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told me, “If this is going to drive a wedge between you and your family, we’ll find another way. Maybe we should wait—”
    “We could wait until doomsday and they’d never come around. I don’t want to wait.”
    Only my grandmother gave her blessing, wishing us joy and reminding us to be good to each other.
    I considered the possibility that my parents’ extreme reaction was caused by fear of losing me. Unfortunately, I never really believed that. Their disappointment was so deep and bitter that we never recovered from it or breached the rift. In a way, that was their gift to me. Now I was free to devote all my energy to loving Steve and making a life with him.
    As for my parents, they seemed willing to write me off. It was their loss, I told myself. They never had the chance to know Steve. I promised to keep them in the loop, sending photos and cheerful letters, but only Gran seemed to appreciate my efforts.
    It hurt to be forced into making a choice between the man I love and what my parents wanted for me. My heart paid a toll when I became estranged from them in this way.
    “I feel like an orphan,” I said to Steve.
    “Welcome to the club,” he said, and pulled me into his arms. Then he told me about his own mother, a drug addict living in a crummy apartment on Telephone Road in Houston. She had simply drifted away one day when he was little, and the neighbors turned him in to child welfare. I was horrified by that. I couldn’t imagine a mother who would turn away from her child for any reason.
    My parents threw me away because I refused to live the life they wanted for me. That wasn’t my job, but that’s what they raised me to do. Steve was abandoned by a mother who couldn’t help herself. Mine was completely rational when she turned her back on me. In our own ways, we each paid a toll. Sometimes we felt like two shipwreck survivors, adrift in the world.
    My heart was heavy, but as the miles sped back on the journey to the Naval Station at Pensacola, I counted my blessings and my anticipation soared.
    Like all girls, I pictured myself as the bride in a grand wedding. Was I let down by the private ceremony conducted by a Navy chaplain, attended only by Steve’s friend and fellow officer Whitey Love, who stood up as witness? Honestly, I was not. The marriage ceremony was merely a formality to be dispensed with as soon as possible so we could start our life together.
    My wedding night, spent in a room at the Navy Lodge overlooking Parking Lot B-19, more than made up for the low-key ceremony, the lack of pomp and circumstance. That night, there were fireworks and comets and whirlwinds, and I found such joy in the arms of my bridegroom that I was overwhelmed with emotion.
    When I admitted my inexperience, he seemed startled and perhaps even moved. He kissed me tenderly and said, “I didn’t know you’d saved yourself for marriage.”
    “I didn’t,” I said. “I saved myself for you.”

Chapter Twelve
    Steve and I had no honeymoon, but that hardly mattered. Every day with him was a honeymoon. No luxurious resort could have made me feel more pampered, more special, more in love with my new husband.
    Since we knew we’d be going to Italy soon, we lived in a tiny furnished apartment. Quickly realizing that the garage sale was a huge part of Navy life, I learned to shop for the sort of household items you don’t really want to spend much money on, but that you know you’ll like having around—that extra radio, an unopened box of candles, the odds and ends that might sit around a civilian household for years. In a Navy household, a possession had to earn its right to be there, to be wrapped, moved and unwrapped over and over again.
    Sometimes I couldn’t resist a whimsical item. I found a thick ceramic pitcher in the shape of a chicken, its mouth open to form a spout. However, when the time came to pack our belongings and move overseas, the pitcher just didn’t make the cut. I sold it in a