Summer Adventures and Reflections on Raising a Man
Italy, Guns-N-Roses, and a Father/Son Growth Mindset
I’m switching gears today. I planned on an article responding to memes I’ve encountered recently combined with a mailbag-type post addressing a couple questions or comments resulting from previous articles. But I want to make sure my thoughts are clear on that one, and I’m not sure they are.
Besides, I was hit hard with feelings of nostalgia this morning, and think perhaps some writing will alleviate their propensity to get in the way of productivity.
This has always been the problem with nostalgia, even since the term was first used way back in the 1600’s. The word "nostalgia" comes from the Greek words "nostos" (homecoming) and "algos" (pain). It was coined when Swiss mercenaries had difficulty fighting wars due to their desire to go home. Today we attribute it to good feelings about things in our past, but back then it was understood mostly as a debilitating problem.
I wouldn’t call my experience with nostalgia debilitating. Rather, I like to sit with it and ruminate.
It’s as if moping around remembering the days gone by will bring me new joy in the moment, and give me an excuse to put off doing some of the difficult tasks I have ahead of me.
As I was preparing for my day this morning, I saw a ticket to a baseball game sitting on one of the shelves in my closet. It was wrinkled and still shaped like the curve of my butt having spent some time in my back pocket on the night of the game as I sat through 9 innings of baseball and the hour ride home. The date of the game was August 15, 2023, just over a month ago. My son, who was home from college on summer break suggested we go because our favorite team, the Boston Red Sox, was visiting the Washington Nationals. We live just over an hour’s drive from DC, and he thought it would be a good idea to go see them. My wife and I agreed and we went.
Only two things of note happened at the game. First, the ‘Sox always travel well when it comes to their fans. We’re everywhere. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say there were more Red Sox fans at the game than there were Nationals fans. The nature of Washington DC being what it is means there are thousands of out-of-towners, so it makes sense that many others took the opportunity to see the Red Sox for the same reason my family did. In fact, I made conversation with the people sitting behind us only to find out one of them graduated from the same high school I did and that we’d had some of the same teachers. You can be sure we reminisced a bit, finding we shared certain memories even though we’d never met before.
Second, on the way out after the game all of the Red Sox fans began celebrating their camaraderie in the only way we know how. We all chanted, “Yankees suck! Yankees suck!” Usually, I refuse to participate due to the fact that it was completely untrue and felt like whiney, sour grapes. But on this occasion it was different. For the first time in the past two decades I could say “Yankees suck” knowing it was the truth. This year the New York Yankees did in fact, suck. It made no difference that my team sucked too (and at this point, it looks like they’ll finish with a worse record than the Yankees and win the competition to finish last.)
As I looked at the ticket this morning and reflected on that night, I was hit with a wave of emotion. The ball game was one part of what had been a tremendous summer.
We kicked off the summer activities by seeing Ed Sheeran. A couple weeks later we went on a trip to Italy and Greece. I’ve written about this trip before and I’ll do so again. It was truly a lifetime memory.
But upon our return, it was a summer of concerts for our family. The list of bands and artists we saw includes:
Ed Sheeran
Beyoncé
Pink
Fletcher
Billie Eilish
Guns-N-Roses
Pink, Fletcher, Billie Eilish and Guns-N-Roses were all part of a summer music festival in Atlanta. While Billie Eilish was the highlight for my kids, I was there to see GNR. It wasn’t an experience I expected to have.
I was glad I did.
The entire concert tickled my memory banks and brought back images of times when their music erupted from the after-marked subwoofer I put in my Chevy S10 pickup truck as a teenager.
As lead guitarist, Slash, began to pluck out the opening lines to Sweet Child of Mine the nostalgia hit hard, which made sense because that’s what the song is all about. For me, it’s as if the Axl Rose was singing lyrics about the song itself.
She's got a smile that it seems to me
Reminds me of childhood memories
Where everything was as fresh as the bright blue sky
Now and then when I see her face
She takes me away to that special place
And if I stare too long, I'd probably break down and cry
Whoa, oh, oh
Sweet child o' mine
Whoa, oh, oh, oh
Sweet love of mine
She's got eyes of the bluest skies
As if they thought of rain
I'd hate to look into those eyes and see an ounce of pain
Her hair reminds me of a warm safe place
Where as a child I'd hide
And pray for the thunder and the rain to quietly pass me by
As the band played through the song, my own sweet children belted out the lyrics with me. My heart melted. When the last few drum beats and strums of the guitars wound down at the end of the song my daughter, Jordan, turned and joked with me, asking if the song had been everything I’d hoped for. I put my hand up indicating I couldn’t answer her. “I’m going to need a moment.” I said in all seriousness, smiling and a little embarrassed. She’d meant it as a joke, but I was thoroughly taken with the experience and wanted to remember the feeling of the moment.
“Jordan, you know how you felt last night at Billie Eilish?” my son, Josh, asked his sister. “Well, that’s how Dad’s feeling tonight.” I smiled again, tearing up a bit. He was mostly right, only that he fell quite short of the entire truth. Because in my youth the song had never meant what it did to me that night as I heard the lyrics screamed by my children, accompanied by Slash1.
I've consistently maintained a positive relationship with my son, but this summer marked a significant transformation in our connection. Looking back, our relationship had its strained moments over the past few years, and for a while, the reasons behind this eluded me. I'd find myself becoming frustrated with him, and he, in turn, had his own grievances with me. One poignant memory that continues to weigh on me is the last time I recall causing him to cry.
It was the spring of his senior year of high school. I was outside doing yard work when he came out to ask me … I don’t remember what about. What I do remember is absolutely laying into him about … well, again, I don’t remember what it was, exactly. The specifics don’t matter in this case. Just how I acted, and how the high school senior reacted. He stood there for a moment and tears welled up in his eyes. “Dad! This is what I’m talking about!” He began to open his heart about his frustrations of trying to please me and feeling like he never could.
I stopped what I was doing and listened. I didn’t mean to make him cry and I was glad he called me on … whatever it was he called me on.
As much as I don’t remember what we were arguing about that day, I do remember apologizing to him for making him feel like crap. I was sorry. I didn’t want to do that. There are a lot of fathers who wouldn’t have, instead admonishing their son to man up and just do what was asked of them due to their place in the family hierarchy. I don’t know if that’s right or not. The fact is I tried that in the past and probably wanted to that day. But clearly, that hadn’t worked. I tried something else this time.
I listened.
I was impressed my son had the wherewithal to tell me how my communication or lack thereof was making him feel. I made a decision to try and do better and promised him I would.
It was a beginning, but not a light-switch type of moment. I’d fail again over the few years between that day and where we are today. But I eventually came to understand I needed to let my son be who he is. I needed to be able to let him make some decisions, and even if this looked like he’d be a different person than I had envisioned as my wife and I raised him. He’s an adult now, and I need to understand that while he’s part of me, he isn’t me.
My son is going to make his own decisions, some of which I’ll question, but most of which will make me proud. The hardest part of being a parent of an adult is the fact that I need to keep my mouth shut until he asks me to open it and share my perspective with him. And when I do, I do so in the humility that the advice I’m offering might be wrong, and it’s his prerogative to move on it or not. We have a better relationship when I let him come to me.
An unexpected byproduct of letting my son be who he is is that he’s repaid the favor. As I’ve grown to accept the ways my son is different than me, my son has grown to accept the ways I’m different from him. I’m still the butt of family jokes, but these days I get the sense that the things which used to really drive my son nuts about me are beginning to be parts of my personality for which he has developed more patience. He even seems to be looking past them to the things where he appreciates me and my input. The less I offer my unsolicited advice, the more he comes soliciting.
What an unexpected turn.
So, as he told my daughter to let me have my moment at the end of Sweet Child of Mine, I knew it was his way of showing me he loves me. That he gets me and wants me to experience the best of each moment of my life, just like I do for him.
All this because I noticed and old, bent-up and wrinkly baseball ticket in my closet.
What a night it was.
What a summer it was.
What a son he is.
If you’re not familiar with Guns-N-Roses, Slash is a guitarist of legendary status. He’s one of those people I consider myself lucky to have been alive to see.