Wasn’t going to post this. Eric’s post is too hard to follow. But I think I finally realized tonight that the “big” picture is so beyond ordinary well-read humanity and well on it’s way to whatever end the means have been focused. To say it saddens the compassionate me is a gross understatement but I think I finally must try to accept it and just get on with rollin’ with mama, papa, progeny, om-mani-padme-hum, get up, son, and get some….for the meaningful time we have remaining. It’s no wonder those who used to raise the roof about these kinds o things have gone silent. Anyway, the following is just humans being.
This basic human circle of life is so strange, as we’ve reached the days when the kids are growin’up. Maya & I decided to go for a night drive to the next state and back…just to get some open spaces and pull over to catch the occasional fireworks display from the soft shoulder. …On the way home, we called younger son at 11:45 to see how it’s goin’. He’d been out on a date at the drive-in with his girl. (His first time going to a drive-in sans the parents, having just recently gotten his license. We knew their plan was to skip the 2nd movie to be sure and get her home by 11:30.) He told us he’d dropped her off at her house, & now he’s trying to make it home by curfew (legal curfew for minors is midnight around here). I tell him we’re on the interstate just about to exit by the Party Center [to pick up a six of Guinness and some Amish muenster cheese for tomorrow], wait for us there. We pulled up in my pickup to find him there in the parking lot, leaning against numba-one son’s (hand-me-down) Nissan 4X. (He just happened to be there, too, to get a late-late night ice cream snack with his friend whose house he’s spending the night at tonight). ………What were once 4 people perpetually bonded together in most everything we did is now…something else. & so there we were, in a coincidence only this time in our life can produce. This family that is on the brink of to the winds, @ the preadolescence of our empty nest ……and it’s too strange. We’re rollin’ with it like with everything else, like some of you did, …like some of you will. But it’s strange…and I suppose comforting, too (from another perspective), that all of us and our vehicles got to be together in that parking lot at midnight in the heart of summer, serendipitously.
Those of you with little ones, (…you’ve heard it before, but) bloody well enjoy every possible minute of them now because time flies so fast……….so fast. Jeez, …fast.
On the highway home tonight Maya & I listened to the Traveling Wilburys. (Although the lyric isn’t on topic, the song is a good one…) This one’s dedicate to you parents out there:
