Prodigal Song

I got it bad for The Prodigal Son. Some women are attracted to good guys. Some chicks dig bad guys. I love bad-guys-turned-good.

The Prodigal Son by Pierre-Cecile Puvis de Chavannes

Listen, always, with this caveat: words, and their connotations, are relative. The gander ain't always turned on by the same things as the goose.

While many women in my peer-group (middle-age, middle-class, Middle-America-living white women) seem drawn to a spouse with a college degree, a professional job, a big savings account  coupled with little personal baggage, I am not. These are the good guys. The kind of guys you can rely on for material wealth and emotional stability.

These are not my type of guys.

I've always been attracted to the bad-guys-turned-good.

Who are the bad guys?

Some chicks gush over the baddest guys out there. These guys fuck the rules. These guys put the dick in unpredictability. Whether nerdy Sherlocks, jock-boys, or socks-on-cocks rock stars, these guys leave you crying out for more. These guys leave you, never ever bored.

These are not my type of guys.

I love the Prodigal Son. The son who leaves his family home, searching for riches and fame, breaking the hearts of endless bitches, then finally, fed up with the game, returning, begging forgiveness, full of repentance. Hopeful for a welcome arm around the shoulders, an extended hand, a kiss on the knee. It'll all be better now that you're home, son. Let's gather around the fire. Let's feast on the best food in our pantry. Let's drink our best wine. Let's sit together and sing, as a family, the song of the Prodigal Son.

That's my type of guy.

Or chick. I am a bleeding-heart sapiosexual, after all. My sexual desires skew intellect and emotional vulnerability no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity. I happened to marry a man, so often I'm mistaken for a cis-gender heterosexual. It awards me a position to speak freely of things my LGBTQ friends must hold inside. I am lucky for that. I am lucky in many ways. I'm lucky to have Will. I knew I'd married the right guy when Will burst into tears at the end of the movie, "The Fisher King."



The Prodigal Son gives me a major lady boner, for sure. I also gravitate toward prodigal sons and daughters as friends. Anyone who has ever been out into the wilderness and returned, admitted defeat, asked for help, and accepted grace into their heart is my friend.

Here are three such friends, Jay, Nancy, and Jacob Cantrell.

Our dear friends, The Cantrells. From left to right are husband and wife, Jay and Pastor Nancy, and their son JJ. If you're looking for some uplifting gospel music, check out the video I posted above.

Our family has been intertwined with the Cantrells for longer than I’ve been a member of the Carleton Clan. My husband Will has been jamming with JJ since they were about fourteen. Will's mom, Pam Davis Carleton, first met Jay and Nancy Cantrell in the 1990s when, along with her dad and mom, Bill and Sadie Davis, she became a member of HABOT (Heart of America Bluegrass and Old-Time Music,) a Kansas City-based organization of local musicians.

The first time I met Jay and Nancy was in the fall of 2003, if memory serves, when Will introduced us in the campground at the Walnut Valley Festival, in Winfield, KS. They were sitting around a campfire with Will’s mom and dad and a few other musician friends--guitars, mandolins, banjos and other acoustic stringed instruments in hand--going round the circle taking turns leading everyone in song. 

It was amazing. What a way to feel connected to our fellow humans, to gather in a circle and sing together.

I grew up in a much more bourgeois household. We did not go camping. We did not gather in song. My parents were both accountants. The most outdoorsy thing they ever did was go golfing. I was unaccustomed to singing in front of others, other than that time I wore a fancy dress with poofy sleeves and wobbled around in high heels at my sister Jenny’s wedding, or in a "Robbing Hood costume for our sexist sixth grade musical, It Takes a Wizard.

image source (my red arrow directed toward "Robbing Hood")

screenshot source (my highlights emphasizing sexism in yellow)

Singing was more about giving a performance and less about being part of a circle sing-along. 

I never learned how to play an instrument or read music. My mom and my older siblings taught me nursery rhymes, but once I “grew out of it” we stopped singing those songs. Thankfully, my mom was a quirky housewife during my formative years. I grew up listening to her play Queen’s A Night at the Opera on her portable eight-track player while cleaning the house, or the soundtrack to the film The Way We Were, featuring Barbra Streisand, while crafting on the couch. Every now and then she’d even break out Sonny Lester's How to Belly Dance for Your Husband album and practice in the living room. 

Image source

Needless to say, Mom’s eclectic taste in music influenced me greatly.

Mom actually met my dad because of music. Around 1966, when Mom first left her abusive first husband, at just 28-years old with four kids ages 3-8, she was looking for an outlet for her adult social needs. My paternal Aunt Donna, whom Mom knew through her first husband, who she as friends with Donna’s husband at the time, invited Mom to join her woman’s singing group called Sweet Adelines. From there, Aunt Donna and Mom became good friends. A couple years later, when Aunt Donna’s older brother, my dad, Glen Burton asked his sister if she knew of any single ladies he could date—he was going through a divorce from his own first wife—Aunt Donna suggested he call up Beverly, my mom. A year-and-a-half later, they married. A year after that, I was born.

https://sweetadelines.com/

My older siblings were all pop music fans. From the year I was born in 1970 to 1977 when we moved from St. Joe to Kansas City, I don’t think a day passed that I didn’t hear songs by artists such as Jim Croce and Elton John  playing on St. Joe’s Top-49 radio station, KKJO either on my big brothers’ and sisters’ bedroom radios or in my mom’s car. One of my earliest memories is standing in the back seat of Mom’s car (what seatbelts? This was the 70s) belting out my favorite song at the time, Helen Reddy’s “Delta Dawn.” 

My dad was a huge Big Band swing-era music fan. When I was a teen and he was nearing retirement, I’d wake up on Sunday mornings to the sounds of Dad playing his Glenn Miller and Count Basie albums while making biscuits and gravy. As a flexitarian, I’ve always hated biscuits and gravy. Why would you ruin a perfectly good biscuit by ladling greasy ground pig onto something that obviously pairs much better with butter and honey? I used to hate Sunday mornings as a teenager. Bleck. That smell.

But the sound? The rustling pots and pans, the sizzling sausage, the clarinets and sultry singers. I loved that part of Sunday mornings.

We weren't big church goers. We went to Wyatt Park Christian Church for a few years until we moved away when I was six. We joined Park Hill Presbyterian Church when I was twelve, but we moved again that same year and pretty much gave up physically going to church.

Off and on over the years, I've gone to church, all sorts of mostly protestant Christian denominations. Unity. Metropolitan Community Church. Bethel AME. Shawnee Mission Unitarian Universalist. Grace Covenant Presbyterian. The Foundry. Weston Community Church of the Nazarene.

This final church on the list is the latest one I've attended. I went a few weeks ago with my family--husband Will, daughter Kat, and mother-in-law Pam--right before our local health departments shut down all in-person gatherings of 10 or more people. Since then, I've been attending virtual church in my living room. I have to say, I like it better than church IRL. I don't have to wear a bra. Or pants. And I can watch anytime I feel like it because it's on YouTube.

Here's the latest sermon from Pastor Nancy. View it on your own time.

Here's a clip of The Cantrell's Sing-along on this Easter Sunday. The day of new beginnings.



I've written in the past about our friend JJ. You can read it here, if you like. In that post, I say, "JJ is no longer our friend." That is no longer the truth. Hallelujah, Jesus! Our friendship with JJ has been renewed. We have forgiven, and we have been forgiven.

JJ--like my husband, like myself--sings the prodigal songs. Prodigal songs make the best sing-alongs.

It's not my story to tell, but one of the things I love the most about JJ Cantrell is that he eschews his personal beliefs for the greater good. He might be a nonbeliever, but he's still at his mother and father's side when they call upon him to sing along to the Prodigal Song.