The Janitor Who Came to My Graduation

Her Side of It

We talked for almost an hour in that hallway. I am not going to pretend I was perfect in it.

I told her it hurt that she spent eighteen hundred dollars on a tournament and would not spend three hundred on me. I said it plain. I did not raise my voice, but I said it.

She did not argue. She told me the tournament fee was paid in January, before I even had a graduation date. She told me she kept telling herself Brecken needed her more because he was younger and he still lived at home.

“That’s what I told myself,” she said. “But that wasn’t it. Not really.”

“What was it?”

“If I came, I was saying it was okay. That you could go. That I was fine with you going somewhere they could send you to a war. I thought if I stayed home, you’d know I still wasn’t fine with it. I thought it would make you think twice.”

“Mom, I already signed. I already went.”

“I know. It was stupid. It was a stupid, scared thing, and I did it anyway, and an old man drove six hours on bad knees to do what I should have done.”

I told her about the pin. I told her about the salute. She cried so hard she had to put the phone down for a minute.

“Your daddy would have stood like that,” she said when she came back. “He would have stood just like that.”

“I know,” I said. “That’s what Mrs. Varga said too.”

A Long Drive South

I shipped to Fort Sam Houston, in San Antonio, the next morning. Advanced training for combat medics is about sixteen weeks. It is hard in a different way than basic, with a lot of books and a lot of practice on plastic dummies that never tell you when you are doing it wrong.

My mother wrote me every single week. Real letters, three and four pages. She wrote about the nursing home, about Brecken’s games, about the furnace finally getting fixed.

She also wrote that the Saturday after my graduation, she drove out to the Vargas’ house on the north edge of Hiawatha with a cherry pie, stood on their front step, and could not get a word out.

“Ardith just took the pie and hugged me,” she wrote. “Otis came out and shook my hand. He didn’t say anything about any of it. He just said, ‘Sheree, she’s a fine soldier. You raised her.’ And I said, ‘No, I think you helped.’ And he said, ‘Takes a few.'”

They started having coffee. My mother and Ardith Varga, every other Saturday at the café on Oregon Street. I would not have believed it if Brecken had not sent me a picture.

In the summer, when the date for my advanced training graduation came, my mother called me before I could even ask.

“I already asked for the days off,” she said. “I asked in April. Brecken’s coming. Brecken’s coach can take the team that weekend without us.”

“Mom, it’s ten hours to San Antonio.”

“Then it’s ten hours,” she said. “And I’m bringing two more.”