Spring, 1965

When a G.I. family arrives in another country, they can get most of what they need from others who hve been there and are going home. It's the same with a baby's necessities. We had acquired a small crib. About half the size of cribs you see in the states. We would be going home before J outgrew it, and it would be passed on to another family. There were gifts of new things mailed to us by family, and the rest were passed around things. As a child outgrows something, there is always someone in the service family who needs it. The only thing we bought new, was a counter top, portable washing machine we found at the PX . With no laundromat in the village and too far from the base for daily washing, I needed it for the diapers and baby things. It had to be filled by hand with my precious hot water. It would wash a half dozen diapers at a time. And, I do mean wash. That's all it did. Then I could lay a hose in the sink to let it drain. Everything had to be rinsed out by hand, wrung out and hung all over the apartment. Till the weather was nice enough to hang them on my little balcony. There were diapers and tiny clothes in every step of the process all the time.

During this time, I received a letter from a friend back home. She had a new husband and a new home, (house, not apartment) and she was upset because her new full size washer and dryer hadn't been delivered on time and she had to go to a laundromat another week. I looked around at a sink full of diapers, more boiling on the stove and damp things hanging all over, and I had to laugh. I thought of taking some pictures and sending them to her. Everyone should have to do things the hard way for a month or two. It will change your outlook in a good way.

(Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. I didn't feel like complaining back then. It was an adventure...the experience of a lifetime. I knew it was temporary, and everyone around me was in the same boat. And, I was lucky enough to see it like that even then. If I would complain about anything, it would be that G didn't share the experience with me.)

Early that spring, when J was a couple months old, we had one of those suddenly warm beautiful days that coaxes everyone outside. With a tiny baby, I had been pretty much stuck at home. I was sitting on our front steps, just me and J. We had new neighbors in the lower apartment of the other half of our building, and I hadn't met them yet. An American woman, about my age, came out and sat on her steps, just 10 feet from my steps. When we introduced ourselves, I got a big surprise. She had my maiden name. Which isn't at all common. I knew my family added a "y" to the end of the name about 4 generations before. Their name was still spelled the original way. Duprey and Dupre. Her husbands family was from Louisiana (she was from Iowa) but, I still wondered if there could be a relationship. We exchanged information and we both wrote to our Grandparents. Both families sent us the same names and it looked like the ancestor on my side who had added the "y" could have been a brother to his ancestor. Not 4, but 5 generations before. Can you imagine my excitement in finding a "cousin" I never knew existed, thousands of miles away? I felt like I suddenly had family living right next door. They had a boy who was about 2 years old, and a little girl who wasn't quite a year. And a poodle.

They did go to some band jobs with me, but mostly Toni and I spent our days at home with our kids. Her husband, Kerry, was around evenings and it was fun to get to know "a cousin" who's life had been very different from my own. His Grandparents (related to my own) were Creole and he spoke some Cajun French. Nothing like the life of an Ohio farm girl. Kerry and Toni, keeping with the idea that their names could be male or female, had named their kids, Dana and Terri.

That spring, I had a new baby, and new cousins living right next door. G wasn't around much, but it didn't seem to matter quite as much anymore.

Then, that summer got really busy and interesting and exciting. We had company from stateside, and four adults and a five month old baby toured Europe in a Volkswagon. Now, that was a trip.