In the Navy, “First Class” means someone at pay grade E-6, a leadership position more or less equivalent to middle-management.
I take a taxi back to the hotel and retire to my room. I check Messenger. No response from Ashley, though the mini-profile photo in the corner tells me she’s seen the message. I check the time. The Philippines is one hour behind Japan, so right now Sophie is taking her shower. We stopped bathing Sophie ourselves when she was four. Some kids need more help than others, but Sophie’s always had an independent streak. When she was five I poured the milk in her cereal and she kept saying Let Me Do It until one morning, I did: I handed her the milk jug. She filled up the bowl, and splattered a bunch of milk on the table. We laughed as I wiped it up.
It’s memories like these that matter. I see a lot of parents posting pictures of their kids’ embarrassing moments on social media, and I have to ask: why? When I was in San Diego there was a female First Class who complained about her son at work and I don’t mean she vented like parents sometimes do, I mean she complained loudly and obnoxiously, ranting about the “weird shit” that poor boy did, and the question just comes back to me: why? Why treat your children like this? The boy threw a temper tantrum. She posted it on Facebook and it had a dozen likes, many laughs and even a few loves…and I think of moments with Sophie like the milk, I look at my iCloud photos and I could never fathom doing something like that to her. Who could?
That female First Class, for starters.
All the people who liked her Facebook post, for another.
