When you’re a kid, if there’s one thing that you lack, it’s an understanding of how the world really works. As children, day after day my brother and I would watch days melt into years, amidst a steady stream of monotony. The roof over our heads was the roof over our heads. Our parents’ work was their work. Weekdays meant school, weekends meant fun. Years passed without even an inkling of what it all meant. That’s not to say that we don’t have memories…which is actually the purpose of this blog.
I am the baby brother of our 7 member sibling team. I watched my older cohorts leave the house, get jobs, fall in love, get married, and settle down into their own suburban boxes of routine. It never really affected me until Andy left for the Navy. By that time, our comfortable monotony wasn’t so comfortable. We had moved a handful of times in the span of 5 years, my father looking older, more tired with each move. And then, just as we had settled again…My brother announced that he had joined the Navy, and would be leaving. Somehow, I just didn’t put him on the same level as the other 5 that had left. For one thing, he was much closer in age to me.. only 4 years. This is the point in which my narrative on carefree childhood morphs… into a muddy pond of growing up all too fast, losing both Mom and Dad, struggle, hardship, pain…finding Jesus, redemption, grace, love, happiness…and then….
The house appeared out of nowhere. It was a quick comment about a pipe dream that turned into a serious conversation that turned into a tour, an offer, a loan and after 37 years, it’s finally time for the baby of the team to grow up. As I look at pictures of my new house, I can see things happening. Yard work. Painting. Gardening. Payments. Principle. Interest, Equity. I see my future.
A lot of us remember that TV show “The Wonder Years”, all about a 10 year old boy, and his daily life in a suburban town. His father, who is really the focus of the series…making sacrifices, working hard, hoping, dreaming…and raising a family. At the very end of the series, The Narrator, a now grown up version of the lead character, goes into detail of what became of his family. And then you hear a voice..”Hey Dad, wanna play catch?” “Sure”, he replies. “I’ll be right there.”. As you get older, the one thing you do is long for childhood…where the choices were easy, and the consequences of your actions were miniscule in the grand scheme of life. You want to go back, relive it all…knowing what you know now. But it doesn’t work that way. I have desperately longed for childhood ever since I was forced out of it. But as I look at my house…my little box of monotony in suburbia, for the first time in my life..I truly believe that Our Wonder Years…. are still in front of us.
