ourselves in eggnog and scoffing down forkfuls of ham and mashed potatoes smothered in gravy.
Any respectable man would make amends with people before leaving. I sat down with my father and told him how I felt about not seeing him as much as I would have liked when I was younger. I told my mother over and over again how sorry I was to leave her and my grandmother to fend for themselves while I fight overseas. I apologized for refusing to bury the hamster when it died, and she suppressed a laugh. I apologized to my sister for all of the meaningless fights that we got into when we were younger. I told her that I appreciated her more than she could ever imagine. I made sure that all of my affairs were in order, and I took the time to get together with friends to celebrate a new beginning and to remember all of the good times we had, and all the stupid things that we had done in the past.
I felt as if leaving home to go fight meant that I was leaving my whole life behind. I had planned on graduating from Abington High School that year. I wanted to go to college and get my doctorate. The only way that the middle class could get a job was if you had a good enough degree because of the economic downfall, especially the months following the draft. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to find work when I returned home. I would miss graduation, the summer parties on Nantasket Beach, fishing at Island Grove. I'd been thinking about what would happen if I were not to return and how it would affect the town, and the more I thought about it, all I wanted to do was stay in Abington and raise a family of my own.
I was making myself more nervous as days passed. I thought I was beginning to contract a case of photophobia. I wasn't sure what I would do under pressure. What if we were under heavy fire, and we needed to move and I froze in place? I was so afraid of actually being scared that I began to lose sleep. My last night home, I was haunted by the most realistic nightmare I had ever experienced. I was in the jungle with my squad doing maintenance checks on the Humvee. Gusts of wind threw my hair back, and the rain pelted off my face. I was underneath the vehicle working for about an hour, and I was exhausted, sweat trickling down my back and seeping through my uniform. I rubbed the mud off my face and pulled myself to my feet. My eyes burned as if acid spewed into my very corneas. I quickly squatted back down and rubbed my hands together in a small puddle splashing the cold, mucky water into my eyes and the burning subsided. The voices stopped. I turned on a dime, and my squad was gone. Nowhere to be found. I was in hostile territory by myself. Heavy gunfire rained down on me, and I dove behind the Humvee landing in some sort of tangled thorny abyss, and it held me in place so that I couldn't move. Then I jerked into consciousness screaming bloody murder. Was it a sign of things to come, a premonition, or my mind playing awful tricks on me? That very day, I left everything I loved behind to join the churning turbines of the evil war machine. I was powerless; but what kept me going was that I knew I was fighting for my country. I was going to die on my own terms, no one else's. From then on, I was no longer a boy. I was a man.