Other Wayward Sons

This place is (by a long reach) named after a song from long ago when I was still a big-haired, high school-hating farm kid. Back then almost everything I heard was on a badly distorting AM radio bolted to a tractor fender or a dusty cassette deck in the cow barn. Most of it just faded away or became background music at the grocery store but a few songs got under the sunburn and stayed for the duration. 'Carry On Wayward Son' was one of them. Yeah, it wasn't particularly good or especially meaningful as songs go but it stuck just the same. Sometimes odd things mean something to someone and there's no explaining it. But I know I always felt like I was Wayward in ways I couldn't understand and so here we are.

One of my sons graduated from college last week. The other one is working and doing that adult thing with the best of them. They're off and rolling. Now I find myself asking the questions parents of every generation have asked...When did they grow up, stop being the boys and become men?

I look at them and wonder...as every father does I suppose...how did all this happen? I'm in the same fix as anyone that's ever turned their kids loose on the world. You wonder if you did it right. They didn't come with an instruction manual. Two small people just showed up and took over being everything. From the day they came home to the day they leave to lead lives of their own, they print memories and feelings on me every day. I'm ecstatic that they are who they are. They're the proudest thing in my life. They became absolutely wonderful people without much help from me sometimes.

I was gone so much of their young lives that I sometimes wonder if I even had much to do with raising them but they did good for being basically single-parented. I know...nobody ever wishes they'd spent more time at work and less time with their family. I feel it very much but reality really does suck and you have to work unless you're born loaded. Somehow...it worked out for them.

And now they're young men and the world is ahead. They'll have their own songs stuck in their heads I hope. It makes me smile to think of it.

They'll be Wayward in their own way and somehow...it'll all be okay.