The Baton Mom Twirled at Homecoming

Mr. Hensel came over and shook Mom’s hand with both of his. He told her the band was honored.

He said it twice. Then he showed her where to stand, right out front, a few steps ahead of the first row.

Jesse was on the end of the front row, just like he’d asked.

He gave his grandma a little nod and a thumbs up with his trumpet hand, and Mom nodded back like a general.

I asked Mom if she was nervous. She said, “Of course I am. I was nervous in 1966. Your daddy said nervous just means you care how it turns out.”

Then she took the baton out of the pillowcase and untied the tassel, faded and soft, with that little brass ’66. She tucked it into her cardigan pocket and patted it. “Your daddy’s going out there with me,” she said. “He’s just riding in my pocket so he can’t tangle my catch.”

Mr. Hensel said I could stand out on the grass near the 50, a few steps off her path, close enough to catch an elbow. I went and stood there. I looked up into the stands and found Teri, about halfway up, sitting next to Kenzie.

Teri had both hands wrapped around a cup of cider and she wasn’t drinking it.

Halftime

The first half went by in a blur. I couldn’t tell you the score. I don’t think Teri could either.

I looked up at her about every two minutes, and every time she was looking at the end zone.

Then the horn went for halftime, and the teams jogged off, and the announcer’s voice came over the speakers.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back the Pauls Valley class of 1966, celebrating their 60th reunion.”

The crowd clapped for the eleven of them in their folding chairs on the track.

A few of the old men stood up and waved their caps. The clapping went on a long time.

“And leading our band onto the field tonight,” the announcer said, “please welcome the head majorette of the class of 1966, Mrs. Patsy Rowe.”

The drum major blew his whistle. The drum line started the cadence.

And my mother walked out onto that football field ahead of the whole band, with her silver baton held high in one hand, smiling.

She walked. She didn’t strut and she didn’t high-step. She walked like a woman going to her own front gate, steady and sure, and that whole band of red uniforms walked behind her at her speed.

I stood out on the grass with both hands pressed together at my chin. I don’t remember putting them there.

Neal told me later I stood like that for the whole walk, like I was praying. I probably was.

At the fifty yard line, Mom stopped. The band stopped behind her. The drums went quiet. You could hear the flag snapping on the pole at the far end of the field.

She brought the baton down and saluted, the old salute, the baton across her body and her chin up.

Somebody in the stands started to clap and then stopped, like they knew she wasn’t done.

Then the wrist twirl. Smooth and easy, the chrome flashing. Then the figure eight, slow, both directions, the baton tracing loops in the stadium lights.

Then she bent her knees the way she had every single night in Neal’s headlights. She looked up. And she threw that baton straight up into the lights.

I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t breathe. I watched that baton go up end over end, higher than she had ever thrown it in the hayfield, flashing every time it turned.

Up in the stands, before it even came down, somebody stood up. I didn’t have to look to know who it was.

Mom kept her eyes on it. She didn’t move her feet. She put out her right hand, open, the way she’d taught me when I was six.

And she caught it. Clean. Right in the center of the shaft, the ball end swinging, her hand closing on it like it had never been gone.