It’s a hot, early evening at FloydFest, the storied independently-run music festival held each July in the backwoods of rural Virginia. With live music radiating from stages positioned in seemingly every direction, indie-rockers The Nude Party finish its set to the deafening roar of the jubilant crowd begging for just one more tune before dispersing into the next melodic adventure. 

When I became a parent for the first time, I asked my brother what to expect. He already had two small children and another on the way. 

“It’s overwhelming in every way,” he said.

He was right. It was, and it has been. They grew up too fast. That’s the oldest cliché in the book, but my God.

Sometimes, it feels like we’re just nowhere in this life. It was like that for me in the early 1980s.