The Land of Lost Content

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, lived a mother and a father and five rambunctious sons who were each other’s best friends, who sometimes knocked holes in the walls but whose wise young mother knew to look the other way when they did because holes in the wall can be covered up with pictures, but little boys don’t stay little for long and before you know it, they’re packing their backpacks and loading up their skateboards and Camaros and heading off for college and marriage and fatherhood and mistakes of their own and there you are in the middle of your empty nest wishing the fledglings would fly back home and mess up their bedrooms just one more time.

At least, that’s what happened to me. Maybe it happened to you, too. Maybe it’s happening right now.

And then I read a favorite poet who saw hills off in the distance; what are those blue remembered hills, he asked. I remembered those same blue, distant hills. And when he answered that those hills are the land of lost content, I knew he meant long ago happiness, because I once lived in that same land; I once walked those same happy highways, I and my five sons.

What you see below are my recollections of those happy highways where I went with my longsuffering husband, Chuck, a.k.a El Jefe or Alpha Wolf, and our five little beta wolves: John, Gabe, Daniel, Carson, and Andy. Some stories are happy, some are sad, some are funny, some are just life at its realest. Most are true – I only lie a little bit. As Grandma used to say, it never hurts to embroider the truth. (Of course, we don’t know what Grandma’s final disposition has been.)

By the way, I’ve also tossed in my observations on a few other perplexities that I have observed along the way. I hope you enjoy those, too. And I hope you feel the urge to comment on what you read here. I’d love to get to know you as you get to know me.