Riley: The Prodigal has returned

Published in the Asbury Park Press
Copyright 1997-2001 IN Jersey.

"Home is where, when you go there, they have to take you in." 
-- Robert Frost

Joshua, my 18-year-old first-born, left home about five months ago to make his Way in the world.

The world was singularly unimpressed. 

 

Which explained what he was doing in our living room, his meager belongings at his feet, on the eve of a new millennium. 

"Hey, Dad," he said with a broad grin, "The Prodigal Son has returned. When are you going to kill the fatted calf for me?" 

"Well, son," I replied, "if I know my New Testament parables, and I think I do, I believe that when the Biblical prodigal returned, he did so on his knees, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth, sobbing to his father that he was not fit to be called 'son' any longer. Perhaps if you did a little groveling, I might be tempted to haul a hunk of meat out of the freezer in your honor." 

"Yeah, right," he said, his smile turning into something like a sneer. 

Amd that's about the way it's been. 

My son and I are as tense and itchy-fingered around each other as Texas border guards peering across the Rio Grande on a moonless night. Every conversation ends in anger and accusation. It's like he never left.

And I try to do what Sue tells me: to steer the talk away from him, or at least away from my opinion of his recent choices. But every path leads us to a cliff and we leap off into the shadows. 

He tells me about his friends, really smart college kids who are all on the verge of flunking out, who find strength somehow in lowering their expections in the face of difficulties. 

"So, basically," I ask him, "they're a bunch of losers, right?" 

 

Sue says that was a mistake. 

My son and I talk philosophy: Josh tells me that regret is a bad thing, and he struggles to be free from its burdens. And I respond that regret can be a good thing, that regret is part of conscience. 

"Exactly," he replies. "Conscience isn't so great, either." 

"So, your fondest desire is to become the very definition of a sociopath?" I say, and the sneer was all mine, and we felt together the queasiness of free fall and the wind rush up at us as we stepped off the cliff's edge once more. 

Later he tells me that the past is a trap and that the future is a blind alley. 

 

"I live in the moment," he says. 

 

"Well, let's take a look at this particular moment," I say back. "You're broke, without direction, ambition, or prospects. . . . Hey, here comes another moment: same thing. Boom! Another moment, and another and another, all pretty much identical. You must be enjoying the heck out of these moments . . ." 

He stands up, looks at me with wounded anger -- "You never let up, do you?" -- and storms off. 

Sue says the boy is right, that I'm relentless. 

I tell her that he can't be allowed to get comfortable with the nonsense rolling around inside him.

"It won't be there forever," she says, "but there is a time for rest. Even the lion shall lie down with lamb, remember?" 

I say that I don't see any lambs round these parts; it's all lions. 

The Prodigal has returned, and while I hope the ending will be as happy as Jesus' story, right now there is only the cliff and the roar. And one loving mother and wife to keep the uneasy peace.

 

Michael Riley, a staff writer for the Asbury Park Press, is an ordained Baptist minister. His column appears on Sundays.

Michael Riley ... Google search