End of the Beginning

To the best of my knowledge, I have only disappointed my father once.

It had seemed like the end of the world. Perhaps so, in that it ended one epoch of my life--one I do not like to think about often anymore. Like it or not, though, I owe my cherished present to that unpleasant past.

In the winter of my senior year in high school, I withdrew my application to the Naval Academy, for which I had prepared the three years previous. My father has an Irish temper, and usually it flares bright and brief. That event, however, infuriated him to such an extent that I could not talk to him for nearly a month.

It probably did not help that my eldest brother had done something very similar years ago.  He had changed his mind about attending West Point at the last minute, went to a liberal arts college for a short while, then hared off to some Ashram in California.

Dad attributed my change of heart to 'nerves', cowardice, the liberal media's brainwashing, and pretty much everything except for the reasoned decision I thought I had made. Neither he nor my mother would accept my choice, and kept waiting for me to 'get over it'

I heard them talking in the living room at night about how I would never make it in civilian life. They thought me too intellectual and too sensitive to brave the world without the structure of the military to prop me up and give me direction.

At the time, I believed them.

Like my brother, I did find my own way to higher education. Unlike my brother, I did not drop out to join a commune, but our life experiences still have their parallels. Academic scholarships made moot my parents' reluctance to foot the bill, and I never returned home again except for short, uncomfortable visits.

Though I kept in touch with my parents by email and by telephone, we rarely had much to discuss. They no longer brought up military service, or other unsolicited advice that they knew I would ignore. Nevertheless, it seemed plain to me that they did not particularly approve of my life choices. I could live with that.

A couple of months ago, I called my father to wish him a happy birthday. We talked about the weather and our workout routines, and about my mother, as usual.

Then, he dropped this bomb: "I don't think I say this often, but I'm proud of you. You may not have done things the way I would have, but you've done good, and I love you."

To put things in perspective, I do not come from a warm and demonstrative family. By "I don't think I say this often", my father actually meant he had never said it before--at least not to me.

So I gaped for a moment, wondering who had kidnapped Major Farrington, USMC (Ret.) and replaced him with this understanding, modern dad. No, it defied the bounds of belief to imagine someone breaking into the home of my aging but freakishly in-shape ex-military parents and leaving with anything other than injuries.

"I love you, too, Dad," I replied at last. "You're my hero, and the best father a son could have."

Even typing that now kind of makes me cringe, but I meant it. Before we hung up, he added that, in retrospect, he believed I had made the right choice in not attending the Naval Academy, and he respected me for holding my ground against him.

It felt like some strange, belated rite of passage: a blessing from the man whose opinion I had valued above all others for the better part of my life. Sure, I did not any longer wait on his approval like the child his anger once devastated, but in a way that made it easier for me to appreciate the gesture.

Entering military service, in and of itself, would not have made me like my father as I once hoped it would. Becoming my own man, honoring my word, respecting others, and taking responsibility for my actions--these things make me my father's son.

And I did not even have to join the Navy to do it.

Beginning of the End

On the second day of Naval Academy Summer Seminar, they woke us at 0530, lined us up in the passageway, and told us to run five miles in half an hour. I made it in under the time limit, winded and nauseous, but triumphant.

My limbs felt like noodles as I struggled to keep up with the squad on the way back to the dorms. A squadmate, the only one who finished ahead of me, threw my arm over his shoulder and helped me along.

He had platinum blond hair, buzzed very short, and ice blue eyes. Though almost two inches shorter than me--no mean feat--he probably outweighed me half again in pure, rippling muscle. I could not decide whether I envied him or wanted him.

It turned out he lived near the beach, and would run down to the water each morning, swim across a cove (in all seasons, no less), do a ton of push-up on the beach, then run home.

To me, his accomplishments seemed godlike. Sure, I played varsity soccer, but it mattered more to me that our quiz bowl team made it to the nationals. I jogged three to five miles every morning, and visited the weight room every other day, but it did little to improve my whip-thin physique.

The rest of the squad had already written me off as a nerd--even our midshipman squad leader vocally disdained my "book smarts"--but they shunned him for reasons entirely mysterious to me. Perhaps he just seemed too well-prepared, too gung-ho, and too unconcerned about their opinions.

The next day, during personal time before lights-out, he confided his motivation for joining the Navy. He needed structure and regulation in his life to compensate for something he lacked.

He looked right at me, no emotion in his perfect Aryan eyes, and said, "I can be very cruel."

I stopped envying him, but wanted him more than ever. Maybe the others avoided him because they could sense his sociopathy, or something. What did it say about me that I liked him?

When he asked me why I wanted to join, I could not summon any of the high-minded drivel about duty and service and 'being a part of something bigger than myself' that we all write in our admissions essays.

"I want to be like my dad," I blurted.

He actually smiled then, a strange, thin smile. "You can do that without joining the Navy."

"He's a Marine, actually, a Mustang," I conceded. "Said he would rather have a daughter in a whorehouse than a son in the Naval Academy. Guess this counts as rebellion for me."

"You can do that without joining the Navy, too," he pointed out.

It did not occur to me to turn that around on him--to say that he could find structure and purpose and whatever in all sorts of places. It did not occur to me because his words had triggered a revelation of sorts.

Until then, I had embraced the naval service as my destiny. If not the Academy, then NROTC, or enlistment. The very thought of civilian life seemed ridiculous and untenable. I did not consider the litany of reasons I might not belong in the military, and, more problematically, I refused to consider why I really wanted to serve at all.

Later that night, I lay in my bunk, waiting and dreading as cries of "goodnight" traveled down the passageway. I joined in when our turn came. When the last, distant "goodnight" sounded, I thought for a moment the next part might not come.

Then someone outside shouted, in a sing-song voice, "Goodnight, Jane Fonda!"

"Goodnight, Commie bitch!" my fellows roared, without me.