I missed my own college roommate’s wedding because Zora had strep throat that same weekend. I missed a rare invitation to visit an old Army buddy in California because there wasn’t extra money for both the flight and Nadia’s orthodontist bill that same month. I gave up, somewhere along the way, the ordinary chance most people get to build a family of their own from scratch, not because the girls ever once asked that of me, but because somebody had to stay, and I’d already decided, that first night with a tiny fist wrapped around my finger, that the somebody was going to be me.
By the time graduation day finally arrived, I had more gray in my beard than I ever expected to see, a bad right knee from two decades of stocking shelves, and a cheap digital camera shaking slightly in my hands as I found my seat in the crowded gymnasium at Calloway State University.
