House of the Rising Sun

I was going through some old emails and came upon this one from Grant. It’s a very powerful, emotionally intense, genuinely heartfelt experience between father and son.

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The following article was written in an email to me by Grant dated January 14, 2020 at 10:51 PM.

As he often does at bedtime, Ash asked me to tuck him in and play some guitar and sing to him. My guitar playing is basic (at best) and my singing is even worse, and the only song I've ever been able to play and sing at the same time is the old tune "House of the Rising Sun." Because of my ultra-limited musical skills, this is a song I've been playing and singing to Ash since he was a baby. However, for the first time tonight, Ash interrupted me to ask *what the song is about.*

I responded by telling him, "you know, let's read the lyrics together and see if we can figure it out."

There is a house in New Orleans

They call the Rising Sun

And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy

And God I know I'm one

I asked Ash, "can you think of another word for a house with a name?" and after a bit of meandering and a little prompting from me, he blurted out, "AN INN! LIKE THE INN OF THE LAST HOME IN DRAGONLANCE!!”

"Sure," I responded, "or maybe a hotel - those are 'houses' where people stay or live, and they almost always have a name. Maybe this one was called the Sunrise Hotel?" Further exploring the verse, Ash was very struck by the idea of a ‘house’ or hotel where ‘poor boys’ are ruined - something bad and sinister must happen there…

My mother was a tailor

She sewed my new blue jeans

My father was a gamblin' man

Down in New Orleans

Next, we talked about the protagonists parents. Ash quickly decided that the mother must be a kind, talented woman, given that she has the skills to sew a pair of jeans and is kind enough to give them to her son. Ash was less certain of the quality of the father’s character, given his gambling habit.

Now the only thing a gambler needs

Is a suitcase and trunk

And the only time he's satisfied

Is when he's all drunk

Before I even had a chance to start explaining, Ash excitedly pounced on this part. “If all he needs is a suitcase and a trunk, maybe that means the dad left him and his mother? And if he’s only happy when he’s drunk, well, he must be… kind of a jerk? Maybe he left them in the House of the Rising Sun? Or maybe he left them so he could go to the House of the Rising Sun??”

Oh mother tell your children

Not to do what I have done

Spend your lives in sin and misery

In the House of the Rising Sun

Ash found this verse really disturbing - “so the House of the Rising Sun is an EVIL PLACE where people do the SEVEN DEADLY SINS?! I guess that’s why he’s telling the moms not to let their kids go there??”

Well, I got one foot on the platform

The other foot on the train

I'm goin' back to New Orleans

To wear that ball and chain

Ash was initially grossed out by the first two lines of this verse, and it took a few minutes of going around in circles before I realized that he was interpreting it *very* literally - he thought that the singer had lost both of his feet in a horrible railroad accident, leaving one severed foot on the platform, and the other on the train.

After catching my breath from laughter, I explained: the saying “one foot on the platform, one foot on the train” is describing the feeling of when your heart is being pulled in two directions - you might be happy where you are, but feel obligated to go to wherever that train is going… and the train ain’t waiting for anyone to make up their minds.

The second two lines caught his imagination too - he immediately assumed that “ball and chain” must mean “jail,” since he’s seen cartoons where prisoners are dragging around a big chain and iron ball. I explained that “ball and chain” can have several meanings: it can definitely refer to being a prisoner. It can also be a jokey way of describing your spouse. Or, as I think it’s used in this song, it can refer to a painful, burdensome obligation.

We then looked at the verse as a whole: the singer seems to have gotten away from the House of the Rising Sun, but now feels a powerful obligation pulling him back to New Orleans and The House, even though he knows it’s a place of sin and misery. Ash really struggled here - “why would the singer ever go back, if he was able to escape all that sin and misery?”

I started to talk about how sometimes people find themselves in a terrible, painful situation, and when it goes on and on for so long, they can start to forget that they deserve happiness and can start to think that they deserve the pain and sadness and “sin and misery.” I told him, as an example, me and mom and Ash are really good partners in our family - sure, we argue sometimes, but we always treat each-other with love and respect even when we’re angry.

However, some folks aren’t so lucky, and can end up in a relationship where there is way more anger and hurting and frustration. Sometimes it gets so bad, they might *really* hurt each other, in their feelings or even in their actual bodies. And if it’s been so, so bad for a long, long time, even when someone escapes from that kind of situation, they might still feel like that’s where they belong, and they might go back again even if they shouldn’t.

At this point, Ash sat bolt upright in bed and said, “DAD. YOUR EYES. THEY’RE REALLY SERIOUS. DID YOU ESCAPE FROM SOMETHING BAD?”

Caught totally off-guard, I immediately teared up.

I told him that I have very carefully chosen not to share much with him about my life before I met mom, because it’s hard to talk about it without starting to share things that an almost-10-year-old just can’t really understand. I told him that I promise that I’ll share more about it all when he’s older, but that in the meantime, I can just say that my parents tried *really hard* to make a good life for us when me and my sisters were kids, but that it wasn’t always easy.

I told him that Grandpa Jay and I loved each-other very much, but that in some ways, he didn’t know how to be a good dad, and it became a situation that was so bad, I had to escape… but that it was a long, long time before I believed that I deserved anything better, and that I’m still working on trying to believe it.

This is why I work so hard to provide a good, happy, stable life for the three of us - so that Ash doesn’t have to feel what it’s like to have one foot on the platform, and the other foot on the train, desperately trying to escape something terrible but knowing he’ll end up back there no matter what…

Ash, seeing the heavy tears in my eyes, grabbed onto me and bear-hugged me, and repeated again and again, “it’s okay Dad, you can let it out. Let it all out Dad.”

Well, there is a house in New Orleans

They call the Rising Sun

And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy

And God I know I'm one

I held him, and cried, and he squeezed me, and it was the most intense emotion I’ve felt in a very long time. I am so profoundly grateful to have the life that we have created for ourselves, and yet that gratitude is always accompanied by a constant nagging fear that it’s all just one tiny mistake away from disintegrating around me. I still feel myself with one foot on the platform of my dangerous, exciting, chaotic, terrifying, love-and-risk-filled childhood, and the other foot on a train which has been steadily chugging me towards a happier, stabler future. The work of knowing how to keep both feet firmly planted without being torn in half never seems to end, but at least I have the most supportive family imaginable helping me along the way.