Ocean Springs, Mississippi, is where we lived while my father was in Vietnam. After he received his orders in Worms, Germany, my mother made the decision that we would move there while he was away.
Before that, we had spent five of the previous six years living in Germany due to my father’s Army assignment, and I attended first through third grade and then fifth through sixth grade at American schools on Army posts there.
Ocean Springs was another move and another wait for us, until we moved again.
This photograph holds pieces of both worlds, Germany and what came after. The dolls in the photo represent different countries across Europe, reminders of the places we had seen. Before we left Worms, Germany, my parents took me to a jewelry store where I picked out the ring on my finger. I still remember the shop, not far from an ice cream place I loved near the Luther Monument in downtown Worms.
The record player sitting on the chest was a Christmas gift from the year I turned eleven. I had been saving my money to buy one myself, determined to make it happen. My mother eventually let it slip that one would be waiting for me under the tree. The globe was another Christmas gift from an earlier year. The books, I do not recall, but the chest itself was mine, a “hope chest,” as it was called then. It was a place to keep things meant for the future, something many girls were given, whether or not they fully understood what that future might hold.
We lived about twenty to thirty blocks from the beach and often walked there. Life in Ocean Springs had its own rhythm. There were teenage dances, evenings spent riding around town, and drives along the shoreline. Gas was about thirty cents a gallon, and when we went riding, each of us would put in a dollar. That was enough for nearly a full tank, and enough for an evening of freedom.
Music filled that time as much as anything else. I remember hearing “American Pie” by Don McLean almost daily during study hall. “Doctor My Eyes” by Jackson Browne and “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper seemed to mark the passing of time, especially as school came to a close and another move approached. And there was “Color My World” by Chicago, a song that seemed to follow every slow dance, then and even now.
The plan had been to remain in Ocean Springs after my father completed his tour in Vietnam. But plans, especially in a military life, often change. After nearly two years there, we moved once again, this time to Fort Knox for what would be my father’s last Army assignment, another move that quietly marked the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.
