DATE: Thursday, July 24, 1997               TAG: 9707230586

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: THE HOME FRONT

TYPE: MILITARY

SOURCE: JACEY ECKHART

                                            LENGTH:   68 lines

NAVY LIFE IS EVERYTHING DAD WARNED ABOUT - AND MORE

My father never says, ``I told you so.''

Then again, my father rarely says anything at all. Taciturn by nature, he speaks only when something must be said, testing each word in his head for tone, resonance and meaning before it leaves his mouth. Thus, when my personal oracle speaks, I listen.

Well, most of the time. Other times, I go flying off wildly in my own direction and crash headlong into the consequences.

Brad and I had only been dating a few months before it was obvious to everyone that this was It. Maybe it was the fact that we spent every waking moment together, preferably in a liplock. Maybe it was the way we spent hours on the phone talking and talking and talking. Maybe it was the little pink haze that followed us around.

Whatever it was, it was serious enough that even my father took notice. The afternoon that I headed back to school, he picked up one of my boxes and followed my mother and me out to the car. I could tell he had something to say by the way he held his mouth, as if the words were perched uncomfortably upon his tongue.

``Daughter,'' he finally began, ``your mother and I think that Brad is a fine, upstanding young man. We like him.''

He hesitated. ``But the life he offers you . . . sucks.''

Sucks? My father said that? Mother's eyes nearly bulged out of her head. I was floored. What in the world? Did he think I didn't know military life? I had been born in an Air Force hospital, lived in base housing and never spent a day without an ID card. I watched my mother go off to teas in her red patent leather heels. I spent years of my life waiting for my father to come home from Vietnam and Korea and Thailand. Surely I knew, better than any civilian, what I was getting into.

``Daddy, I love him,'' I said, with all the earnestness a 21-year-old can muster. ``And six months with him is better than a whole lifetime without him!''

My father searched my face for a moment and exchanged a look with my mother. In that look were the piano lessons I quit after three months. The clarinet I forgot to play. The chemistry class I withdrew from twice. My 19 college roommates.

My parents looked at each other and wondered how this flighty bird of theirs would ever settle down to something as important as marriage - especially a marriage that had so much hardship already built into it.

My father frowned and opened the car door. He watched me buckle my seat belt and made sure that my fingers wouldn't get caught in the slamming door. A few months later, he danced the Funky Chicken at my wedding.

And shortly after that, I started calling to tell them about work-ups and engineering exams and duty nights. I told them how expensive it was to move and how hard it was to find best friends and how exhausting it was to take care of a baby alone.

But my parents never once said, ``I told you so.'' Instead, they listened as I cried on the phone. They said, ``We know you can do it, honey,'' They said, ``We are so proud of you, daughter.'' They said, ``Remember how much Brad loves you.''

So I kept going. I celebrated homecomings. I learned to sew curtains. I called to tell them about the beauty of Thailand and the wonder of Malaysia and the marvel of the California coastline.

My father was right about the life Brad offered me. But the idealistic young woman was right, too. After 10 years, that girl still loves to talk and talk and talk to her husband on the phone. She still likes to spend some time in a liplock. And she knows that it is better to be right here with Brad living this Navy life than to be with anyone else doing anything else.

And when I talk to my father, I never say, ``I told you so.''

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