In two months my son comes home from his first deployment at sea on the USS Nimitz. He'll be stationed at Point Mugu in Southern California somewhere around Malibu. He spent the last four years in the Hawaiian Islands at NCTAMS (not Pearl Harbor) so he's been fortunate to go from paradise to paradise. And I've been fortunate to watch him morph from boy to man.

This was a kid I couldn't keep in class in high school. Sure, he went to school every day but he pretty much just hung around in the hallways or out in the courtyards being social. The school called me so often I finally made arrangements to show up and surprise him. I dressed like a bag lady, torn tee shirt, dirty old ragged jeans, no makeup, uncombed hair. I found him strolling a hallway with a girl on each arm, laughing very loudly and carrying on, and not one teacher came out to see what was going on when I know they had to hear the three of them in the hallway. I talked to his school counselor who should never have been within a mile of any child as she sat there behind her immaculate desk under her perfect helmet of hair in a pristine linen suit and said to me (while my son sat there next to me), "I don't see Tristan attending college. He just isn't college material. In fact, I don't see him being successful in any significant way. He just doesn't have it in him." To which I replied, "How dare you talk about my son that way. How about if I have a little chat with your 14-year-old daughter and tell her that I think she'll be pregnant before her sixteenth birthday?" I took him out of that school and placed him in an alternative high school where within six months he was entirely caught up with his work and graduated and then went straight down and enlisted in the Navy.

This was his decision. He said he wasn't ready for more school, especially one that would cost a fortune which we didn't have, being a single-mom family, and he didn't want to get stuck in the rut of Joe Jobs, and the only alternative was the service. I was skeptical. I mean, at the time this was a kid who worked as seldom as possible because he just wanted to hang out with his friends and he never came home with my truck at the agreed upon time and his room looked like a junk drawer and smelled like, well, something really awful. He'd never been in any real trouble, just wasn't all that responsible. Which he didn't learn from example because I've worked full time jobs since I was 14, and went to night school to boot, while raising a kid and doing my father's books on the side and taking care of my mother through the cancer crisis.

But when he made it through boot camp and I flew to Great Lakes outside of Chicago to see the graduation, and I saw my son walk toward me looking like a man in his white dress uniform, I was speechless. My pride, my relief, my love, incapacitated me to the point of weeping when we went to the Navy Pier for the afternoon and right in the middle of the common area I started blubbering and couldn't stop. And, even more amazing were the people who suddenly surrounded us, dozens of them, as my son held me and I just cried myself out. When these people discovered the tears weren't because someone just died or I'd lost my Visa, they just milled around us, comforting me and congratulating us and offering coffee and jelly beans and lots of good wishes. One old man, an Army veteran, took an American flag pin off his lapel and attached it to my sweater. I'll never forget his face.

Then off to Hawaii he went. He came home on leave when I got married and he stood up in his dress blues for my husband as the best man. All my friends who hadn't seen him in about a year couldn't believe the transformation. He came home when my father died and he never left his grandmother's side except to drive people to and from the airport and make a few trips to the grocery store. Of course, he's his grandma's darling, being the only grandSON, as my sister and brother both have a gaggle of girls. She said to me, "You did good." But I only take partial credit. Standing at the intersection of the good way or the bad way, he's the one who made the right choice and decided it was time to become a man.

And in two months he'll be coming home from sea. We're all going to San Diego to watch the ship come in, me, my husband, his girlfriend and her parents, and, of course, his grandmother. I understand that the sailors line the ship in their dress whites and there's a lot of entertainment, free food, and billions of tears. I'm going to take that American flag pin with me and I'm going to find someone in that crowd of strangers who I believe needs it and I'm going to pin it on him/her with all my best wishes.

I met my husband in a bar (cringe) but to be honest I wasn't looking for a man. I was there with my friends on karaoke night to sing a little Janis Joplin and throw back a few diet Cokes. He said hi to me when I walked past him and I gave him a look. You know, that look that says not interested buddy. But then he walked over to my table and asked to sit down. I thought, sure, this guy is too good looking to be interested in me. He just wants an easy introduction to my female friends. But, okay, I said have a seat, because it never hurts to have a handsome guy sitting next to you. Me being close to 300 pounds at that time, it's not like I could turn away male attention when it came looking for me. We danced a few times and I did introduce him to my female friends who were pretty much giddy over him. In fact, they turned to mush around him. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Six feet. Trim. Fantastic moustache. Who wouldn't melt? He overheard me saying to a friend that I wish I could move like one of the other women on the dance floor who twirled and stepped and dipped like a professional in her high heeled shoes. So John said to me, I can help you with that. Come walking with me tomorrow. So I met him at Thunderbird Park on a hot June day and we walked this horrendous trail and I would have given up within minutes if he hadn't been just ahead of me in his silk shorts and bare midriff, his tight tushie like a carrot just out of reach. By the time we finished that hike I was sweaty and messy and smelly and about ready to drop dead on the ground. We had a few platonic dates, hikes and karoake and pool parties and tubing on the Salt River. Then one night he called and asked what would it hurt for two friends to go out dancing. He felt like dancing, he said, and he didn't want to go out alone. He thought it would be fun. So we met at Nifty 50's and while we were dancing (sloooowwww) I felt something come between us and it definitely wasn't part of MY anatomy. He apologized and we sat down and he apologized again, stating that we couldn't let sex into the equation because it always ruined a good friendship. To which I told him that it had nothing to do with friendship, it had to do with my being fat and that he should just be honest about it. A minute went by during which we watched people dancing and flirting at the tables and all of the sudden the next thing I knew my head was being pinned between two big hands and his mouth took over mine and afterwards he said, so much for being fat. We've been together ever since. I lost nearly 100 pounds, which means I'm still overweight, but the fact that this man loved me when I was still in my Velcro period (that time of life when you can't bend over far enough to tie your own shoes so you buy slip-ons or Velcro fasteners) just amazes me. You don't see too many really nice looking guys with fat girls. Not because they aren't interested by them or attracted to them, but because they won't allow themselves. What would their buds think? How would it look to be seen in public with a woman not proportionately correct? And if she's this fat now, what will she be like after I make a commitment? She'll be downing the fried chicken and chocolate shakes like there's no tomorrow! And I can't be caught dead with a woman I'm not able to bench press. I recently went to my husband's workplace for the first time and used his employee discount card and the cashier took a doubletake and said, YOU'RE MARRIED TO JOHN? OUR JOHN? Like there must be some mistake and she might have to call him on the overhead to have him identify me. He came walking by on a customer call and saw me standing there and came right over and told the cashier to be extra special nice to me because I was extra special to him and she blushed and looked embarrassed. As she should have. So much for being fat.

I walked down South Beach and met a man named Atkins who asked if I knew the way to Scarsdale. I told him no, but Jenny Craig over by the snowcone stand might know as she is in The Zone. I kept walking across the sand until I spotted a sexy looking Mediterranean crying into his Cabbage Soup because Suzanne Sommers dumped him after his appointment at the Mayo Clinic where he discovered his Blood Type wasn't compatible with hers. I told him there were a lot of sweet young things at Duke University bored to death with their Rice who might enjoy the company of a Sugar Buster like him. He handed me a Grapefruit which I enjoyed right there on the beach without even thinking about the Calorie Commando waiting for me at home.

I just had to get all these diets off my chest and out of my life.