Letter 10 — October 2026
Re: Red Lobster
Dear Soldier,
Your battle buddy's mother drove from wherever she had come from to see her son graduate. She was at the ceremony because she was his mother and that is what mothers do. After the ceremony, she took her son to Red Lobster, because that is what you do after military graduations in America — you go somewhere that feels like celebration, somewhere with tablecloths or at least the suggestion of occasion.
She took you too. This is the detail I want you to hold.
She did not have to. You were her son's friend, his battle buddy, the person who had been beside him through the particular intimacy of basic training. You were not her obligation. She included you anyway.
You sat at that table in Red Lobster in Missouri, a Kenyan immigrant who had just become a United States soldier, eating seafood with a woman you had met that day whose son had become something like a brother over the previous months, and I want you to know that this is not a small story. It is a story about the specific kindness that sometimes comes from strangers when strangers are all you have.
You ordered something. You ate it. You were part of a family's celebration for one evening, by the grace of a woman who noticed that you were there and decided that noticing was enough reason to include you.
I have not forgotten her.
From the man still sitting at that table,
Gabriel
mydearsoldier.com