“‘This is Diana—our family dropout,’ my mother said for the fifteenth Thanksgiving in a row, but when my sister’s new husband reached across the table to shake my hand, his grip locked, his face went still, and the room forgot how to laugh before he said the two words nobody there was prepared to hear”

she answered on the second ring. And the conversation that followed was the first one I could remember where someone asked me what I wanted to do rather than telling me what I would.

I submitted my officer candidate school application in April.

I called my mother in May, sitting on my dorm room bed with the acceptance confirmation open on my laptop.

The continue reading …