A Bubble Off Plumb

I’m sure there are a boatload of John Wayne fans out there. We love the Duke in all his incarnations. When I was a kid, the Cowboys came out. I’d read the Dale Jennings book long before and loved the story and the adventure. That was, of course, before I spent a lot of days in the saddle pushing cattle where they didn’t want to go. The romance was still intact.

When rancher Wil Andersen, mortally wounded and with his next to last breath, says “Well, summer’s over,” I thought then it was about the end of the calendar season and the cattle drive.

Now I know better. It was about the boys growing up and becoming young men. You see, I am at the end of my own summer. My baby boy is turning 21 and it breaks my heart.

On one hand, I am so grateful he has made it to the recognized age of adulthood without falling victim to violence, alcohol or drug abuse or auto accidents. I’m delighted he is making his own way, lives on his own in a faraway place doing a job he really enjoys.

But I also look back at the little boy who walked the streets of the town where he now lives, holding his daddy’s hand and wearing identical boots, denim shirt, suspenders and straw hat. I don’t know where he went. I think of the baby with first birthday cake smeared on his face and super puppy onesie. How is it that the baby is now 6’5” and has a beard?

I never gave permission for that. Or maybe I did, without knowing what I was doing.

We as parents taught him how to think, not what to think. He loves the laws and sovereignty of the United States, but he still has compassion on people who risk their lives to come to this country. He has the ability to see two or more sides of an argument.

He loves his sisters and his nephews. He would just as soon spend time in the library as the woods, his two favorite places. I wonder if that’s from getting up from his homeschool desk to run outside to play, creating a dual love of books and wildlands.

He is an avid gamer, but not to addiction. I wonder if he learned that because we set and stuck to time limits on his gaming as a youngster.

He is active in creative anachronisms, where perfectly normal people dress up in the garb of other centuries – or imaginary planets – and get together. His own preference is the Viking era and he’ll watch a movie and pick apart the costuming and weaponry if it isn’t historically accurate. I wonder if that came about from my own love of history and facts.

He is kind and generous, but he’s nobody’s fool. He can ride with the best of them but has no desire to work on a ranch or with cattle. He has seen all the sides of the industry and decided it isn’t for him. He gets that from his dad, but I wonder if it is because he knows how many ways there are to get hurt in that line of work.

So, there he is, funny and smart and all grown up. Shy and bold in equal measures. How did this happen?

It happened in the silent passing of seasons and in lessons learned. It happened with the passage of time and experiences. It happened as we taught him to be his own man and take care of himself. He met the challenge and we put ourselves out of a job.

Like the Duke said, summer’s over.