Graduations and Such

My brother and his significant other are coming to visit for a couple of days in order to attend his daughter's high school graduation. Although she has lived with him in Wisconsin since her parents divorced several years ago, she wanted to spend her senior year with her mother in Maryland so is graduating from high school out here on Friday night. She has no idea what she will do after graduation. Although she has always done very well in school, she wants to postpone college and join the full time work force for a year or so, though she has no particular inclination for any particular kind of job. I can't help but compare her life situation to that of my parents when they were in high school. My father, like my niece, was not even 18 when he graduated and too young to join the Army, but he did anyway. But then that was during World War II and to him, at least, it seemed like he had a duty to fulfill. I can only say that I hope she one day is as sure of her roles and purposes in life as my Dad always seemed to be, and as determined to complete her education as my Mother, who had to enter the work force before she graduated and sat up nights studying, after working all day at Muntsingwear, to complete her high school requirements. And I hope, in the end, my niece is as successful in all her endeavors as my parents were in theirs.

After Graduation

I joined the Army.
It was the right thing to do.
We had to make the world safe,
For democracy.

I trained as a paratrooper,
And came home on leave
A few days before
I was sent to Japan.

Your mom had grown up
(Sort of),
Had become the most beautiful girl
I’d ever seen.

We couldn’t help ourselves.
Me, only 18, facing death.
Her, barely 16, ignorant,
Like girls were in those days.

When they finally let me out,
You were already here.
There was never a question.
We married.

Maybe we didn’t know
What love is.
But together, we learned.
And we had a wonderful life.

I wouldn’t have traded it
For anything.

P.E. Ortman

A portrait I painted of my parents when they were in their late 40's or early 50's is on this page on my website:

http://members.purespeed.com/~peo/portraits.html