R-Day Eve

Our West Point Bound Son at His Going Away Party

One Year Later at Cadet Field Training

Today is R-Day Eve for the West Point New Cadets Class 2013, and many emotions are flooding my mind. It's been a full year since the family delivered our New Cadet to the land of all things gray, and the adrenaline of that 24 hours has become a part of our family history.

An entire auditorium of people gave my son a standing 'O' as he received the certificate stating he had received a West Point appointment. There were several going away parties with cakes, speeches , tributes, toasts, and flag waving. He was a regular hometown hero...

but all that would quickly change.

On R-Day, my son morphed from Hometown Hero to New Cadet and it is was made crystal-clear that New Cadet is the lowest form of life in the strange new world he had entered.

It was a tearful, emotional good-bye, as delivering any child to college would be..

multiplied by a thousand.

And we morphed quickly as well. We changed from tearful parents to...

New Cadet stalkers.

They (the New Cadets) were everywhere, being herded in small groups from one station to the next. We planted ourselves at a strategic crossroad and, with binoculars and video camera in hand...

the stalking began.

Our New Cadet loaded with gear and sporting his new BCGs (BCG = Birth Control Glasses) was
herded by our vantage point into the barber shop and out again. The transformation was...

well...

breathtaking.

Mom's voice can be heard on the family video saying,

"Oh...
my...
goodness..."

Moms everywhere could be seen crying...

especially after seeing the haircuts and glasses.

Soon we were lined along the street waiting for a glimpse of our New Cadet at the R-Day Parade and Oath Ceremony.
Dad spotted him as he was marching away and was so overcome with pride that he gave a "Go, Kinley!" shout-out.
I saw Clayton's trademark 'smirk' as he continued to stare straight ahead. It was the last time I would see him for a long time, and I lived off that smirk for the rest of the summer.

Next, they herded the Class of 2012 into the Mess Hall. The doors were closed with a ceremonial bang....
West Point's way of saying, "Show's over folks. Nothing more to see. They are 'our' New Cadets now."

The summer was full of silence. I wrote him every day, but received little back. Only the fill-in-the blank letters I had composed were returned. Meanwhile, he spent the summer chewing 5 times a bite, doing push-ups for every conceivable offense, and trying to be as invisible as possible. We lived for the three 10 minute phone calls.
And, in the end, purchased two plane tickets to New York in August for his Acceptance Day weekend to witness firsthand his upgrade from New Cadet to Cadet and Plebe.

Once he got settled into the barracks with his own landline, and we could talk to him, a lot of the anxiety began to fade. He didn't fly home for Thanksgiving, so Christmas leave was a joyous homecoming full of friends and non-stop activity.

We flew up again in March for Plebe Parent Weekend, he spent Spring Leave in Colorado skiing with a friend, we prayed all spring for him to pass Calculus, and, the next time we see him...

Dad is pinning his Airborne Wings on his uniform!

This has been a year full of growth both for our Cadet and for us as parents letting go of our first child. He has grown from a boy to a man, independent from us and thriving in an incredible environment.

Tomorrow when a thousand families will be living their R-Day, my Cadet will be shooting from tanks at Fort Knox, Kentucky. He has already had a summer full of jumping out of airplanes, being in the field for days at a time, blowing open buildings, shooting all kinds of guns, and

...well...

preparing to be an Army Officer.