After I turned around and started back down her drive, Barbara waved and blew me a kiss. She'd done this every holiday since that Valentine's Day back in 2002. It wasn't the happiest of times back then, but together we've made it through that year and the years that followed. Jason probably wouldn't approve, but Barbara does because it makes her happy, and like she says, "that's all that matters". It's a little hard to understand our relationship if one doesn't know the whole story, so I'll begin at the beginning.
Jason and I grew up together, well, not together, really. I mean, we weren't next door neighbors or anything like that. Jason lived with his mother on a small farm in the country. I lived with my foster parents in a house in the city with three other foster kids.
My situation wasn't of my choosing and once I got old enough to understand what was going on, it wasn't one I particularly liked. Jeff and Marilyn were nice enough people and they took care of us kids pretty well, but I wasn't very fond of either. Jeff worked for the city taking care of the roads during the day and worked on his model railroad at night. Marilyn was a stay at home "mom" to us, and was paid by the state for doing that. She did help out with the income by knitting baby sweaters she sold at a local second hand clothing store.
It wasn't that I hated Jeff and Marilyn because I did like them as people; we just didn't click, if you know what I mean, so I couldn't think of them as a mom and dad. We were also very different in personality. I wanted excitement in my life. Jeff was a quiet man who taught me how to make models but never did anything exciting. Marilyn taught us how to be polite and made us study our school lessons every night, but there was never any of the love between us I saw between Jason and his mom.
Jason's mom, Barbara, was a widow who stayed on their farm after her husband had a heart attack and died. They'd started raising goats and chickens for milk and eggs to sell right after they married, and Barbara kept up that business by herself.
I was always a little jealous of Jason because he had a real mom. Barbara made him toe the line about things, but she was always hugging him and telling him he was a great kid. I never got hugs and because I was a little on the headstrong side, Marilyn usually told me I was wrong and needed to change.
Jason and I met in the first grade and stayed friends through high school. I stayed over at his house on the weekend about once a month and loved those short visits. I'd help him clean out the goat barn or change the straw in the chicken nests, and once we were done, Barbara would check on how we did. Jason knew how to please her, so once she'd inspected our work, she'd give Jason a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. Then, she'd look at me and say, "Ricky, you deserve a hug too. Come here, Honey". I'd get the same hug and the same kiss on the cheek.
I turned eighteen a month after we graduated and that meant I'd aged out of the foster care system. I needed to move out of Jeff and Marilyn's house because the state would no longer pay them to take care of me. I found a job at a local fast food place that paid enough I could buy my own meals and a few clothes, but that was it. After looking for a month for a job that paid enough to pay for my own place, feed me, and let me buy a car, I gave up. There were plenty of good jobs around if you had a college education or some sort of skill, but I didn't have either. It seemed like going to college would get me out of Jeff and Marilyn's house and get me the degree I needed at the same time.
I knew this situation was coming because Jeff had explained it to me. He'd also insisted I take the SAT when that time came around. I'm reasonably smart and made a decent score, so getting into a college wasn't much of a problem. The problem was money. Jeff and Marilyn weren't obligated to pay for my education and couldn't afford it even if they'd wanted to.
Jeff did some checking around and found out I could get a Pell grant because I was a foster child. The problem was a Pell grant wasn't enough to pay all the expenses for a four year college. It would pay for almost everything for Nashville State Community College though, so I applied there and got accepted.
The college helped me fill out the paperwork for the Pell grant and also helped me find a tiny apartment within walking distance of campus. The night job I found washing dishes at a restaurant close to my apartment paid enough for my rent and I could eat at least one meal a day for free. In September I started in the associates degree program for mechanical engineering.
Jason didn't like the idea of college and Barbara couldn't afford to pay his way anyway. He also didn't want to stay on their farm. The US Army recruiter told him the Army needed vehicle repair technicians and said the Army would train him and he'd get paid while learning a skill he could use as a civilian. Jason signed up and left for basic training the same month I left for Nashville State Community College.
Jason and I kept in touch through letters because I couldn't afford to both eat and have a phone. After basic training at Camp Benning, Georgia, Jason went to track vehicle maintenance school at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. He didn't like basic much, but really liked the maintenance school. He was looking forward to being assigned to a unit so he could do what he'd been taught.
Jason got that assignment just before Christmas in 2000 and also got a two week leave. He came home on the twenty-third and drove to Nashville to see me and ask if I wanted to spend Christmas with him and Barbara. I really didn't have anywhere else to go but I did have to work the day after, so I said I'd spend Christmas day with them if he'd come get me and then take me back.
That Christmas day was the best Christmas I'd ever had. Jeff and Marilyn had made sure we got to celebrate Christmas. They always had a Christmas tree and they bought us foster kids some presents, but there wasn't the feeling of really belonging. With Jason and Barbara, it felt like I was one of the family.
Barbara had made a Christmas dinner with enough food to feed a dozen people, and after eating, we sat down in their living room. Jason and Barbara exchanged gifts and after opening hers, Barbara picked up another package from under their tree.
"This one says, 'To Ricky, From Santa'. That must be you, Ricky."
I suppose at one time or another I'd written Jason that I wanted a better scientific calculator but couldn't afford one. Mine was the one I'd used in high school, but it didn't do some of the things I needed for my college classes so I did some of the math on the calculator and did the rest by hand. That's what was in the package. It was a used one, but everything still worked. I looked up at Barbara.
"Mrs. Wilton, you didn't need to do this."
She just smiled.
"I found it at the thrift store in town. It seemed to work and it didn't cost that much and Jason said you needed one. Besides, I couldn't let one of my men have Christmas without a Christmas present."
I have to tell you that I got sort of choked up then. Marilyn had called me by my name and she had sometimes called me stubborn, but she'd never said anything that might lead me to believe she felt anything for me. Barbara had called me "one of her men".
I looked up at Barbara.
"I don't know what to say. I didn't get you anything."
"I didn't expect you to. Just having you here with us is enough, Ricky. It's like it used to be before both of you grew up and left home. That makes me feel good, and that's all that matters."
The day after New Year's Day, Jason went back to his new unit as a track vehicle repairman. His letters told me he was happy with his new job but didn't like all the regulations. He was happy he had only three more years to go before he could become a civilian again. My letters told him how much I had to study but that I was happy to be learning something useful.
Spring came and went, and since I didn't have school, I spent the summer working two jobs. Jason spent the summer in another Army school learning more about repairing track vehicles. He wrote that he'd probably try to find a job with a construction equipment dealer when he got out of the Army.
I was sitting in an advanced calculus class on the morning of September 11 when another teacher burst into the classroom gasping for breath.
"Somebody flew an airplane into an office building in New York! It's all over the television...every station!"
The classroom quickly emptied as the teacher and all the students ran out to find the nearest television set. I ended up in a hallway of the building with a bunch of people huddled around another student with a portable radio. It wasn't just one plane and one office building. It was both of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and another plane that crashed into a field.
Some of the girls were crying. Most of us just sat there dumbfounded. How could this have happened? This was The United States, not some backward third-world country where there was fighting all the time.
That night, on the small television I'd bought second hand that summer, I watched the planes flying into the towers and then the buildings collapsing as people ran for their lives through the dust. The news said it was Al-Qaeda terrorists that commandeered four airliners. Three hit their intended targets. The plane that crashed was taken over by the passengers before it could get to its target. Since the crew was dead and nobody else could fly the plane, it crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
I saw the rubble where the World Trade Center had been. I saw hole in the side of the Pentagon. I saw the President saying the terrorists would be punished. It was a bad time. I didn't think it could get worse, but it did.
Though he usually wrote me every couple of weeks, it was two months later I got the next letter from Jason. His unit had been mobilized within hours of the attack and had been confined with no outside communication allowed for almost a week. After that, they'd been loaded onto planes and flown to Saudi Arabia and were not allowed any communication of any type for another two weeks. He couldn't tell me where he went after that, but he said I'd see it on the news.
That was the last letter I got from Jason. It had taken almost two weeks for his letter to get me, and I'd already seen news about the suicide bomber that crashed the truck through the gate into the Army compound. The truck blew up in the middle of a tank maintenance area. I hoped for the best, but that wasn't to be.
Barbara came and picked me up for the funeral. She seemed to have come to grips with Jason's death pretty well. She didn't say much on the way back to her house, but at least she wasn't crying or anything like that. I was glad of that because if she'd started crying, I would have too.
Barbara was pretty calm and collected through the funeral. She had tears in her eyes as the soldier in dress uniform handed her the folded flag, then stood at attention and saluted her. Her hand was trembling in mine when she walked to the casket and placed a single white rose on the top. Then, she turned to me, handed me her car keys and said, "Ricky, I don't think I can drive us home. Would you take us?"
It was when we walked through the door of her house that Barbara fell apart. One minute she was fine. The next, she was hanging on my shoulder and sobbing her heart out. I didn't know how to comfort her, so I just held her close and let her cry. I'm not ashamed to say I was crying too.
It was about half an hour before she finally stopped. She gently pushed back a little, wiped her eyes with the back of her hands, and looked up at me.
