Until now, I have always envisioned myself as the one coming home for holidays.
This evening I find myself playing an entirely different role: I'm waiting for my children to arrive.
I'm not sure that I can put into words how different this feels.
This evening I find myself playing an entirely different role: I'm waiting for my children to arrive.
I'm not sure that I can put into words how different this feels.
It was a long time ago now. Julie and I had told my parents that we would not be coming to Kentucky for Christmas. Even while we told them that story, we were making secret plans to show up on their door step . . . on Christmas Eve no less. And we pulled it off. We even took a taxi from the airport. The look on my Mom's face was worth all the planning and secrecy.
I've carried that image around for years - not just the image of my surprised parents but the image of myself as the one coming home. Over the years, though, the center of family life tends to shift. For our family, that center used to be a suburban home on the outskirts of Louisville. But that's not the center any longer. Tonight the center of our family life is this home in this rural part of northern Michigan. For this year at least, I'm not journeying anywhere. My children are making their way here.
And I am . . . waiting for them. It is simply stunning how things change - and perhaps even more stunning how things change so quickly.
Suddenly - almost overnight it seems - I have been given a new role to play. And here I am, a couple of nights before Thanksgiving, learning my lines and hoping that I can somehow pull it off. I'll never be the man that my Dad was, but it dawns on me that I'm now the patriarch of the family. And I'm not even sure what that means. Julie has her cooking. She builds the nest that we live in. That's a role that she cherishes.
My specific role? I'm not really sure what that is yet - except for this. Right now, my job is to wait for everybody to arrive. I'm sure that there's more to it than that. But right now, that's what I'm supposed to do. That's my role. I am the one who waits.
And that's not a bad assignment. At the very least, it's something that I can handle.
How different things are now. In the old days, homecoming was something I did. Today, it's something I wait for.
I've carried that image around for years - not just the image of my surprised parents but the image of myself as the one coming home. Over the years, though, the center of family life tends to shift. For our family, that center used to be a suburban home on the outskirts of Louisville. But that's not the center any longer. Tonight the center of our family life is this home in this rural part of northern Michigan. For this year at least, I'm not journeying anywhere. My children are making their way here.
And I am . . . waiting for them. It is simply stunning how things change - and perhaps even more stunning how things change so quickly.
Suddenly - almost overnight it seems - I have been given a new role to play. And here I am, a couple of nights before Thanksgiving, learning my lines and hoping that I can somehow pull it off. I'll never be the man that my Dad was, but it dawns on me that I'm now the patriarch of the family. And I'm not even sure what that means. Julie has her cooking. She builds the nest that we live in. That's a role that she cherishes.
My specific role? I'm not really sure what that is yet - except for this. Right now, my job is to wait for everybody to arrive. I'm sure that there's more to it than that. But right now, that's what I'm supposed to do. That's my role. I am the one who waits.
And that's not a bad assignment. At the very least, it's something that I can handle.
How different things are now. In the old days, homecoming was something I did. Today, it's something I wait for.