I'll Meet You There

I can't go with you
But I'll meet you there

I still gotta lock up the house
And winterize the windows

The place needs a paint job
And the porch is all split

Read 'til I get there
Work on your cursive 'r's

I don't like sending you alone
But it's better than making you late

There's still some warm weather
Left in the month

You can play ball
I hear Gram's got a pool

You know, the important thing
Isn't how you arrive somewhere

It's how you leave
The last place you were at

I want to leave this place nice
Even if we don't ever come back to it

You know, Gram says we shouldn't get emotional
Because it's just a house

But I don't know how you spend that many nights
Sitting out on a porch without getting a little sentimental about it

I'll make sure I put your name somewhere in your room
Maybe in the closet on the other side of the door

That way if you come back here a hundred years from now
You'll still know which room was yours

Oh sure, people are living longer these days, you know
By the time you're my age, a hundred will be like being twelve

That's why you can't spend too much time
Thinking about how long you were here or how long you were there

It's not about time
It's about impact

Did you leave an impact?
No, I'm not talking about carving your name in that tree

Oh well, maybe I am
Maybe all we can do is carve our names in trees

And in closet doors
And on front porches

You hate to mark something up
But how else do you leave a mark, huh?

Either way the snow comes
And pretty soon everything's covered and dried and washed away

That's just the nature of things
Houses and trees and land

We had a good long run of it though
And we'll have a nice time at Gram's and after that we'll...

Well, we gotta take it
One step at a time

Can't do much more than that I guess
Can't predict the future, that's for sure

So you go on ahead
And I'll meet you there

Take a good look at the place, kid
And take a good look at your old man
Standing here
On his old front porch

Who knows when you're going to see it
Again