(no subject)

My baby's walking tall, now.

It isn't easy being my son; sometimes we don't get the parents we should have had because we get the parents that had us.  Sometimes we don't get the children we can nurture as they deserve, we get the ones that show us the parts of ourselves we like the least.  That seems to be what happened to the three of us, and all the love we have for each other hasn't made it easy for him to find and be who he needs to be.

But today, my little boy is walking tall.

We bought a simple house where the payments would let us have enough income to choose his schools as he grew, and it sort of worked--until his father lost a good job, and couldn't persuade the people hiring to give him another like it.  Then we had to put our slightly awkward, socially impaired teenager in a school where the wolves had been carefully trained to prey upon children like him when nobody could see them do it, schools where policies insist that "zero tolerance" means that the victim who responds at all is "disciplined" along side his tormentor, no matter what the individual circumstance.  After the second incident, when the school counselor broke his confidence--after having elicited the triggering comment in the first place!--and the school administration demonstrated beyond a doubt that it would not keep him safe, we thanked Fate that he was 17 by then, and dropped him out.

Over the last five years, he's earned his GED twice, joined the Job Corps and got a high school diploma, been hired for a dozen different jobs that lasted only a few months, at best, and generally tried to grow up faster than his friends and cohorts while never having the resources to buy a car in an area where public transportation is less than useful.

Today, though, my kid is walking tall.

Over the years, he talked to Army recruiters several times, but he was always overweight, and never kept at a regimen that would get him down to their requirements--until a few months ago, after neither he nor we could afford to feed him much for too many weeks (as soon as his father got a steady job, I lost mine.  It isn't pretty, being old and unemployed).  And one day, his most recent good friend and he started talking to the National Guard recruiter at Jefferson Barracks, and his weight was just low enough to get him in.  He started basic training at Fort Leonard Wood in January; every time he called or wrote, he was cheerful, if rushed--it wasn't bad at all.  He enjoyed himself!

He graduated yesterday.  It was his father's 61st birthday; the whole nine weeks, he's been working to graduate on that day.  It wasn't easy--he had to do the PT test twice because he couldn't finish the two mile run quickly enough the first time--but he did it.  He graduated.

We went down there and did the Family Day thing Thursday, with the whole program and rah-rah (of course, in the Army it's "Hooah!"), and then we got to see him and hug him and spend the rest of the day with him.  They kept telling us how much our soldiers have changed over the nine weeks of basic training.  They were right.

He stands straight, and moves with confidence.  He has purpose and pride.  He's accomplished what few have, and he's going into the next phase knowing that he can do what he needs to do, because they'll give him what he needs to make it.  They already have. 

My soldier's walking tall.