OK, I'm back but I don't know for how long.

Don't have much to say today. Have spent a lot of time lately worrying about our children. That's not much different from any other time, but for some reason they've been on my mind a lot the last couple of days.

My wife and I have five boys between us, ranging in ages from about 33 to 37. By that age you'd think that our worry about them would have quietened down, but it hasn't. As a matter of fact, it seems to get worse because when they're small you can keep your eye on them, have more influence over them, etc.

Now, at this age, it's like watching them going down a roller coaster and noticing that someone's removed one section of the track. The car they're in might manage to jump the gap, and if not maybe they'll come out of the crash without a scratch. Maybe they'll just have a broken leg, or a concussion.

But the worst could happen too, and there is nothing you can do about it. Oh, you can yell, try to warn them, but they won't hear you, the interference from other people and things, the background noise of their own confidence even, will drown you out. So all you can do is stand by and hope there are pieces to pick up.

We've got one who has a seasonal disorder (fall and winter can send him into a tailspin). He's the youngest and seems most vulnerable of the five, the baby of the family. He's probably the "nicest" about taking advice, but he doesn't really "take" it any better than the others. He just has the ability to turn down your ideas with the most tact. He's our English/Poetics major. He's been having his problems over the last year and we worry about him.

The second youngest hasn't talked to his mother for 10 years. He's never been one you could talk to easily and when he was trying to become a rock star, his mother said that she thought he would be better off to concentrate more on a regular full time job since he had a real flair for organization. This was a deadly insult for him, his mother telling him he was a failure. He might have been having troubles this year, we don't know. But we worry about him anyway.

My youngest son (and believe me, I am surprised about this) appears to be doing well. Oh, he's the same old guy who marches to such a different drummer that I can't even figure out what advice to give him. I just don't know of anything that he might be interested in changing and he seems reasonably happy where he is. But I worry about him because he's never seemed to be able to roll with the punches easily and some must be coming down the line somewhere.

My oldest son is in love. But I worry about him because he has a tendency to love with all his heart, not noticing the effect it has on him. And when/if the love dies, it takes a bit of him with it. I worry about whether he is really over his divorce, whether the new one is the right one, whether he understands how much I want to help. Well, I just worry about him. He seems the most vulnerable right now, the most likely to experience hurt in the next year. I hope I'm wrong, I pray I'm wrong.

And the oldest of our sons. He's in the military which adds an additional stress. He has had tremendous changes in his life over the last few years and has even more coming up in the next two. I feel these changes, some good, some bad, have introduced uncertainty into his life that he's not had before. We worry about him, too.

I suppose we parents were put on this earth for just this purpose. The responsibility goes on and on. And when our children have children, then we get to worry, right along with them, about our grandchildren. I believe the love a parent feels (or should feel) toward his children is about as close as we can come to the love that God feels for us. And he has billions of us to worry about. So try to make his job a little easier today, OK. :)