Changing Shoes by Tina Sloan

Author:Tina Sloan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

During his sophomore year, Renny told us that one of his friends and fellow rowers had gone to Marine Officers Candidate School in Quantico, Virginia, the summer before and thought it was a great experience. Marine training seemed about as big of a physical challenge as you could possibly get, and Renny thought he might like to give it a try. He talked to some other Marines and decided to do the program that summer and see how he liked it. Naturally the experience is designed to test young men and see if they have what it takes to join the military. But it didn’t really occur to me that this was a possibility. Renny had always talked about going into journalism when he finished school, and I just assumed that this would be his path after he graduated.

But he ended up loving his time at Quantico, and that fall, after he was back at Harvard, September 11th took place—so when the OCS recruiter called him up to see if he was coming back the following summer, there was no question. Still, I didn’t think he would actually join full-time. I was proud of him for wanting to be involved with the Marines at such an important moment in American history, but somehow I felt certain that come graduation, he’d choose to find a job in New York City, close to home.

Then one day in April of Renny’s senior year, I was standing in the kitchen when the phone rang. It was Renny and he sounded serious. He told me that he had committed to join the Marines. COMMITTED, as in past tense. I was completely stunned. How could we be having a conversation about “committed” when we’d never had the conversation “thinking about committing”? I couldn’t believe it. Yes, it was noble and honor-able, but what would I do if something happened to him? He was my only child.

“Sweetheart,” I said, “can we at least talk about this? Why do you have to go in? Wouldn’t you rather go to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop like you always talked about?”

He said, “Mom, what do you think I’ve been doing the past two years?”

He was right, of course. There had clearly been denial on my part—after all, most people don’t go to Marine OCS for two summers just for fun. But pretending that he wasn’t going to actually join the military had been my safety valve, taking the pressure off so I didn’t worry. It had allowed me to get through these past two years without constantly thinking about the what-ifs.

But then two alternate scenarios flashed through my mind. That first summer when he’d gone to Quantico, I’d encouraged him to take a position with a friend at the World Trade Center, which had, of course, subsequently been attacked on September 11th. I had also met a man at a party recently who told me that his mother had kept him from going into the Marines, so he had gone to work for an investment firm and been sent to their offices in the Middle East.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.