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“You’re not actually thinking about it, are you?” I asked.
“I’ve been doing this job for thirty-six years,” Sarge said, and he sounded tired. “Retiring doesn’t sound like a bad idea. I have grandkids I want to see grow up.”
I looked at Sarge, and I saw the kind of man I wanted to be. Seeing as how I didn’t have any real role models growing up, he was the first person I had to look up to and learn from. He was strong, brave, and decisive. He had fought in the thick of things for twenty-eight years before being promoted to chief. And with everything he did around the fire station, he had still done his best for his wife and their two children, both of whom were older than I was.
“Sarge,” I said, looking at him as my mentor for more than just the job. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
He looked a little surprised, but he nodded. “Go ahead.”
“Well… I was wondering if you ever found it difficult to balance this job with your family?”
Sarge listened intently and then nodded. “You met a girl, didn’t you?”
I smiled. “It’s not near anywhere serious,” I said. “We’re purely friends. It’s just that… I don’t really want to take it any further if there’s no room in my life for a relationship.”
“That’s crazy. You can’t put your life on hold for anything—not even this job. You just have to learn to balance it.”
“How?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“By sleeping less,” Sarge replied, with an amused smile. “Family is a big commitment, Phil, and so is this job. You’d be taking a lot on if you decide to one day start a family, and not every woman can deal with that.
“My advice to you is this: pick a woman who understands this job. Pick a woman who respects you for your service and respects what you do for the community. That’s the girl you need to marry.”
“You’re getting a little ahead of me, Sarge,” I said. “I’m not even close to thinking about marriage just yet. I’ve just met this girl, and as I said, we’re strictly friends at the moment.”
“But obviously, that’s not all you want to be.”
“Well…”
“What’s holding you back?” he asked. “This job?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “And the fact that her brother also happens to be my friend.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “I’d be breaking a rule, wouldn’t I?”
Sarge shrugged. “Depends on the friendship,” he said. “And depends on the friend.”
“I’m just not sure what I should do at the moment.”
Sarge clapped me on the back. “It depends on how strongly you feel about this girl,” he told me. “Some women are worth breaking friendships for.”
I laughed. “Are you speaking from experience?”
“Maybe,” he said with a little twinkle in his eye.
“Thanks for the advice, Sarge,” I said.
“My door is always open.” He nodded before heading back out to his office.
I thought long and hard about what Sarge had told me. It was good advice, but it still didn’t make my decision any easier. Sometimes I wished I had a family to talk to, but everyone from my childhood had scattered, and we had all taken different paths, some by choice and others by force. I thought about my father and the nights he would stumble home drunk and angry, looking for a fight. He had been buried for ten years now, and I still couldn’t find it in me to miss him even a little.
I thought about my mother and the sad expressions she wore at different times of the day. She had been a beautiful woman, but she lost her beauty there towards the end. She had been so consumed with her disappointing life that it had eaten away at her. I think she must have finally realized that it was either her or us—and she chose herself. There were still days when I was hurt by her choice…but a part of me understood it, too.
I thought about my fearless older brother. He had all the courage and conviction that I had lacked growing up. When I was five, my goal in life was to grow up to be like Paul. And then I got older and realized that my superhero of a brother was nothing more than a juvenile delinquent who was just as lost as the rest of us. He put on a better act than most, but it was an act all the same.
I could see the broken threads of the family I had once had, and it hurt to think that we were no longer even that. I realized suddenly that we had never truly been a family. We were just separate people, brought together by a combination of bad choices and DNA that wasn’t really strong enough to hold us together for long.
