By When I sit down and think about where I am in my life, I am reminded to look both ways down the path I have walked.
I look forward every day towards the next step: A job, a wife, and a family.
Less often do I look back, towards the people who got me here.
I remember my high school football coach and my wrestling coach, who both taught me about the importance of hard work.
I think about my best friend Jeff, who has been at my side since I was 10 years old. But mostly, I think about my mom.
When I think about my mother, I mostly think back to the end of high school.
Like any senior, I was struggling with motivation. Add a particularly brutal break-up, and I rarely wanted to spend time out of my bed, let alone planning the next steps of my life.
None of that concerned my mother, though. For as long as I can remember, my mother wanted me to attend college. My mom had started college, but dropped out after one semester to start a family and enter the working world.
I knew from an early age that one of her biggest regrets was never finishing school. She wasn’t going to let me feel that way.
What now seems like every night of my senior year, my mother sat down with me while I filled out scholarship applications, applied to schools, and wrote essays explaining why I wanted to attend college.
Night after night, I sat at the dining room table while my mother worked with me. It didn’t matter if I had practice or if I had just got off work.
We were going to sit down and get to work.
It wasn’t easy for my mother. She workeds 12-hour days in retail and spent most of her days on her feet.
Sometimes, she wouldn’t be home until after midnight, with a 6 a.m. shift ahead.
My mother drove me to apply for an ROTC scholarship. The scholarship process was lengthy. I had to schedule a physical and an interview with a lieutenant colonel.
But I got it done – because my mom was always there to push me, pull me, love me.
The reason I am at Carroll today is because of ROTC – a scholarship that’s technically from the government, but is actually a gift from my mom.
Beside us and behind all of us are parents, siblings, grandparents who have made sacrifices for us.
We must never forget to remember, to be grateful.
I am grateful for the mom who wanted her son to get the education she never had.
I am grateful for my mom, who worked her day shift, and then came home for her night shift – helping her son get into college.
Above all else, I am grateful for my mom who loves me and believes in me.
