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2008-06-21 - 3:09 a.m. BREAKING HOME TIES A Normal Rockwell painting just made me sad. It's a young son and his old dad, sitting, waiting for a train, or bus, or something that's going to take the son away. It's called, "Breaking Home Ties" and it just hit home with me. The young one is upright, wearing spanking new clothes and ready for take-off, his shoulders back, his face expectant as he looks one way. The obvious father next to him sits looking the other way while wearing an identical yet older face, with a jaded, downtrodden expression in his eye and on his brow. You can see that the old man has 'been there and done that', and that he dreads the future for his boy. Maybe that's just how I interpreted it as my own boy gets away from me, inch by inch. That picture moved me because the father knows what's coming and the boy doesn't. The father knows that despite the huge disappointments ahead, he must let the boy go to experience it all on his own. He'll weather his own storms and earn his lines and grays. The boy will survive, in the process growing into a man. He'll only really mourn the loss of that youthful innocence when he is one day closing in on 40, with a boy of his own, seeing this painting and recognizing himself in the youthful one and the old one at once. There's no saving them. As sad as it is to realize those young dreams are just that...I'm not unhappy. Older, wiser, and still in search of happy. On my way, in fact. He'll have to do it on his own. free hit counter � � 1 comments so far
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