The Boy Who Crossed the Hangar First

The sign

We started counting in January. I made a paper chain out of strips of construction paper, one link for every day until the homecoming window opened, and we hung it across the kitchen doorway. Every night after supper Mason tore off a link. June cried every time because she wanted to tear one too, so we started letting her tear the little scrap off the end.

In February, Mason’s baseball team started practicing in the gym at the middle school, because it was too cold to be outside. The coach was a Junction City police officer named Steve who had played ball at Kansas State. He took one look at Mason’s swing and said, “Who taught you to keep your elbow up like that?”

“My dad,” Mason said.

“He did a good job. Where’s he at?”

“Iraq,” Mason said. “He’s coming home in April.”

Steve nodded. “Then we’d better get you ready for him.”

That spring I learned more about baseball than I ever wanted to. I learned about pitch counts and batting gloves and why you cannot wash cleats in a washing machine.

I sat on cold aluminum bleachers at practice with June in a sleeping bag on my lap and a thermos of coffee between my feet.

I sent Ryan videos of every at-bat, which he watched days late on a cracked phone screen, and he sent back long messages about stance and follow-through that I read out loud to Mason at bedtime.

In March, the Family Readiness Group leader called and told us the window. Mid-April. The exact date would come late, and the exact hour would come later, because that is how it works. You find out when the plane is wheels-up somewhere far away, and then you have a few hours to get to the hangar.

That night Mason and I made the sign.

I bought a big white poster board at the dollar store, and a pack of markers, and a tube of glitter glue that I regretted for weeks. We spread it out on the kitchen table after June went to bed. I wanted to help him draw the letters in pencil first. He did not want help.

“I want to do it myself,” he said. “So he knows it’s from me.”

So I sat across from him and did the dishes and watched him work. He wrote it slow, with his tongue in the corner of his mouth, in red and blue marker. WELCOME HOME DAD. He drew a flag in the corner, and a baseball, and a stick figure in a helmet that was supposed to be Ryan.

When he finished, he held it up for me to see.

The two E’s in WELCOME faced the right way. The E at the end of HOME did not. It was backward, like a mirror. A little three with a back on it.

He saw me look, and his face fell. “I messed it up.”

“You did not mess it up.”

“The E is backward.”

“Mason,” I said. I came around the table and knelt down next to his chair so I was looking up at him.

“Your dad is going to walk into that hangar after six months away, and he’s going to see a sign made by his son. He is not going to see one E. I promise you that. I’ll bet you twenty dollars he keeps that sign for the rest of his life.”

He looked at the E for a long time. Then he looked at me.

“Can we not tell Mom it’s backward?” he said.

“We don’t have to tell anybody anything.”

He nodded and set the sign against the wall to dry. Then he did something he had never done. He leaned over and put his forehead against my shoulder, for just a second, and then he went to brush his teeth.

I stayed kneeling on the kitchen floor until my knees hurt.