It is Monday morning. I am out of coffee. My wife has just left the house for a run, and the boys are all off at school. In a word, it is time to write.

April 7 has been circled on my calendar for months, though not because it's the first day of this new column. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are in town for two nights, and how can I tell you how much I've looked forward to this without sounding like a total geek? Love the Boss, have seen him lots (lets put the number somewhere between 50 and 100 shows, which qualifies me as a fanatic but does not ever remotely put me in the stratosphere of some hardcores), and I track the setlists from each tour over at Backstreets.com. So, yeah, the band is coming to my town and I am glad.

What will make tonight's show memorable is that I'm taking my two oldest sons for the first time. They're in high school, with the oldest about to graduate. I was his age when I first became a Springsteen fan, an idealistic runner and aspiring writer who heard Thunder Road's admonition to ride out and case the Promised Land as a personal call to battle. My sons don't realize it, but they have absorbed the music and lyrics to every song in the Springsteen canon, thanks to countless hours in the car since they were infants. I even played Thunder Road as I drove my oldest home from the hospital, as my own little introduction to the world.They will find themselves singing along without even knowing why, perhaps wondering how they knew the whispered reminder to "change your shirt" in Meeting Across the River, or that, note for note, Clarence Clemons' solo in Jungleland is just shy of three minutes of the most mournful saxophone lament in the history of rock and roll.

So,you ask, do they want to go to the show?

Frankly, I suspect that they can take it or leave it. It is a school night and perhaps they will be thinking about their homework instead of mouthing lines to songs that have less significance to them than to me, because by now they have their own musical heroes. (I have often wondered why song lyrics mean so much more to us in high school and college than the rest of our lives. I have come to the conclusion that it's because in high school we are still forming our world view, and take our cues from others. But when we get a little older we draw inspiration from our own experiences. Just my personal point of view, but I think it's got merit).

They are going out of deference to my enthusiasm. It's important to me that they see Springsteen in concert, just as I would have encouraged them to go see Sinatra-- or Gretzky or Prefontaine, for that matter. The great ones do something different, and even if you're not a fan, you owe it to yourself to have a look.

But what makes tonight that little bit more meaningful is that my oldest is heading back east for college this summer. He just received an acceptance letter to the school he's been working most hard to get in, and though I know he will be home for breaks and that there will be many other chances to see Bruce in concert, there seems something symbolic and significant about tonight. If childhood hasa story arc, beginning the day you take a kid home from the hospital and then going all the way to the day they leave for college, we are on the final portion of that delicate curve. Somewhere in the midst of that arc have been myown personal adventures and career shifts, the hours spent coaching and watching their various sports, and the other interminglings of parenthood. My personal soundtrack to all these years was Springsteen, the themes of fathers and sons that run through his songs resonating more and more as my boys grew older.

This past week I've had a hard time sleeping. I wake up at 3 a.m. for no reason,wide-awake, and just lie there. I tick off the reasons it could be happening -- bills, deadlines, irrational fears -- and find none. It's like there's something nagging at me, demanding my attention, but it won't say what it is. During the day I can problem solve like I always do, running down to the trails and putting in a mindless hour of sifting and sorting. But at night there's nowhere to go.

These are the wide-awake struggles of a man whose oldest son will soon be off to forge a new chapter in his life, one where he will make his own decisions and where his glories and sins will be his own. I'm so proud of him, but I am also wont to get a little misty when I think about the day I will shake his hand and then pull him tight for a hug as my wife and I see him off. No. More than misty. I cry, secretly, the emotion coming from someplace deep and awkward, a mixture of sadness and joy that I have never known before. Hard to explain. Can't explain. I just know that it keeps me up nights.

But tonight, this night, all of that is in the future. We're going to blow it outwith the Boss. This is my April 7, a day of new hopes and new beginnings. "Show a little faith," as Springsteen sings, "there's magic inthe night."

Damn, I hope he plays Thunder Road.