Summer is Over and Gone

We were out on the lake the other day with Colin.  One of our last hurrahs before the end of the season.  It was clear.  The air was slightly cool as the sun went down.  Along the edge of the lake we could see that the trees are beginning to change.  The deep greens of summer are beginning to give over to paler, dustier greens.  The early changers like sumac have begun their turn around; so dark reds were seen here and there along with yellow and gold. 

In our garden there are some obvious changes as the hours of sunlight decrease and the sun’s intensity diminishes.  The morning glories, once so bright climbing up the back rail are still giving it their all, but their leaves are curling and many have fallen so, as Sasha and I go out to get the paper each day there are fewer and fewer bright blossoms to greet us.  The Angel’s Trumpet with its big bell shaped flowers, so fragrant you can smell them from the road, has stopped blooming as well.  Its spent blossoms lay withered on the ground, a faint testament to their former glory. 

We have a small garden out back that is only for cutting flowers for the house.  I don’t know the names of them all but there are Gerber daisies and Black-eyed Susans.  All the blossoms are nearly gone now and our inside flowers are changing over to little yellow wild flowers, the last remaining hydrangeas and some tall grasses. 

Overhead there are geese in their familiar formations, honking shamelessly, advertising their relocation to warmer climes.  Some will stay I think, but those loud, strict V shaped formations are not the same as the lackadaisical v-like flying patterns for short distance during the summer.  No, they’re taking off.  Let them go.  They don’t know what they are missing. 

This is my favorite time of year.  This change.  This cusp on the edge of something quite different in the natural world.  Insects and spiders are hurrying to get their jobs done.  Many of my students have brought in cicada shells for us to examine in our science area.  These short-lived adults don’t have much time to advertise, find a mate, and reproduce.  As adults they don’t even have a digestive tract.  No, it’s all about making babies and saying good-bye.  They'll soon be recycled into something else.

In our classroom we have had the breathtaking excitement of observing black swallowtail butterfly eggs hatch into caterpillars so small that you can barely see them.  We have watched them eat and grow and molt when their skin got tight - and eat some more.  We’ve been there to bear witness to them clinging to a twig, tucking into themselves and shedding their final skin to emerge as a beautiful brown or green chrysalis, so camouflaged that you wouldn’t have a chance to spot it on a bush or a branch or a twig unless you knew it was there.  And we'll be there to watch them appear as an adult, ready to go out and mate and lay more eggs.  

I miss my mom this early fall.  Last year she was still around.  At this time last year, she was still healthy, still grieving the loss of her husband just a few months earlier.  But last fall she believed that she had time left.   She was looking forward.  She was still writing to me about the change of color, the trips she planned to take, how beautiful the water of her little lake was with mist lifting off its surface in the morning.  She was still getting out for her usual walks along the water’s edge.  She would not miss observing the natural world if she could help it.  My mom loved the changing seasons.  Perhaps that’s where I came to love it as well. 

And now there are the crickets.  There are crickets all summer long, right?  But during summer they have to compete with the night sounds of chorus frogs, katydids and cicadas.  As the frogs quiet down with the chillier evening temperatures, and as the cicadas and other insects begin to die, the crickets seem to have renewed energy.  As Heidi and I walked last evening in the final rays of evening twilight and on into the night, we heard mourning doves in the distance, and this beautiful mockingbird who would not give it up and go to sleep.  And we heard crickets. 

Our lives have these rhythms.  Some are artificial – like the school timetable, which has governed my existence since I began school in 1963 and has continued on through high school, college and into my professional life as a teacher.  My mom had this rhythm in her life too.  She was a teacher before she retired. 

But there is this other, deeper, more primal rhythm as the earth spins on its axis and makes its yearlong journey around the sun on its crazy tilted axis.  The seasons.

Like so many things, I would have loved to share my feelings about the edge of fall with my mom again this year.  I would have loved to drink a cup of her hot, strong black coffee on her early morning porch, and look out over her lake, and watch as that mist lifted and that water began to sparkle, and those morning birds began to sing their daybreak songs.  I would have loved to share that feeling of being on that cliff just before fall, that sense of being poised and ready to plunge pall mall into the cool, the crisp leaves, the smoke tinged air, of jackets, and Halloween, and color and color and color. 

And I know that missing her is just another part of the cycle, the long rhythm of life, the comings and goings of lovers and family and friends, of times and places.  Of the seasons. 

The crickets sang in the grasses.  They sang of summer’s ending, a sad, monotonous song.  “Summer is over and gone,” they sang.  “Over and gone, over and gone.  Summer is dying, dying.”

            The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever.  Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into fall – the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.

            Everybody heard the song of the crickets.  Avery and Fern Arable heard it as they walked the dusty road. They knew that school would soon begin again.  The young geese heard it and knew that they would never be little goslings again.  Charlotte heard it and knew that she hadn’t much time left.  Mrs. Zuckerman, at work in the kitchen, heard the crickets, and a sadness came over her, too.  “Another summer gone,” she sighed.  Lurvy, at work building a crate for Wilbur, heard the song and knew it was time to dig potatoes. 

”Summer is over and gone,” repeated the crickets.  “How many nights till frost?” sang the crickets.  “Good-bye, summer, good-bye, good-bye!”  From E. B. White's Charlotte's Web  p. 113-114

Mr. Rogers Neighborhood

"It's easy to convince people that children need to learn the alphabet and numbers. How do we help people to realize that what matters is how a person's inner life finally puts together the alphabet and numbers of his outer life? What really matters is whether he uses the alphabet for the declaration of war or the description of a sunrise, and his numbers for the final count in Buchenwald or for the specifics of a new bridge" (Fred Rogers)

I’ve written about Fred McFeely Rogers before.   He had a pretty profound impact on my boys and me when they were little ones and I was a young dad.  I would come home from school and those little boys would come running up and hugging on me and loving on me.  And we would wrestle and take our walk through the neighborhood.  We would visit the lake, maybe fish for a little while, have an explore, chase each other around this big old oak tree and then head back to our condo.  On many days we would watch Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.

He came along on ETV when I was too old to understand or appreciate him when I was a kid.  It was one of the baby shows.  He was too soft, wore old fashioned clothes and had lousy looking puppets for the fantasy part of the show.

We were very careful about what our little boys watched on TV.  Since we didn’t have cable, it was mostly ETV for kids.  Kratt’s creatures, Magic school Bus and Mr. Rogers’s Neighborhood were the biggies. 

I saw Fred Rogers with new eyes when I was watching with my little ones.  He was real.  He talked right to you.  He went on real field trips and taught you about really cool things like how crayons were made or how the mail system worked.  He was encouraging and didn’t talk down to kids.  In one show he was feeding the fish in his 10-gallon fish tank and discovered a dead one.  He took a net and got it out.  He put it in some water with a tiny bit of extra salt to see if he could revive it.  But it was dead.  He spoke to little ones about the nature of life and how all creatures’ lives come to an end one day.   But for most of us it comes after a long and happy life. 

His fish died and he taught us how to celebrate life. 

There was nothing fancy about his show.  It was simple.  There were lengthy shots where you could tell that he wasn’t reading from a prompter.  He was just being Fred, a good man and a great teacher.  I quote from him in my newsletters to my students’ parents, at teacher workshops, and I use his words for language appreciation in my classroom. 

And he was an awesome songwriter.  He wrote a song or two every day.  And they were so cool.  They were deep and filled with great ideas for young minds.  And older minds too. 

A friend sent me a link to this YOUTUBE video.  It has been seen by millions.  Perhaps you have seen it already.  Give yourself a treat and watch it again. 

Do you ever imagine things?
Are they scary things?


Do you ever imagine things?
Things you’d like to have?


Do you ever see a cats eyes in the dark

and wonder what they were?


Do you ever pretend about things like that before?

(Do you ever pretend about things like that?)


Did you ever grow anything in your garden of your mind?

(In your garden of your mind?)


You can grow ideas in your garden of your mind?


(In your garden of your mind?)

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

I was born in 1957.  In those days brush haircuts were the fashion for men.  Really short.  There was some variation among the style, super short on the sides (whitewalls), flat on the top, buzzed the same length all over.  But short hair was in. 

There was a contingent of roguish men or beatniks whose hair was long in relation to the standards of the day.  They stood out.  

As a child of the 60’s, hair was super important.  It said who you were, where you stood on social issues, how lenient your parents were.  My brothers and sisters attended Catholic school, where long hair was not allowed.  There wasn’t much thought about freedom of expression with the clothes you wore or how you wore your hair.  It was all quite simple.  For the boys it was long dark dress pants, white shirt and tie.  Hair was supposed to be above the collar of your shirt.  For girls it was a plaid skirt (which had to touch the floor when you knelt – and we did lots of kneeling as we went to Mass every school day as well as Sundays), white blouse and, if you were in first or second grade (no Kindergarten back then in the Catholic school) a beanie held to the crown of the head with bobby pins.  It certainly was a great equalizer.  Rich or poor, or somewhere in the middle – we all looked the same. 

In the mid sixties, many of my friends would have preferred long hair.  The hair length of movie stars and singers was getting much longer.  Who wanted a crew cut when the Fab Four and The Monkeys had those fantastic moptops? 

So it was always a struggle when my mom lined us up and pulled that horrible electric razor to buzz our hair.  It wasn’t new or sharp any longer so, besides the insult and shame of not even going to a real barber, getting haircut from my mom was painful.   I always complained (no, I probably whined) about having my hair shorter than EVERYONE ELSE and looking like a MAMA’S BOY and so OLD FASHIONED.  So my mom, in her wisdom would compromise with a 5 guard instead of a 3 guard – against her better judgment of course. 

When I went to high school, still in Catholic school for two years, the rules governing hair length were a little more moderate.  I always went to the acceptable limits.   But when my family moved in the summer between my sophomore and junior years, all bets were off.  I attended a public school for the first time and there were essentially no dress codes!  At 16, my parents sort of threw up their hands and figured that the length of my hair was not as important any more and I think I went at least three years without a cut.   Looking back on images of myself during those years, I was pretty bizarre.  I’m sure that my parents just gritted their teeth and figured that this wasn’t a battle they wanted to fight any more. 

My head was like a bush.  My hair was so thick that it stuck out in every direction.  I didn’t care.  I was into letting my freak flag fly.  And it sure did.  When I pulled it back into a ponytail after a swim or shower, it didn’t really ever dry.  When I wore a bandana it stuck out crazily wherever it could escape the confines of cloth.  It was clownish really.

But I wore it that way for years.  Finally, I met Heidi Mills and she convinced me that it needed some trimming.  It was way out of control.  The result of her first haircut was a little uneven, but it had to be far better than the crazy clown wig I had been wearing for the previous few years.  And I was madly in love and anything that Heidi would do for me would be fine. 

And I’ve worn my hair roughly the same ever since.  I do go to COST CUTTERS now.  And the part is slightly to the side – instead of straight down the middle.  But for roughly 30 years, my hair has been the same.  A little shaggier - then a little shorter. 

We all go through the changes of fashion.  My parents probably went through some similar things with their parents.  Skirt lengths, necklines, makeup, hair grease, widths of ties.   At some point most parents are old fashioned to their kids and kids are outrageous to their parents.  Part of life I suppose.

Our oldest son, Devin, has great thick hair.  He was self-conscious about it as a kid.  It was wavy and didn’t stay down.  He wet it and wore hats to bed.  And for a while, would never be seen outdoors without a hat. 

Once when he was on an overnight religious retreat with his teenage friends, he called us and asked if he could get a Mohawk.  We said, “No!” without hesitation.   “But thanks for asking.”  There was something a little suspicious about that conversation.  I had the idea that he was asking after the fact.   Our suspicions were confirmed when he came back home with a complete buzz cut.  At least he got rid of the long hair down the middle. 

We put Colin through an awkward stage with his hair.  Heidi insisted on giving him a bowl cut.  He had it for years.  It looked “European”.  As soon as he knew his rights (4^th grade or so) he said NO to the bowl thing and opted for very long hair that sort of stuck out all over.  People said a few times that he looked a lot like Justin Bieber.  That was the end of that.  Now he has a handsome, relatively short, neat look.

The thing about fashion is that it is…  so… ridiculous.  What’s in, goes out.  What’s out, comes back.  And who decides?  I guess the short answer is “designers” decide. Whoever they are.  Obviously the idea behind fashion trends is to part consumers with their money.  If my perfectly good jeans aren’t what’s cool, they go to GOODWILL or simply to the trash so I can go out and buy something new. 

Same with hairstyles.  Depending on which famous people wear their hair a certain style, many people will change how they look in a minute to match.  Take Justin Bieber for instance.  (Please.)  If he were to get a crew cut, chances are that it would make a momentary bump in the fashion trend du jour.    

Rick

I’m having a hard time trying to find the words for what I’m feeling.  Maybe I’m not sure what I feel.  It’s odd thinking back on my childhood, to all of the crazy pranks, misdeeds, insights, breakthrough moments, times when I was sure that I was not the same kid I was just the day before.   So many of those times I shared with one person.  My neighbor growing up.  Rick.

We moved to Merrillville, Indiana (back then we had a Gary address – Merrillville had not yet incorporated) in 1962.  Rick and his family lived right next door.   He was my earliest friend.  We raised each other as much as anyone.  We went to school together and played together and got into trouble together.  We ate at each other’s houses, spent nights together, had our first girlfriends around the same time.  There weren’t many milestones in my early life that I didn’t share with Rick. 

We went to Catholic school – Saints Peter and Paul.  It was less than two miles away, so in about second grade we walked to school.  Every day.  When our big brothers were still going to Peter and Paul, we walked with them. They sort of watched over us.  When we grew up a little, and our older siblings went to high school, we took charge of my little brother Dan.  Day after day, year after year – we walked to school together.  All the way through our sophomore year in high school.

We had many of the same teachers at Peter and Paul.  We learned cursive together, shared homework assignments and stories of our wacky teachers.   We developed some silly games like finding a can to kick all the way to school, hiding our cans in bushes near the campus, then kicking the same can all the way home.  For weeks at a time. 

Rick’s family had 5 kids (modest for Catholic standards back in the day).  We had 7.  And some of us matched up pretty closely in age.  We always had a game of something going on and many of the players were from our two families.  They were much more athletic than us.  Rick taught me how to throw a baseball and how to bat, how to throw a spiral and how to tackle.  He taught me how to shoot a basketball and how to dribble.  While I never got very good at any of these, I couldn’t have been a regular kid at all in our neighborhood if not for Rick and his brothers. 

We were altar boys together and even got smacked around by Father Wood after mass when we weren't holding our hands properly and couldn’t say the prayers in Latin the way we were supposed to. 

Because we lived close enough to walk home for lunch, we were drug mules - only it was candy we smuggled back to Saints Peter and Paul from Ameling's Sundries - a little store that sold penny candy.  It was like something out of the Andy Griffith Show.  Little old Mom and Pop behind the candy counter counting out flying saucers, and Snaps and licorice and Necco Wafers and Smarties.  Wooden floor worn down smooth.  Little tingly bell over the door announcing customers.  It was at the corner of 57th and Harrison I think.   How many times did Rick and I walk into that store ready to get our own sugar fix?

 We had tin can telephones from his bedroom to our kitchen.  My big sisters used to tease him mercilessly, giving him cherry bellies until he got too big and strong to hold down.

I was just talking about Rick the other day to my wife.  He taught me to drive a stick.  It was in his dad's old black Ford pickup truck.  It had a three speed on the column.  He taught me the hardest thing first.  Stopping on a hill and then starting up again.  It was on Harrison Street on an incline at a RR crossing.  What a right of passage.  That was one of the last times I saw him.  

While I did not keep up with him at all since my family moved away from that area after my Sophomore year - I am such an jerk about keeping up with old friends - I knew Rick longer than anyone.  All of these images of him are rushing back to me.  Playing soccer in the back yard or kickball or football or cream-the-kid with the ball.  Snowball fights.  Kick-the-can at night.  Camp fires in Maysack's Woods, where once we nearly burned the forest down.  They had a great basketball hoop over their garage.  We could play there anytime we wanted - even if they weren't around.  He was with me once when we were walking back to school at lunchtime and I was bitten by a dog.  He went with me to Sister Anastasia's office where they patched up my hand.  When I look at my hand I can see the scar.  I always will. 

They had a great TV antenna and could get UHF (we only had 4 stations including Educational TV which we would never watch).  So we spent a lot of time watching TV in their basement.  We regularly watched The Three Stooges after school.  We played pool and ping pong.  He and his older brothers - mostly Gene, who was in my brother John's class - turned me on to the best music.  Stuff my folks would never let me listen to.  Hendrix and the Who, Alice Cooper and Steppenwolf.

He was weird about his hair.  He would comb it straight down and wear a hat to school because he was all self-conscious about how frizzy it was - but he wanted it long.  It was the 60's after all.  I remember getting into a fight with this guy named Danny Smith in their backyard over a snowball fight.  Probably the only real fistfight I'd ever been in.  After the fight was over, Rick sort of comforted me.  Told me what a dick Danny Ford was.  

We talked about everything from girls to music to sports.  We shared every thought unselfconsciously.  Every dream.

Rick is gone now.  I got an email from a mutual old friend.  He left and I didn’t get to say goodbye.  I am so sad that I didn't make the effort over the years to catch up with him.   I can't say I'll miss him since I haven't talked with him in probably 30 years.  But I'll miss the idea of Rick being out there.  My best old childhood friend.  Besides my own family, I don't know I've spent so much time with any other person. 

I don’t pretend to know that much about life after death.  But I hope that in some way Old Rick knows what he meant to me and to all of us he left behind.

Good bye old friend.  

Holy Line

         C        /B    Am     /G                      Dm                            G

I’m goin’ on a mission, you see God has spoken to me

     C       /B           Am           /G                     Dm           G

I’m gonna do his holy work, gonna save the family

        F                        G                                                           C      /B         Am

I know it’s during the workweek, but I’ll make the sacrifice

             F                                                  G                   F                  G              C

Gonna buy me a chicken sandwich, Dr. Pepper – hold the ice

Thought about working in a shelter, maybe serving up some food

Got to consider my limited resources, and give to the greater good

Gonna get me a chicken sandwich, teach these people what is right

You know it’s just an abomination, holding hands out in plain sight

Gonna get me a chicken sandwich, and answer someone’s prayer

Maybe get a side of waffle fries, just to show that I really care

And I’ll buy a big fat soft drink, at least a quart or two

Just to thumb my nose at the government, yeah, let’s see what they do

Thinkin’ about serving at that soup kitchen, or donating to the poor

Instead I’ll get me some fastfood, make it quicker to Heaven’s door

Or holding babies in a hospital, or reading to kids at school

No, I’ll just get me a chicken burger, my mama didn’t raise no fool

I remember the lessons that I was taught, way back in Sunday School

To love your neighbor just as yourself, and apply the golden rule

But these people are way too different, they’re not like lepers or the poor

And these public displays of affection, GOD they make me sore!

I thought about volunteering, way downtown at the food bank

But instead I’ll buy me some chicken, fill up that old fuel tank

Thought about teaching Sunday school – how Jesus helped the sick

Then I considered the chicken sandwich – pickle?  No pickle? Hard to pick

I’m going on a spiritual retreat, right down to the chicken store

And wind up on the right side, of this nasty culture war

As far as feeding the homeless, I’ll leave that for the others

I’ll go stand in that chicken line, with my holy sisters and brothers

Senior Moment

There were a lot of things leading up to the moment. 

This summer as we watched the Olympic games, Heidi and I would snuggle up on the couch almost every night.  Since we are both early risers, it meant that we had been awake all day, usually working and playing hard.  So naturally, at around 11 we started to snooze.  Of course, our nightowl boys and their friends would come in after we had fallen asleep and see us on the couch with the TV on.  Just as I had seen my dad asleep in his old easy chair when I would sneak in from my late night prowls when I was a kid.

Then there was this nasty muscle spasm that has had me in its grip for weeks now.  I can’t pick up heavy objects, can’t really run, can’t water ski.  There have been doctor visits, prescriptions, etc.  Just old guy stuff.

Then there is the fact that our dog, Sasha, is getting old.  I mean really old.  She’s still happy.  She still likes to go out for walks, but the young, spry, energetic dog, who used to pull me for our five-mile runs is long since gone.  Now we walk her to the corner and back so she thinks she’s been on a real walk.  And I sure don’t run five miles any more since I’ve had arthroscopic surgery on both my knees.

Of course, both of my parents have passed on now leaving me an orphan. 

We are thinking a lot about retirement, have our financial plan all outlined.  While that is still years away, Heidi talks about it all the time. 

Many of my third-grade students can outrun me on the playground field – no more races in my future with eight and nine year olds.

Both of the boys will be in college this year…   making us…  wait for it…  empty nesters. 

 

So we were at the movies the other night, taking Devin and his girlfriend, Shae, out for a night on the town.  We get up to the window and I tell the pretty young woman taking the money that we would like tickets for, “Four adults, please.”  Devin reminds me that he and Shae are students.  “Make that two adults and two students.”

Then the young woman at the ticket counter says, “Are those adults senior tickets?”

Not one to take offense at anything to do with age, I replied that, “No, we’re not seniors yet.”  Then I remembered getting all of that AARP stuff in the mail.  And that my mom insisted that I could get a senior coffee at MacDonalds last summer when we stopped there for her beloved soft-serve cone. 

Cautiously, I asked, “What is the age considered senior?” knowing full well that we had a long time ahead of us before we could officially be referred to by that label. 

She smiled.  Maybe she was a little embarrassed at having asked the question.  “Fifty five, sir.” 

WAIT… WHAT!?  55?! 

“Wow, sure.  We’ll take two student tickets, and two s-s-s-senior tickets.  We’re both fifty five.” 

I guess it makes sense.  I’d only be middle aged if I lived to be one-hundred-ten.  Not much chance of that.  And while we won’t be collecting social security for a long time, yeah, the signs have all converged. 

My beard is turning white, my bones are getting creaky, I am a little scared getting on the roof to blow the leaves off.  Sometimes when I hear myself sing, I sound like an old man. 

At school, every once in a while, in the middle of a conversation, my students would slip and call me “Dad.”  A couple times last year, one of my students mistakenly referred to me as “Grampa.”  At the time it was endearing. 

There’s no sense in not owning it.  I’m what my brother Pat (an automotive repair guy and 15 months my senior) calls a “high mileage vehicle.”  Still, there was that moment, the first time I paid for senior tickets to a movie that I will always remember.  It’s not sad exactly.  It is what it is.   But it was just sort of momentous for me.  You know, just another stage.

OK, maybe not quite this high mileage.

And just so you know?  We saved twelve bucks on the movie.

Shopping for College

The other day we were out and about with our youngest son, Colin.  We were shopping for college stuff for his new dorm room.  If you have college-aged kids, you know what I’m talking about.  Or you may remember going out with your folks and doing the same…  extra long sheets for the dorm room bed, bathroom stuff, a new stash of socks, new shorts and t-shirts, etc.  It is sort of a right of passage.  He is bringing a microwave and a little freezer.  His roomie is bringing a TV and a small fridge.  Of course he’ll have his guitar, a poster of the Beatles, his stack of CDs, his computer and all kinds of personal things.  All of the stuff that makes him uniquely Colin. 

There were lots of other parents and their kids at BED BATH AND BEYOND doing the same thing.  Alarm clocks (which most kids don’t use these days – in favor of the alarms in their phones), shower shoes, new bed linens, dorm-room-trash-cans, little bathroom caddies for holding toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo and stuff - and all kinds of things one gets when one goestocollege for the very first time.  When one movesawayfromhome for the very first time.  Moves away from home.  Away from home.   Away. 

There is something beautiful to me about watching teenagers with their folks.  You see what the parents looked like when they were 25 or 30 years younger.  And you get a glimpse into the future faces of these youngsters.  There is something poignant, something so very real about seeing the interactions between these younger versions of these adults and their parents.  The teens trying not to seem scared or unsure of themselves.  The older ones trying not to seem scared for their kids, trying not to seem sad at the prospect of that empty bedroom, that quiet house. 

There is no question about their relationships.  Adults/their offspring.  There was this look on the faces of many of the moms and dads.  This look of pride in their kids – coupled with a look of sadness and of future loneliness.  There was an anxious look on the faces of many of these young adults too.  This look of  Ohmygod, this look of isthisreallyhappening?   I-can’t-wait / but / am-I-really-ready-for-this? 

Or am I just projecting these feelings? 

I remember when my dad dropped me off at college.  It was a big deal.  We didn’t spend a whole lot of time together, just the two of us.  He took the time to pack my stuff, drove hours away, helped me move my junk inside that sweaty old dorm room in Wright Quad, took me out to dinner, and gave me $40 to tuck into my pants pocket.  Something he told me not to report to me mom.  A secret.  Perhaps the only secret we ever shared. 

And I remember being scared.  I would miss my little brother, my homies – most of whom were younger than me.  I would miss my mom and riding the high school bus.  I would miss my room, my bunk bed, my woods and my lake.  I knew I would be home before too long.  But it wouldn’t be the same, right?  I would be visiting from college.  I would meet a whole bunch of new friends.  I wouldn’t have any monitored time I would have to come home or be in bed.  I could listen to music as loud as I wanted. 

And it was a BIG moment for me to move.  And I was anxious, scared, homesick, proud, on-my-own, curious, free, lonely, I was legitimately my own person.  I could be whoever I wanted to be with no parents to tell me when I had to do anything. 

It was a sort of, ready or not situation.  I just wasn’t sure f I was ready.

I think Colin is more sure than I was.  But he is probably having some of the same thoughts and feelings I had back then.  2012 - 1975 = 37 years ago.  A lot has changed in 37 years.  He has a car.  I didn’t have one until I was 21.  He has a computer and literally thousands of songs in his music collection.  I had a BSR turntable and a couple dozen records.  He’ll have a TV.  If we wanted to watch TV we had to go to the lounge and negotiate what to watch with everyone else on the floor.  Of course there were only 5 stations. 

But I am guessing that he is feeling a lot like I felt.

All I know is that I am going to miss that child-young man living in our house.  Those late night I-Love-You’s, those hammering drums and that guitar and his singing in full voice.  I’m going to miss cleaning his whiskers out of the sink, and picking up the empty food containers in his room.  I’m going to miss that super spicy food he prepared and the lessons he taught us about physics, black holes and whatever else his current passions are.  I’m going to miss him turning us on to new music that we would have never come across on our own.  I will miss his liberal politics and sense of social justice. 

While I miss that baby-toddler-little boy-adolescent he was.  I will miss the fine young man he is now.  Oh, he’ll be back.  I know.  He won’t be that far away.  We’ll probably see him nearly every week for a while. Bt it won’t be the same.  He knows it.  We know it.  It’s all part of the natural process.  It’s all good.  Still…

I can’t help but think of that old Robert Munsch book called I’ll Love You Forever.  I love that book.  When our boys were little we read it to them pretty often.  It follows the relationship of a mom and her son as he grows from a baby to a fine man.  There is a hook in the story, a repeating little song that the mother sings to the boy all the way from when he is a tiny baby until he is a full-grown man.

I’ll love you forever

I’ll like you for always

As long as I’m living

My baby you’ll be

There is this part that describes the boy’s shift from a nine-year-old to a teenager…

Well that nine year old, it grew and it grew and it grew until it was a teenager.  And it had strange friends and it wore strange clothes, and it listened to strange music.  Sometimes the mother would say, “This kid is driving me crazy!”

But at nighttime when that teenager was asleep, the mother would open up the door to his room, crawl across the floor, look up over the side of the bed and, if that great big kid was really asleep, she would pick him up and rock him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and sing…

I’ll love you forever

I’ll like you for always

As long as I’m living

My baby you’ll be

Funny how your perspective changes over the years.  Colin used to be that baby.  Then that little kid.  Then that teenager.  Now he is the young man who is as much a friend as a son.  How blessed are we?