hawaii. Who would? I wanted to stay there and find work there but he said he had to go home and I knew Mom would expect to meet her Grandson and Sue needed me even then.