Yesterday, a child came out to wander.

So many times, I sat on the edge of the bed of my older daughters and sang that song to them as they fell asleep.

Fearful when the sky was filled with thunder

Then, one morning Miranda, when she was about five years old, wandered into my bedroom as my first wife and I were having the first argument that Miranda had ever seen us have. It was also one of the worst, the one that marked the beginning of the end of that marriage.

And the seasons they go round and round

It was a pretty rough period of my life, but with the help of friends, I got through it. I met someone new and we fell madly in love. A couple of years later, Kim, who was to become my wife in the fall, along with Mairead and Miranda went sailing on the Yacht Club cruise. We stopped at one yacht club at the end of Long Island where there was an evening dance. The club provided child care for the beginning of the evening, and Mairead and Miranda went to that. When the child care was over, the dance was still going on. Mairead wanted to go back to the boat and read. She was old enough to read quietly on the boat alone. Miranda wanted to see the dance.

So, Kim and I took Miranda with us back to the dance, and she had a wonderful time. As we walked down the dock afterwards, she asked us, “Is this what college is like?” We chuckled. It wasn’t the right time to go into discussions about classes, majors, theses and all the struggles of college life. We responded with something like, “Well, college can be a lot of work, but yeah, at times college can be like this.”

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty

Well, actually, it was forty-two. Kim and I had gotten married and Fiona was born. When I wrote about her birth, I also used ample quotes for Joni Mitchell’s ‘Circle Game’. Fiona adores her two older sisters.

Even more years have spun by and this weekend, I drove down to Mary Baldwin College where both Mairead and Miranda are students. Miranda is a junior and it was Junior Dad’s weekend; a weekend full of pomp and ceremony. We went to the “My Precious Someone Champagne Brunch”. We ate and talked with some of Miranda’s friends. Miranda went on with her newest dream. After school she wants to start an artists’ salon. We talked about other salons through the ages and the spice factory I lived in after college with various artists.

Miranda and I slipped out of the brunch early. We had eaten. We had chatted with friends. We weren’t all that interested in the various speeches. Instead, we went over to the art building. Miranda showed me some of her work for various classes. Then, we headed to the ceramics studio where she gave me a brief lesson in throwing pots. I threw two pots, which both eventually collapsed because I had not made them even enough. Miranda graciously complemented me on my work saying that I did much better than many first time potters.

Dreams have lost some grandeur coming true

Miranda then headed off to salon day, a different type of salon. This was the opportunity for all the young juniors of Mary Baldwin to get done up nicely for the evening ball. I sat down for coffee with Mairead. She recounted some of the latest difficulties in her life and it struck me, as often as I had sang about dreams losing grandeur coming true, too often, dreams gained an ever greater and horrible grandeur as they got crushed. So we talked. We talked about rebuilding our dreams, building new dreams.

I’ve often commented about suffering from aspirations of grandeur. Now, at the age of fifty, I’ve seen many dreams horribly crushed. I too often feel like Sisyphus standing at the top of the hill watching the bolder roll back down. I stand at the top and watch, hoping to find the beauty in the latest setback. Then I trudge down to the bottom of the hill and start pushing the bolder back up, knowing that another slip is likely to send it back down the hill again, yet hoping may be this time things will be different.

Like the little engine that could, I say to myself, “I think I can, I think I can” while at the same time fighting off nagging doubt.

There’ll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty

Miranda joined us for a light supper. Then, Mairead headed back to her friends and I went back to my hotel and rested briefly. Later, I joined Miranda, a friend of hers, and the friend’s family, and we all headed down to the “Junior Dads & Family Ball” Everyone was dressed to the nines. As our names were called out, the fathers and their daughters walked onto a small pavilion in one of the grand halls and the fathers gave their daughters their class rings.

Later, there was a dance, and as I danced with my little girl, now a college junior. I answered her question for years ago, “Yes, this is what college is like.”