Educated

I apologized. “He can say whatever he wants. But please come.”
They missed most of the ceremony; I don’t know if they saw me accept my
diploma. What I remember is waiting with my friends before the music
began, watching their fathers snap pictures and their mothers fix their hair. I
remember that my friends were wearing colorful leis and recently gifted
jewelry.
After the ceremony I stood alone on the lawn, watching the other students
with their families. Eventually I saw my parents. Mother hugged me. My
friend Laura snapped two photos. One is of me and Mother, smiling our
forced smiles; the other is of me wedged between my parents, looking
squeezed, under pressure.
I was leaving the Mountain West that night. I had packed before
graduation. My apartment was empty, my bags by the door. Laura had
volunteered to drive me to the airport, but my parents asked if they could take
me.
I expected them to drop me at the curb, but Dad insisted that they walk
with me through the airport. They waited while I checked my bags, then
followed me to the security gate. It was as if Dad wanted to give me until the
last second to change my mind. We walked in silence. When we arrived at
security I hugged them both and said goodbye. I removed my shoes, laptop,
camera, then I passed through the checkpoint, reassembled my pack, and
headed for the terminal.
It was only then that I glanced back and saw Dad, still standing at the
checkpoint, watching me walk away, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders
slumping, his mouth slackened. I waved and he stepped forward, as if to
follow, and I was reminded of the moment, years before, when power lines
had covered the station wagon, with Mother inside it, and Dad had stood next
to her, exposed.
He was still holding that posture when I turned the corner. That image of
my father will always stay with me: that look on his face, of love and fear and
loss. I knew why he was afraid. He’d let it slip my last night on Buck’s Peak,
the same night he’d said he wouldn’t come to see me graduate.
“If you’re in America,” he’d whispered, “we can come for you. Wherever
you are. I’ve got a thousand gallons of fuel buried in the field. I can fetch you
when The End comes, bring you home, make you safe. But if you cross the
ocean ...”