The Semester I Rode to Class With My Son

Anatomy and Physiology, A. English Composition, A. General Psychology, A. Medical Terminology, A.

And under them, an email from the dean’s office. It was a form letter, the same one they send everybody.

It said congratulations on being named to the dean’s list for the fall semester.

I read it four times. Then I went down the hall to room 12 and showed it to Miss Opal, because I could not think of anybody else in the world I wanted to tell first.

She read it with her glasses on the end of her nose. Then she took them off and put her hand on my cheek, the way Mama used to.

“Well, Tonya,” she said. “Your mother would have danced on that table.”

That was the moment I cried. Not at the kitchen table in August, not in the truck, not at Thanksgiving. In room 12, with a ninety-one-year-old schoolteacher holding my face.

I told Dylan that night. He did not do as well, and he knew it before I asked. Two Bs, a B-minus in English, and a C in college algebra.

“A C is passing,” I said. “You worked hard. You did fine.”

“I know I did fine,” he said. “You did great. There’s a difference.” He grinned at me. “You’re going to tell Grandpa?”

“No,” I said. “I’m not.”

He looked at me for a long time across the kitchen. Then he nodded, like I had said something he was going to remember.

Christmas dinner was at Daddy’s. It always is.

Daddy has had Christmas dinner in that house since he and Mama got married in 1970, and he will have it there until they carry him out of it.

There were nineteen of us again. Ham this time, and Karen’s sweet potatoes, and the green bean casserole I make every year, and the good dishes Mama got for their wedding, the white ones with the gold rim.

Daddy sat at the head of the table and carved the ham. He said the blessing, short, the way he always does.

He thanked the Lord for the food and the family and the rain we got in October.

I sat about halfway down on the right side, between Shawn and Dylan. Across from me was Darrell.

Kurt and Dawn were at the far end with their oldest, who is fifteen and wanted to be anywhere else.

We were about halfway through the meal when Kurt asked Dylan how the first semester had gone. It was an ordinary question. Kurt asks it every year to every kid at the table.

Dylan put his fork down. He wiped his mouth with his napkin.

I saw him look at me, and I saw him decide something, and I knew before he opened his mouth what he was going to do.

“I did all right,” he said. “Couple of Bs. A C in college algebra. I’m taking it over in the spring.”

Daddy nodded down the table. “A C’s not bad for the first go-round,” he said. “Algebra is hard. Your uncle Darrell got a D in it.”

“Dad,” said Darrell.

A couple of people laughed. Then Dylan said, “Grandpa, did anybody tell you about Mom’s grades?”

The table went quiet. Not all at once. It went quiet from Dylan’s end outward, the way a field goes quiet when a hawk flies over it.

Even the little ones at the card table in the kitchen stopped.