Back to Our Son

We enrolled William into a Catholic middle school at the last moment. His public elementary teacher said he would be lost at the local school and not to send him there. He was a solid student but very quiet so the teacher felt William would fall through the cracks. What were we going to do? I contacted one of the Brothers at the church where Michael and I had met and explained that we needed help. William was enrolled in their school by that afternoon. From there, he graduated to the Catholic boy’s high school near my work.

William did very well in high school. He made the honor roll every semester and graduated near the top of his class.

During the graduation ceremony, they awarded the Bank of America Award for music along with awards for science and math. He won the music award. We were not surprised, as we knew he was an excellent musician, but we were pleased that his hard work was recognized.

Off he went to a private college in the Northwest. We thought all was well. It was not. It was not a good fit for him and he was failing. He was also feeling guilty for costing us so much money and not taking full advantage of the opportunities.

He phoned one day to tell us that he was dropping out after the second year and was going to travel through Europe for a year. We told him that we wished we could travel for a year but couldn’t afford it. We wished him luck and said that we will continue to pay his rent, bills and food when he returned to college.

He moved to Seattle with a friend and they nearly starved to death. We made a pact that if he was going to become homeless; he had to let me know. It never came to that but it did come close.

As a middle class child, he had all that he needed though certainly not all he wanted. It was good for him to have to struggle and appreciate each dollar. He is currently very good with money, has excellent money management skills and carries no credit card balances. He says he never wants to be that poor again.

He knew he wanted to work in the music industry so he went to the best venue in Seattle and tried to talk them into allowing him to work there. They turned him away for several weeks. Finally, he got his foot in the door and began working his way to being in charge of the stage monitors then to the front of house sound engineer. He was running sound for the venue after a very short period of time. He was being paid! He was eating! He was paying rent! He had money!

In 2003, a local group asked him to go on tour with them. No way! He was stable with a good job that he loved.

In 2004, they insisted that he join them as their monitor engineer. We got the phone call. He had quit his job and was going on the road with a group we had never heard of with a horrible sounding name. We had visions of piercings and tattoos and skuzzy people.

We were so wrong.