Margaret Lough

There was a carved feather in the knight’s helm, once, and the arm that holds the sword sometimes falls out. I’ve considered having it repaired. But I’ve seen enough of soldiers to know that there’s no papering over the past. So I leave the sword a little bent, like a memory.

I found the knight in a small store in Highland Falls, New York, just outside West Point, sometime around the age of nine. West Point always meant family and tradition, three generations of graduates begun by my grandfather. Our father raised us as Army football fans and we spent many fall weekends at Michie Stadium.

There were other toy soldiers in the shop that day, from every war we choose to imagine or remember, but I knew the knight in red and yellow was mine. My father bought it for me.

The childhood home is no more, and when it was my turn, like my brothers, to make my way in the Army, I stopped counting the moves. I gave away and sold so many things. Lost perhaps more.

But still the knight comes with me, sits nearby, sword bent but not broken.

Once, when I was younger, someone suggested that I was foolish to imagine a knight in shining armor. Not in this lifetime, they said.

But oh, I thought then, and know the truth of now - the knight in shining armor is me.