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Whine, Whine, Whine: Jonathan Kent
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You want the best for your son because you’re a parent and that’s what parents do. You want the best for him because he’s good and kind and heroic and any good person wants to see good rewarded. You want the best for him because it’s only right.

But you look at him, sitting at his table, looking small and dejected, and you think back to that little boy who was so afraid of his developing strength, who cried when he realized how not-normal he was, who made the decision on his own to never stay for long in any one place as he searched for a place to belong but consistently made choices that put other people’s welfare over his own. You can feel that little boy’s arms around your neck, phantom sobs still reverberating through the years, echoing in the hidden places of your heart.

Your boy. Your son. A man grown and found his place, happy and settled, able for the first time in his life to look ahead to a future with some measure of confidence.

Now broken.

Unsure.

Reverted back to the searching nomad.

Your throat is squeezed tight, and you can’t quite breathe right.
He’s saying something about all his dreams--a home, a family, a job, all the most normal, prosaic things that should be the expected end, but has always, instead, been something of a fantasy for your son--and you try to focus, really, you do, but all you can see is that little boy’s tears transitioning through the years into a young man’s stoic optimism. Now, finally, transforming--decaying, dying, fading, to become this quiet defeat. This hollow resignation.

“But it’s not possible, is it?” he says, and it’s like a death knell. Like the rattling clap of thunder to mark the lightning bolt that has already set a blaze of fire across the plains.

Your son has always hoped. Always wished and dreamed--and maybe those dreams were quiet, normal things, but he kept hold of that hope anyway. Clung to it even when you yourself were cautioning him to practicality and pragmatism. He dreamed even when the world set him into a brightly colored box and piled up untold expectations on his shoulders. He wished even when his heart was shattered and crumpled and handed back to him with scarcely an apology.

And now he’s giving up. Giving up on that little boy whose weight you can still feel in your empty arms. Giving up on that young man looking for a place of his own even as he came back for his mom’s pie and his dad’s company. Giving up on the man with a job and friends and awards and a future.

Giving up his mother’s name, your name, his name.

All because he can’t stand hurting Lois Lane.

All because he thinks he’s destined to be forever alone.

You think you should probably be trying to comfort him. To reassure him that his dreams are still possible. To tell him that everything will work out and Clark Kent is not a piece of luggage he can just box up and store somewhere and forget about. To warn him that he will regret this more than he will ever know.

But you can’t speak at all. You can’t reach out and touch him. Can’t support his decision or counsel him against it.

All you can do is sit there and mourn the loss of the hope you never appreciated as much as you should have. All you can do is grieve, because this…this feels like the death of something. Not the death of Clark Kent, because you know, you know, that your son will always be Clark no matter what he thinks.

Maybe, you think as you tighten your arms around air…maybe it’s the death of hope itself.

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