Apartment H2

I've been unfairly focusing on Abilene here as I assemble these little memoirs, bit by bit, piece by piece, so I think it's time to move on a bit and write about my--our--time in San Antonio. Just as there was an address associated with the time and space spent in Abilene, so too was there a center to the San Antonio experience: Apartment H2, in the Seven Pines Apartments on Zarzamora Street.

My brother David has been back to the place and sent the photo that will son accompany this post, and it is safe to say that it hasn't changed at all since we lived there. In fact it would be hard to tell that we are not residents still of this place, so little sign is there from the outside of the personality of those within. This is no accident. The time we spent in this apartment specifically and in San Antonio in general was the most frightening and insecure time of my life no question at all.

Part of this feeling had to do with the fact that this was, of course,the first move in my life. I have since learned of families in the military who moved every year, but I also suspect that even in those families, the first move for each child is the most difficult. How could it not be? Leaving the familiar is one thing, but in my case, it was from a familiar mode of existing to another, less secure and in many ways the opposite of what I had learned about the world and how to act in it. In short, it was a move from the country to the city.