This is one of the most beloved paintings in America, and it puts its finger on something we all pass through, first as the child, and one day as the parent left behind...
The painting is Breaking Home Ties, by Norman Rockwell, on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1954. A father and his teenage son sit side by side on the running board of a battered farm truck, waiting at a railway stop. A single track runs along the bottom of the picture. A ticket pokes from the boy's pocket. His suitcase is stacked with schoolbooks and wears a "State U" pennant. The train is coming to carry him off to college, away from home, for the first time in his life.
Everything is in the way they sit.
The son sits upright, scrubbed and dressed in his best, eyes fixed on the horizon, on the track, on the future rushing toward him. He is already half gone. For him that train is the beginning of everything.
His father sits beside him in worn work clothes and scuffed boots, looking the other way, down the line, as if he cannot bear to watch it arrive. The same train means the opposite thing to him. For the son it is the start of a life. For the father it is the day the house grows quieter, the chair at the table sits empty, and the person he built his world around walks out into a life that no longer has him at its centre.
Look at his hands. He is holding two hats. His own battered one, and resting on top of it, his son's crisp new one, held carefully together, because it is the last small thing he can still do for the boy...
And then the dog, its head laid in the son's lap, gazing up, refusing to look away. Rockwell knew exactly what that was for: "The father couldn't show how he felt about the boy's leaving," he said. "The dog did."
It has moved people for 70 years because every leaving is a beginning for one person and an ending for another. The child steps out into the world, as they should. And someone stays behind, watching them go, and loving them enough to let them go anyway...
“When we were first invited to Milan for the Olympics, we said no. It felt like more than we could handle. But we kept thinking about what John and Matty would say if they knew we turned it down. We knew the answer. John loved representing his country. From the time he was little, he dreamed of competing at the Olympics. In that final summer, he was working harder than ever, pushing himself with everything he had to earn a spot on that roster. He was going to be there. Sitting with that knowledge while watching these Games was not easy — but being present for them, surrounded by people who truly cared about John and Matty, made it something we will always treasure. Every person we encountered took the time to ask about the boys — who they were, what they meant to us, the kind of people they were away from the ice. What struck us most was realizing that John and Matty's impact reaches so much further than we sometimes see in our own grief. They are carried by so many people — in locker rooms, in conversations, in quiet moments we will never even know about. That means everything to us. And then Team USA won gold. When Zach, Auston, and Matthew carried John's jersey around that ice, we were overwhelmed — they made sure he was there. And then to see Noa and Johnny — on Johnny's second birthday — carried out onto the ice to be part of that gold medal photo — there are no words for what that felt like. John and Matty should have been there, and in that moment, they were. Thank you to every member of that team for loving John & Matty - and for making sure they were part of something historic. And thank you to everyone at @NBCOlympics and @usahockey for your kindness, your generosity, and for bringing our family to Milan to witness it. You gave us a gift we didn't know we needed.
With love and gratitude,
The Gaudreau Family"
🇺🇸 For bringing home the gold and delivering an overwhelming sense of pride throughout America, we hereby grant FREE CRABCAKES FOR LIFE to all members of the 2026 USA Men’s & Women’s Olympic Ice Hockey Teams! This applies to both dine-in and shipping for all time. God Bless America! Johnny Hockey Forever! 🇺🇸
@DefenseBaron Nah. We deserve it. Had 🇨🇦 won - we would have been WAY more insufferable
Reminder: it was Canadian fans that started booing American teams when they played in 🇨🇦. - we were the ones who took our political frustration’s out on 🇺🇸 citizens
This was an interception by Evan Williams that was ruled incomplete.
This one is more obvious than the whole Cooks/McMillian situation. The NFL is so wild 🤦🏼♂️