Patricia was preparing breakfast for herself and her 19-year old son Justin.
Justin was out for his morning run, and Patricia was making his favorite, strawberry pancakes with bacon.
Justin had just enlisted in the Army and was due to report for the boot camp training in a little over a month. Patricia was already missing him and was determined to spoil him rotten with love and affection in these remaining few weeks.
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It had been just the two of them for 12 years now. Justin's father and Patricia's ex-husband, Rob, a successful dentist, left them when Justin was just six in order to marry Rob's busty office assistant. Rob started a family with his new wife, with whom they had two children, and he did not want to have anything to do with helping to raise Justin. During the divorce Rob insisted that Patricia get full custody of their son, with no visitations required or expected from Rob, and upped the monthly alimony for an extra $1000 to have these conditions accepted. Patricia was hurt by both Rob's affair (his mistress was eight months pregnant by the time the divorce was finalized) and by Rob's cold indifference for Justin's future. She decided to make a clean break of it, and after the divorce she and Justin moved from Dallas to Maine, where Patricia got a good job as a legal secretary. She bought a modest two-bedroom house, and they made a fresh start in Portland.
Although Justin was initially shocked and devastated by his dad walking out on the family, the boy rebounded quickly. Rob had been a mostly absent and indifferent father even while he and Patricia were married, spending long hours at work and not taking much interest in his son. Justin was still very young, and a move to Portland helped with healing the wounds and starting a new life there.
Justin was a good-natured, kind, generous and sociable kid, and he quickly made a lot of new friends at his elementary school and in their neighborhood. He was studious but not particularly academically gifted or inclined. This fact disappointed Patricia to a degree, but she loved her son dearly and was determined to provide him with a happy childhood. She realized that it would be wrong to force Justin to get buried in school work, and that she had to wait for his natural talents and inclinations to develop and too manifest themselves. She was grateful that, unlike so many other kids, Justin had little interest in computer and video games and the TV, and instead preferred to spend his time outdoors. Justin loved running around with friends in the woods outside their house, kicking ball and later exploring the area far and wide on his dirt bike. For Justin's eighth birthday Pat bought a great little tree-house, which the neighbors help her assemble and install in their back yard. The tree-house became Justin's favorite place, and he spent many nights there, often joined by his best pals Jimmy and Ravi.
Justin also turned out to be a really athletic kid. He started running in the mornings when he was around eight, and, in addition to the tree-house, Patricia installed a pull-up bar, parallel bars and a few other exercise pieces in their back yard. Justin started playing football, first in Little League and then on his middle and high school teams. In middle school he also got into weight and strength training at the school gym. Patricia saw that sports provided Justin with extra focus and discipline, which made her very happy. By the time he was 10, Justin was easily the fittest kid in his school.
After divorcing Rob, Patricia quickly gave up the idea of dating and trying to re-marry. She felt that she really did not want another man in her life right now, and wanted to concentrate on raising her young son. She was making good money at her job, and together with Rob's alimony checks that meant that she and Justin were quite comfortable financially. While Pat poured most of her efforts in being a mom, she did not want to be overprotective and overbearing, and gave Justin plenty of space and time to run around freely and to be a kid. Jimmy and Ravi remained Justin's close friends through high school. Ravi, being something of an academic genius, helped Justin a lot with his school work, to Pat's great relief. Jimmy, a skinny red-haired kid and a goofball, came out as gay in high school. Pat realized early on that Jimmy had a strong crush on Justin. But she also knew, from secretly monitoring Justin's computer and viewing the porn sites that he visited, that Justin was incurably straight. Pat was proud to see that Justin and Jimmy remained great friends even after Jimmy came out as gay. Justin also joined the JROTC program while in high school. He enjoyed his cadet training greatly, and excelled at it.
Justin started dating when he was around 14. After a quick succession of several girlfriends, he got a steady long-term one. Tammy, who was in the same grade as Justin, was also an athlete, being on their school's swim team. From the time Justin was about 8 and through his early teens, Pat had a series of long "talks" with him on the subject of sex, using proper protection and on treating others with proper dignity and respect. Pat and Justin remained close through his teen years, and he did not exhibit much in the way of the typical teenage rebellion. Justin wanted to be responsible as the "man of the house". He also truly loved his mom and felt that she was giving him enough freedom, privacy and responsibility. Pat never pried too forcefully in Justin's personal life but she was always available and happy to talk to him and to support him whenever he needed and wanted it. Justin and Tammy remained together until the end of high school. However, now it has been over a year since Tammy, Ravi and Jimmy left for college.
After graduating from high school, Justin decided to take a year off to figure out what he wanted to do next. As usual, Patricia offered her love and support to him. They both realized that college was not really his thing. Neither was he sufficiently interested in football to pursue it professionally. Justin got a nicely paying job as a clerk at a local Ford dealership, and also signed up as a volunteer fire-fighter. In addition, Justin took a few foreign language and computer programming classes at a local community college. He continued to vigorously train and exercise every day, keeping his body in top shape. As his year-off was ending, Justin made the decision to join the Army. He thought that after a couple of tours of duty, if things go well he might try to go for officer training and make the military service his long term career choice. Although Patricia was, of course, worried, about Justin choosing a career path that could put his life in danger, she understood that this was something he really wanted to do. She also realized that the military service was well suited for Justin's talents, temperament and character. So she fully supported his choice and was enormously proud of him.
Justin did not look much like either of his parents. Patricia, who was mainly of Italian heritage, was a slim olive-skinned petite woman of about 5'4'', with dark brown eyes and luscious long coal black hair. Rob was also a slightly built skinny man, only an inch or so taller than Patricia, with light brown hair and brown eyes. By the age of 19, Justin was a 6'2'' giant, of 220 pounds of solid muscle, with short wavy golden hair and eyes of deep sparkling green. He was, using a common phrase, built like a brick house, with powerful thickly muscled thighs, chest, shoulders and back, strong muscular arms, and a flat muscular stomach. Despite his mass, he was agile, quick on his feet, and could do 40 pull-ups with barely breaking a sweat. The only thing that he seemed to have clearly inherited from his parents was his athletic ability, which came from his mother. Even now at the age of 40, Pat still had a slim pert athletic figure. The topic of this lack of Justin's familial resemblance came up a few times in their conversations over the years. Pat knew that Rob was the father as she never had affairs during their marriage. She sometimes joked that maybe she had been visited and impregnated by one of the Olympian gods, the way Zeus fathered Hercules with Alcmene. In fact Patricia thought that Justin looked a bit like the actor Kellan Lutz in the 2014 movie "The Legend of Hercules", only, as she jokingly put it, Justin was better looking and with better hair. She sometimes teased her son calling him "my little Hercules." Justin took it all in stride.
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Justin re-entered their house, back from his morning 4-mile run.
He was wearing short white running shorts and a white A-shirt, and was covered in sweat.
"Mom, I am home!" he shouted.
"In the kitchen, honey," she responded.
Justin walked into the kitchen, inhaling the delicious smell of breakfast that his mom was cooking.
"That smells great, mom, what are you making?"
"Bacon and strawberry pancakes, your favorite," she replied.
"Oh, mom, thank you, you sure know the way to your son's heart!" Justin exclaimed.
They both laughed.
"How was your run, sweetie?" Pat asked.
"Pretty good, mom, but I seemed to have sprained my shoulder muscle a bit while doing pull-ups. It feels really sore."
"Oh, I am really sorry, honey. Come and give your old mama a hug."
"Mom, you are not old!" protested Justin. "And I am all sweaty and stinky."
"That's OK, baby, I love your stink," she reassured Justin. "I am going to miss it terribly when you are in the Army."
