A fall festival, a bowl of Hobo Stew, and the moment I realized our kids grew up when I wasn’t looking
Another Year, Same Good Stuff
We had our fall festival last night, and I’m happy to report it was every bit as good as last year. That’s not a small thing. Some events peak once and spend every year after trying to remember what made them special. Ours just keeps showing up and being itself.
The Hobo Stew was there, of course. If you’ve never had Hobo Stew, I don’t know how to explain it to you except to say it’s the kind of food that doesn’t care what it looks like, because it knows it’s going to win anyway. It’s a Texas fall evening in a bowl.
And the faces. That’s the part I love most. All the familiar ones, the folks you see every week and the ones you only seem to catch at events like this, everybody standing around talking like no time has passed. There was a lot of laughter. The kind that carries across a parking lot and makes you turn your head to see what you missed.
The weather cooperated too, which in Texas in October is basically a coin flip with a third side. It was one of those evenings where the air finally decides to stop fighting you. Perfect.
The Photographer’s Problem
I took a ton of photos. Of course I did. Put a camera in my hands at a community event and I turn into a guy who can’t stop. Every corner of a fall festival has a story going on, and I want all of them.
Kids running full speed for no reason at all. Parents trying to finish one conversation before a small person tugs them off to the next thing. Friends leaning in close over a joke. A good festival is a photographer’s playground, and this one had plenty.
Here’s the funny thing about shooting an event, though. You’re so busy looking for the moment that sometimes you don’t actually see what’s in front of you. The camera narrows your focus. That’s its job. It’s also why the moment that hit me hardest last night happened when the camera was finally down.
Gathering Aiden
Every year we open up the football field so everybody can play and run. It’s chaos in the best way. Kids get to tear around on a real field under the lights, and the parents get a few minutes of sitting down that they will absolutely not admit they needed.
When it was finally time to go, I went to round up Aiden. Anyone who has tried to collect a fourteen-year-old from a field full of friends knows this is less of a pickup and more of a negotiation. You don’t retrieve a teenager. You make an offer and wait for counteroffers.
So I was standing there, waiting, and my eyes landed on the fence around the field.
Then I Looked at the Fence
Our school hangs posters on that fence, one for each football player and each cheerleader. I’ve walked past them plenty of times. Last night, for whatever reason, I actually looked.
And it got me.
I realized I knew most of those kids from the time they were so small. I remember them when they were little enough to get lost in a crowd at this exact same festival. Now here they were, printed big on a fence, looking like actual young men and young women. Some of them look like they could fix your truck and file your taxes.
It’s an awesome and humbling feeling. Awesome because it’s genuinely amazing to watch. Humbling because it reminds you how fast all of it goes, and how little you had to do with the amount of time that slipped by. You blink a few seasons and suddenly the kid who used to come up to your knee is staring back at you from a poster with his arms crossed like he means business.
About That Man Hug
When I see the boys, I give them a man hug. You know the one. Lean in, tap tap tap on the back, then step back like nothing emotional just occurred. It’s a sacred ritual. Nobody taught it to us, and yet every guy in America knows the exact number of taps allowed before it becomes a different kind of hug.
These days, though, those hugs feel different. The boys are so grown now. Taller, broader, more settled in themselves. There’s a maturity in how they carry themselves that wasn’t there a few years back. I used to have to bend down a little. Now I’m starting to wonder who’s bending down for whom.
That’s the thing about watching other people’s kids grow up in your community. You don’t see it day by day. You see it in jumps. One day they’re a blur running across the field, and the next they’re shaking your hand like a grown man.
Who Did This Work
Standing at that fence, the first thing I felt was pride. The second thing I felt was gratitude, because I know these kids didn’t get here by accident.
God has done an amazing work in these kids’ lives. So have their parents, who put in the long nights and the hard conversations and the thousand car rides nobody remembers. So has our school, the teachers and coaches and staff who show up for these kids year after year and pour into them in ways that don’t always get noticed.
Psalm 127:3 says, “Children are a heritage from the LORD, offspring a reward from him” (NIV). I’ve known that verse a long time. Last night I kind of felt it. A heritage is something handed down, something that carries the work of a lot of people forward. That’s exactly what was hanging on that fence.
And Proverbs 22:6 puts it this way: “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it” (NIV). The start matters. All those years of small, ordinary faithfulness from parents and teachers and church folks add up to something you can see, if you stop long enough to look.
A Treasure to All of Us
These kids are a treasure to our families and to this whole community. I don’t say that lightly. You can feel it at events like this one, where everybody knows everybody’s kids and cheers for them like they’re family. Because, in a real way, they are.
As a photographer, I spend a lot of my time trying to freeze moments before they disappear. Senior portraits, family sessions, all of it comes down to that same idea. Hold onto this, because it won’t look like this for long. Last night I got a reminder of why that matters, and it didn’t even come through a lens. It came from a fence and a bunch of posters I’d walked past a hundred times.
So, to Those Kids
If you’re one of those players or cheerleaders on that fence, I want you to hear this plainly. I’m so proud of you guys. Proud of who you’re becoming. Proud of the way you carry yourselves. A lot of people have been in your corner since before you could tie your own shoes, and it shows.
And to the parents, the teachers, the coaches, the folks who keep showing up: thank you. The work is paying off. You can see it from the bleachers.
The Takeaway
Next time you’re at a community event, put the phone down for a minute and look around. Really look. Find the kids you remember being tiny and see who they’ve become. Then tell them. Tell their parents too. Most of us are quick to notice what’s going wrong and slow to say out loud what’s going right.
The years are going by whether we notice them or not. We might as well notice. And when you see one of those boys, give him the man hug. Tap tap tap. Then step back and let him see you’re proud.
He’ll pretend it’s no big deal. It is.
