Middlesex

To resume my parents’ story, I need to bring up a very embarrassing memory for a Greek American: Michael Dukakis on his tank. Do you remember that? The single image that doomed our hopes of getting a Greek into the White House: Dukakis, wearing an oversize army helmet, bouncing along on top of an M41 Walker Bulldog. Trying to look presidential but looking instead like a little boy on an amusement park ride. (Every time a Greek gets near the Oval Office something goes wrong. First it was Agnew with the tax evasion and then it was Dukakis with the tank.) Before Dukakis climbed up on that armored vehicle, before he took off his J. Press suit and put on those army fatigues, we all felt—I speak for my fellow Greek Americans, whether they want me to or not—a sense of exultation. This man was the Democratic nominee for President of the United States! He was from Massachusetts, like the Kennedys! He practiced a religion even stranger than Catholicism, but no one was bringing it up. This was 1988. Maybe the time had finally come when anyone—or at least not the same old someones—could be President. Behold the banners at the Democratic Convention! Look at the bumper stickers on all the Volvos. “Dukakis.” A name with more than two vowels in it running for President! The last time that had happened was Eisenhower (who looked good on a tank). Generally speaking, Americans like their presidents to have no more than two vowels. Truman. Johnson. Nixon. Clinton. If they have more than two vowels (Reagan), they can have no more than two syllables. Even better is one syllable and one vowel: Bush. Had to do that twice. Why did Mario Cuomo decide against running for President? What conclusion did he come to as he withdrew to think the matter through? Unlike Michael Dukakis, who was from academic Massachusetts, Mario Cuomo was from New York and knew what was what. Cuomo knew he’d never win. Too liberal for the moment, certainly. But also: too many vowels.

On top of a tank, Michael Dukakis rode toward a bank of photographers and into the political sunset. Painful as the image is to recall, I bring it up for a reason. More than anything, that was what my newly enlisted father, Seaman 2nd Class Milton Stephanides, looked like as he bounced in a landing craft off the California coast in the fall of 1944. Like Dukakis, Milton was mostly helmet. Like Dukakis’s, Milton’s chin strap looked as though it had been fastened by his mother. Like Dukakis’s, Milton’s expression betrayed a creeping awareness of error. Milton, too, couldn’t get off his moving vehicle. He, too, was riding toward extinction. The only difference was the absence of photographers because it was the middle of the night.

A month after joining the United States Navy, Milton found himself stationed at Coronado naval base in San Diego. He was a member of the Amphibious Forces, whose job it was to transport troops to the Far East and assist their storming of beaches. It was Milton’s job—luckily so far only in maneuvers—to lower the landing craft off the side of the transport ship. For over a month, six days a week, ten hours a day, that’s what he’d been doing—lowering boats full of men into various sea conditions.

When he wasn’t lowering landing craft, he was in one himself. Three or four nights a week, they had to practice night landings. These were extremely tricky. The coast around Coronado was treacherous. The inexperienced pilots had trouble steering toward the diff lights, which marked the beaches, and often brought the boats to shore on the rocks.

Though the army helmet obscured Milton’s present vision, it gave him a pretty good picture of the future. The helmet weighed as much as a bowling ball. It was as thick as the hood of a car. You put it over your head, like a hat, but it was nothing like a hat. In contact with the skull, an army helmet transmitted images directly into the brain. These were of objects the helmet was designed to keep out. Bullets, for instance. And shrapnel. The helmet closed off the mind for contemplation of these essential realities.

And if you were a person like my father, you began to think about how you could escape such realities. After a single week of drills, Milton realized that he had made a terrible mistake joining the Navy. Battle could be only slightly less dangerous than this preparation for it. Every night someone got injured. Waves slammed guys up against the boats. Guys fell and got swept underneath. The week before, a kid from Omaha had drowned.