Not once. Not for homecoming. Not for senior night, when every other mother walked out onto the field with a carnation.
My dad walked out with me alone.
In fourth grade we had a day where every kid stood up and said what their parents did for work. Lori Vogel’s mother was a nurse at the hospital in Odell. Somebody’s dad drove a truck for the co-op. Somebody’s uncle sold seed.
When it was my turn, I said, “My mom answers the phone at the sheriff’s office.”
A boy in the back row said, “So she’s a secretary.”
And I said, “I guess.”
I guessed that for about thirty years.
I left the county when I was nineteen and didn’t look back much. I sell commercial heating and cooling systems out of an office up in Burnsville. I have a title with the word regional in it. I have a company truck and a nice watch and a wife who went to college in the Cities. And somewhere along the way, without ever saying it out loud, I decided that my mother had spent her whole life sitting in a chair in a basement, and that I had done better.
