If you look straight ahead you notice the lines in a different way. You are a passenger and your youngest son is the driver, his hands and forearms give away that he is not a child anymore. If you allow yourself a glimpse out of the corner of your eye, you can see the child on the tricycle, you feel the loosening and the fall of training wheels, and grimace at the first wipe-out on a two-wheeler. You are the passenger in this passing into adulthood where faith is a solid yellow line and hope is the return home. Always home.

If you look in the mirror, you see the lines in a different way. Creases well-earned and deepened with prayers for patience. And hope that it is heard above and below. And that the freedom and exhilaration he feels pulling away from home on his first solo flight, is held like a newborn in the arms of unceasing lessons of the beauty, strength, and fragility that is life. Living with faith that the yellow lines leading to future are true enough to hold.

And you hand him the key…