12 Years of Hopeless Wandering With My Son and Mumford & Sons

My son and I went to a Mumford & Sons concert last week in Tampa.

I’m fully aware that’s an extremely white sentence, but I recently rode a horse while wearing shorts, so you kind of knew what you were getting into here.

I almost didn’t go for various reasons, but I’m glad I ended up making the 2.5-hour trek on I-4 during rush hour (harrowing!). I always love concerts and live music, but this one was particularly special because it felt like a full-circle moment.

My middle kid was a terrible sleeper when he was a baby. This came as quite a shock to my wife and me because our first child was an amazing sleeper. When our first son started sleeping through the night within a couple months of birth, we thought we had it all figured out. We were incredible parents! Everyone was lying about this whole sleep deprivation thing!

Then our second son was born, and he didn’t sleep through the night for at least four years. You win some, you lose some.

My weekend ritual in those sleepless years with the secondborn was an early morning drive with Mumford & Sons as the soundtrack. I tend to fixate on certain music and artists, and Mumford was my hyperfixation during that period.

I wrote an essay about those drives, complete with song lyrics interspersed throughout. I was so literary and cool back then. The essay is rather long and self-indulgent, so I’ll just drop an excerpt here to give you the gist of it.

But hold me fast, Hold me fast,
‘Cause I’m a hopeless wanderer

The last several weekends, usually early on Sunday mornings after another harrowing night starring a restless just-turned-1-year-old, I roll out of bed, load the big guy into his car seat, and set out for a driving tour of central Florida to give Mommy an hour or two of rest. I once looked upon this as a bit of a chore, preferable to trying to keep the baby quiet in the house, but still nothing to look forward to. This past Sunday though, it felt different.

The sun is just rising on another beautiful Florida spring morning as we set out. I’m tired and a little cranky: the usual. My son, however, seems to be in a pretty good mood and doesn’t even put up any fuss for the seat-belt buckling, which is usually a given.

We swing through the Starbucks drive-thru first to grab a coffee and snack for me. No caffeine necessary for the baby. I’ve long suspected he has a secret pump hidden somewhere that delivers it straight to his bloodstream…

As the combination of caffeine and croissant start to perk me up, I take a moment to listen to the babbling and singing coming from the back seat. It’s a sound that can almost always put a smile on my face. When, that is, I take the time to listen. Really listen. All too often these sounds get lost in the noise: music on the radio, a phone call, or most often, the thoughts in my head. This time though, I just let it soak in, trying to create a memory.

I do this every so often. Seek to preserve moments that are so mundane they can easily be lost. For example, I remember sitting, several years ago during our year in England, in the back of a classroom in Cambridge, leaning back against an ancient wood bench, looking out the window as the sun glinted off the dusty glass panes and a tree branch shivered in the breeze at the classically old British architecture, characteristic of university towns, and the cobble-stoned street.

That is my mental postcard from that period in my life. Similarly, this moment, listening, without any distraction, to my 1-year-old as we drive will be my mental postcard for this specific time. All too soon, these drives will be a thing of the past and we’ll be on to something else. Another stage, another routine.

Some people spend their Sunday mornings chasing the eternal; I spend mine chasing the ephemeral.

The baby’s babbling slowly turns to crying so I feed him a bottle by reaching into the backseat and assuming and holding a seated crane pose that my hypothetical yoga instructor would be proud of. He eventually falls asleep, so my mind is free to get back to over thinking. I plug in my phone and fire up Mumford & Sons “Babel” album. It is the perfect soundtrack for Sunday morning drives.

If you are super bored and want to laugh at 34-year-old me’s sense of self-importance, you can read the rest of the piece called Hopeless Wanderers here. It was originally published on April 12, 2015… crazy! This story is also in my first book (Fatherhood: Dispatches From the Early Years).

I learned after I published my book that using song lyrics is definitely not allowed, so I hastily deleted all those from the manuscript and re-uploaded it to Amazon. So, if you have an early copy of the book with the song lyrics in it, please don’t show Mumford & Sons. I can’t afford to get sued.

Anyway, that baby I used to drive around while the sun was rising and the banjos were blaring is now starting seventh grade. Today. But before he started his second year of middle school, we traveled back in time to a place he certainly doesn’t remember, but I will never forget.

Friday evening traffic was mercifully decent, so we made it to our seats in the Tampa Bay Lightning’s home arena just in time for the opening act, a guy/band called Medium Build. I didn’t know him, but I greatly enjoyed his set. Then, after a short interlude during which my son and I admired the Lightning’s NHL banners and looked up what the Prince of Wales Trophy was, Mumford took the stage.

We spent two hours singing and swaying and clapping our hands awkwardly and exchanging excited looks when it became increasingly clear that the boys were going off script from the setlists we had carefully studied on setlist.fm. We didn’t get “Hopeless Wanderers” or “Ghosts That We Knew,” but they played “Sigh No More” for the first time in years, “Clover” for the first time ever, and a bunch of other bangers, old and new.

My son’s only complaint was that our section didn’t stand the entire show, so he felt a little restricted. After “I Will Wait” got fans on their feet, everyone sat back down. “Well, guess this is going to be an up-and-down kind of thing tonight,” my son said with a sigh, clearly annoyed. Important life lesson he had to learn early on: Not everyone is as good at concert as we are.

Overall, the evening was a success. I’d seen Mumford live once before, but I’d forgotten how good of a show they put on. Not a lot of frills, but their energy is high, and they sound great. My son’s favorite moment was when Marcus Mumford ran through the crowd during “Ditmas” and then joked about how he got doused with iced white wine by a fan. He also broke a guitar string during “Holland Road” and didn’t miss a beat. I got that one on video!

On the long drive home after the show, my not-at-all-a-baby-anymore fell asleep once again to the sounds of Mumford & Sons playing on the radio. Just like the old days. As I drove down the quiet highway, fluorescent lights streaming past, it felt for just a moment like I was visiting a ghost that I knew.

It felt nice.

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Words by me, Andrew Knott. Best known for duck… and Baby-sitters Club.

My books:

Love’s a Disaster - contemporary fiction about a marriage proposal gone wrong, complicated families, mini-golf, second-chance love, Florida, sword fighting, and punk rock music.

Fatherhood: Dispatches From the Early Years - essays and humor about the very early years of my parenting journey