It was 1992. As a self-described plain person, I felt overwhelmed at the opulence of the hotel; plush carpets, huge 200 year old portraits hung on walls, white columns, gilded ivy. We waited quietly in line. Whispers seemed the appropriate demeanor. Our turn to enter the restaurant came soon enough and my husband and I were seated by a waif-like young woman with kind eyes and a bright smile.
Two hundred and forty six small lights circled the north and south walls, we were told. And the mahogany panels on the east side were first placed in 1856. A wall of window, floor to ceiling, was on the west. Classical music filled the air, created by a middle aged musician seated at a grand piano in the center of the enormous room.
We waited for about 15 minutes for our son to join us, and then he walked in. Tall, straight, handsome as only an 18 year old young man could be. Neatly pressed in gray, shoes shining, brass buttons gleaming. A very small smile crawled across his lips when he spotted us and walked our way. It was the first time we had seen him in uniform.
I remember that day, breakfast in the grand ballroom of the Thayer Hotel at West Point. I would always marvel at the incongruity of the opulence, the gold and alabaster columns, the classical music gently soothing, while in the bright sunshine on the other side of arched windows helicopters rose and landed and tanks rolled across the bright green grass of the plain.
I looked at my son’s face, bright and eager, and wondered what the next few years would be like in his new world.