Looking for strength to fight cancer
A beloved daughter faces chemo, so many years after, as an infant, she greeted her father returning from war in Korea.
I met Cindy in 1952 on a rainy night at the San Francisco airport.
She was a bundle of warmth, not quite a year old, born two months after I was shipped out with the Marines to fight a war in Korea.
"Meet your daughter," Cinelli said, handing me the tiny girl who studied me through large and wondering eyes. I held her cautiously, shifting her to a secure position in my arms.
For more than a year I had been carrying the metals of combat through the hills of Asia: a rifle, a bayonet, hand grenades, bandoleers of ammunition and a .45-caliber automatic. They were meant for killing, not nurturing.
And now I was holding the soft and vulnerable baby I had helped create.
We were standing under an awning where Cinelli, Cindy and a friend had been waiting for the plane to arrive from San Diego. I had been mustered out of the Corps at Camp Pendleton.
The rain began beating down harder, drumming the memory of that moment deep into my consciousness. I was a father. Now I knew it for sure. Overseas, Cindy had been only a baby picture.
We were in battalion reserve when a Marine Red Cross representative found me in the Fox Company bivouac area and informed me of my paternity.
"You Marteezee?" he asked. In the 1950s, the Corps was emotionally incapable of dealing with even the simplest ethnic names.
"Yo," I said, meaning yes. Yo was a multiple-use response. Yo, I'm here; yo, I understand; yo, I'm hungry; etc.
"You married?"
Years later I would ponder the question. What difference would it make to him whether or not I was married? Was there some sort of moral judgment involved here? Would he refuse to feed me or cut my pay if I were not?
"Yo," I said. I was indeed married. We did that sort of thing back then.
"Well, your wife had a baby. Sarah I think her name is. Congratulations."
Sarah?
It wasn't until weeks later that I learned her name was Cinthia, but I still call her Sarah occasionally; it's a joke we share, Sarah and I.
I write about her today because she, and all of our family, is involved in a different kind of war; more insidious in a way. Cindy has cancer.
It was discovered some weeks ago, a finding that took a part of her large intestine during subsequent surgery. The surgeon noticed that it had spread to her liver. Soon chemo will begin to shrink the tumor, and then it will be removed.
