6. LA to Chicago to North Carolina

So we head out of LA, fly to Chicago, stay one night there to get over jet lag, get to Wisconsin, and life changes!  But this blog isn't about us in the US.  It's about me and life in Okinawa.  The little detour here means quite a bit so be patient and I will get back to Okinawa eventually.  Well after a page or two!

Anyway, we got married on Friday 13th of June 1986 in front of a judge at the court house.  I wanted a church wedding, but the priest at the church I grew up at told us that unless we went through the necessary marriage classes prior to getting married there was no way that I could get married in the church because my wife wasn't Catholic.  (Until that time in my life I like to think that I was a Catholic, not always the best person, but with good intentions.  This event here made me feel like the Church was rejecting my wife as a person, and me as well for picking her.  I've never been truly back.)

I was limited in time because I had to go on to my next duty station in the Marine Corp, I was being sent to Cherry Point, NC which is in the tiny town of Havelock (HaveNOT) NC.  I went ahead and my wife stayed with my sister and came out to NC about a month later.

We lived in a small, but comfortable, 2 bedroom apartment, the time went quickly, and before we knew it, a little over 1 year and two weeks after getting married our daughter was born!  A few months after that, I had attempted to request orders back to Okinawa, but the Marine Corps told me I had to stay on station where I was for at least 4 more years before I could go back, so, I got out.

This is the shortened version, but besides me getting chicken pox, right before our daughter was born, and some correspondence between my wife's father, and cousin and us.  Things in Havelock were pretty uneventful.

But that correspondence was a big one!  You see my wife never told her parents she was going to the states to get married.  She told her Mom and Dad that she was going to Hawaii to visit her former English teacher from college.  But then she never went home!  Eventually she sent a letter telling her Mom and Dad that she got married and that she had given birth to their granddaughter,  the responses were interesting to say the least.  My wife's Dad can not speak English so he got a relative to write a letter to me explaining his situation and his disappointment with me for not meeting him before getting married.

But I never had a chance!  We moved back to Okinawa after Christmas 1988.  Then the "fun" began!